Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a judge yesterday for stealing $8 billion from customers of the now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange he founded, the last step in the former billionaire wunderkind’s dramatic downfall.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan handed down the sentence at a Manhattan court hearing after rejecting Bankman-Fried’s claim that FTX customers did not actually lose money and finding that he lied during his trial testimony. A jury found Bankman-Fried, 32, guilty on November 2 on seven fraud and conspiracy counts stemming from FTX’s 2022 collapse in what prosecutors have called one of the biggest financial frauds in US history.
Kaplan said Bankman-Fried has shown no remorse.
“He knew it was wrong,” Kaplan said. “He knew it was criminal. He regrets that he made a very bad bet about the likelihood of getting caught. But he is not going to admit a thing, as is his right.”
Bankman-Fried, wearing a beige short-sleeve jail T-shirt, acknowledged during 20 minutes of remarks to the judge that FTX customers had suffered and he offered an apology to his former FTX colleagues – but did not admit criminal wrongdoing.
He has vowed to appeal his conviction and sentence.
Kaplan found that FTX customers lost $8bn, FTX’s equity investors lost $1.7bn, and that lenders to the Alameda Research hedge fund Bankman-Fried founded lost $1.3bn. He imposed a $11bn forfeiture order and authorised the government to repay victims with seized assets.
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate, Bankman-Fried rode a boom in the values of bitcoin and other digital assets to a net worth of $26bn, according to Forbes magazine, before he turned 30.