Fraud worth billions

25 years in prison for ex-crypto king Bankman-Fried

Sam Bankman-Fried outside the courthouse in New York last July

(Bild: AP)

The founder of the collapsed crypto exchange FTX must spend a long time in prison. In the billion-dollar fraud trial against Sam Bankman-Fried, Judge Lewis Kaplan set the sentence at 25 years on Thursday after a jury found the 32-year-old guilty in November.

Under Bankman-Fried's leadership, client assets were secretly pumped from the FTX trading venue into a hedge fund. When these transactions went wrong, FTX was left with a billion-dollar hole.

"Life characterized by greed"
The public prosecutor's office had demanded 40 to 50 years in prison. "His life in recent years was characterized by unparalleled greed and hubris, by ambition and self-justification, by risk-taking and repeated gambling with other people's money," they wrote in justification.

A thief who brings his loot to Las Vegas is not entitled to a reduced sentence.

Richter Lewis Kaplan

Bankman-Fried's defense lawyers, on the other hand, had pleaded for a good five to six and a half years in prison. Their client was by no means the "super villain" outlined by the prosecution. The prison sentence demanded was "medieval". They also pointed out that the FTX customers had received a large part of their money back. Judge Kaplan did not accept this argument. "A thief who takes his loot to Las Vegas and successfully bets with the stolen money is not entitled to mitigation by using his Las Vegas winnings to repay the stolen money."

Friedman asked for an apology
In a statement, Bankman-Fried apologized to his former employees. "I am sorry for what happened. There were things I should have done and said, and things I shouldn't have." Some of his former confidants had pleaded guilty and incriminated Bankman-Fried in his fraud trial.

The jury considered it proven that Bankman-Fried, known for his appearances in jeans and a T-shirt as well as his distinctive mop of hair, had embezzled eight billion dollars of client money out of pure greed in order to speculate and finance his lavish lifestyle. Although he admitted mistakes during the trial, he repeatedly denied the accusation of fraud.

Parents attended the hearing
He had also announced his intention to appeal against the verdict and the amount of the sentence. In addition to Bankman-Fried, his parents, university professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, were also present at the hearing on Thursday.