For the FTX fraud, Sam Bankman-Fried should serve 100 years in prison.
Sam Bankman-Fried, who was found guilty of stealing $8 billion from clients of his now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, should serve a minimum of 100 years in prison.
In November, a jury found 32-year-old Bankman-Fried guilty on seven counts of conspiracy and fraud. “Thousands of everyday people,” including citizens of war-torn and unstable nations, had entrusted their nest eggs to FTX, according to federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
“Even now, prosecutors stated in a sentencing memorandum that Bankman-Fried will not acknowledge that what he did was wrong.” “His life in recent years has been one of unmatched greed and hubris; of ambition and rationalization; and courting risk and gambling repeatedly with other people’s money.”
The former billionaire’s representative, Mark Botnick, declined to comment. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan was informed by Bankman-Fried’s attorneys that a 5-1/4 to 6-1/2 year prison sentence would be suitable. They claimed that Bankman-Fried had no intention of stealing and that FTX clients would receive the majority of their money back.
Bankman-Fried will be sentenced by Kaplan in federal court in Manhattan on March 28. Bankman-Fried intends to challenge both his sentence and conviction.
The son of two Stanford Law School professors is Bankman-Fried. After working on Wall Street and graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bankman-Fried rode the surge in the value of digital assets like bitcoin to an estimated net worth of $26 billion, as reported by Forbes magazine.
When FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022 due to a surge in customer withdrawals, his fortune vanished.
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In their sentencing memorandum on Friday, prosecutors pointed to his privileged upbringing and elite education as reasons he should face an especially harsh sentence.
“He knew what society deemed illegal and unethical, but disregarded that based on a pernicious megalomania guided by the defendant’s own values and sense of superiority,” they wrote.
At his trial, three former close associates testified that Bankman-Fried directed them to loot FTX customer funds to plug losses at his Alameda Research hedge fund, while portraying himself publicly as a responsible steward in the volatile cryptocurrency market.
Prosecutors said Bankman-Fried also used customer funds to buy luxury real estate in the Bahamas and to donate to U.S. politicians who might support cryptocurrency-friendly regulations.
Bankman-Fried testified that he did not realize how much Alameda owed to FTX until shortly before both failed. His trial lasted one month.
In a letter to Kaplan, Bankman-Fried’s parents said their son took responsibility for the errors that led to FTX’s collapse and worked hard before his arrest to help recover customers’ money.
Bankman-Fried was arrested in December 2022 in the Bahamas, where FTX was based, and extradited to the United States that month.
He has been jailed at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since August, when Kaplan revoked his bail after finding that he likely tampered with witnesses.
