Legal
Sam Bankman-Fried Deserves Up to 50 Years in Prison for FTX fraud, Prosecutors Say
(CTN News) – FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried will serve between 40 and 50 years in prison for stealing $8 billion from customers, prosecutors said Friday.
Sam Bankman-Fried, 32, was found guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in November. Federal prosecutors said “thousands of everyday people,” including residents of war-torn and unstable countries, put their trust in the company.
Prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum that Sam Bankman-Fried refused to admit his actions were wrong. “In recent years, his life has been marked by unmatched greed and hubris, ambition and rationalization, and courting risk and gambling repeatedly with other people’s funds.”
Due to the losses FTX’s investors and Alameda’s lenders suffered, they seek a forfeiture of $11 billion.
(Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Marc Mukasey, the former billionaire’s lawyer, told U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan that a sentence of 5-1/4 to 6-1/2 years in jail would be appropriate. They said Bankman-Fried would return most of the money to FTX clients.
Bankman-Fried spokesman Mark Botnick said Mukasey will respond to the prosecutors’ memo next week.
Sam Bankman-Fried plans to appeal his conviction and sentence, which is scheduled to be sentenced by Kaplan on March 28 in Manhattan federal court.
In addition to being a Stanford Law School professor, his parents are Bankman-Fried. According to Forbes magazine, after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bankman-Fried worked on Wall Street before riding the boom in digital assets such as bitcoin to a net worth of $26 billion.
A wave of customer withdrawals caused FTX to declare bankruptcy in November 2022, evaporating his fortune.
He received an especially harsh sentence based on his privileged upbringing and elite education, according to the sentencing memorandum prepared by the prosecutors.
