Sam Bankman-Fried deserves 40-50 years in prison for FTX fraud, prosecutors say

NEW YORK : Sam Bankman-Fried must exhaust between 40 and 50 years in detention heart after being convicted for stealing $8 billion from potentialities of his now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency replace, prosecutors stated on Friday.

A jury found Bankman-Fried, 32, guilty in November on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan stated “hundreds of on an habitual basis folks” including residents of battle-torn and unstable worldwide locations had entrusted their nest eggs to FTX.

“Even now Bankman-Fried refuses to admit what he did used to be wicked,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “His existence in contemporary years has been one in every of unmatched greed and hubris; of ambition and rationalization; and relationship wretchedness and playing many times with different folks’s money.”

A spokesman for the light billionaire, Trace Botnick, declined to comment. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers told U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan that a 5-1/4 to 6-1/2 year detention heart term may perchance perchance be acceptable. They stated FTX customers would bring together most of their money encourage, and that Bankman-Fried didn’t situation out to defend shut.

Kaplan is scheduled to sentence Bankman-Fried on March 28 in Manhattan federal court docket. Bankman-Fried plans to appeal his conviction and sentence.

Bankman-Fried is the son of two Stanford Legislation College professors. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bankman-Fried worked on Wall Facet road forward of driving a mumble in the values of digital property equivalent to bitcoin to a gain price Forbes magazine once estimated at $26 billion.

His fortune evaporated in November 2022, when FTX declared financial ruin after a wave of buyer withdrawals.

In their sentencing memorandum on Friday, prosecutors pointed to his privileged upbringing and elite training as causes he must face an especially harsh sentence.

“He knew what society deemed unlawful and unethical, however pushed aside that in maintaining with a pernicious megalomania guided by the defendant’s possess values and sense of superiority,” they wrote.

At his trial, three light shut mates testified that Bankman-Fried directed them to loot FTX buyer funds to toddle losses at his Alameda Analysis hedge fund, while portraying himself publicly as a guilty steward in the volatile cryptocurrency market.

Prosecutors stated Bankman-Fried also extinct buyer funds to aquire luxury staunch estate in the Bahamas and to donate to U.S. politicians who may perchance perchance strengthen cryptocurrency-friendly regulations.

Bankman-Fried testified that he didn’t note how grand Alameda owed to FTX unless rapidly forward of both failed. His trial lasted one month.

In a letter to Kaplan, Bankman-Fried’s folks stated their son took responsibility for the errors that resulted in FTX’s crumple, and worked laborious forward of his arrest to abet increase potentialities’ money.

Bankman-Fried used to be arrested in December 2022 in the Bahamas, the build FTX used to be based, and extradited to the USA that month.

He has been jailed at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center since August, when Kaplan revoked his bail after finding that he seemingly tampered with witnesses.