Sam Bankman-Fried, the 32-year-old former billionaire who founded the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was found guilty in November on seven counts of fraud, embezzlement, and criminal conspiracy for stealing $8 billion from FTX customers.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced on Thursday in a Manhattan federal court to 25 years in prison.
Southern District of New York Judge Lewis Kaplan said that Bankman-Fried was “extremely smart” and “capable of huge accomplishments” while agreeing with prosecutors that Bankman-Fried “wanted to be a hugely, hugely politically influential person in this country.”
Kaplan stated that the loss amount to the victims of Bankman-Fried’s crimes surpassed $550 million and that investors lost billions.
The judge also found that Bankman-Fried committed witness tampering and perjury.
“A lot of people feel really let down, and they were very let down, and I am sorry about that,” Bankman-Fried said in court on Thursday. “I am sorry about what happened at every stage. And there are things I should’ve done and things I shouldn’t have.”
Bankman-Fried faced a statutory maximum of 110 years, but prosecutors argued for 40 to 50 years in jail and Bankman-Fried’s team asked for less, between 5 and 6.5 years.
Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Other high-profile fraud cases have had varying sentences, with Bernie Madoff notoriously receiving 150 years for a Ponzi scheme that lost investors billions of dollars.
Marc Litt, the former U.S. prosecutor who went against Bernie Madoff, told Coinage ahead of the sentencing hearing that he didn’t think Bankman-Fried deserved to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“He’s in his early 30s,” Litt stated. “We do as a society believe in rehabilitation and redemption as much as we talk a lot about and believe in punishment as well.”
