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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves Federal court, Wednesday, July 26, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
The son of Stanford law professors who went on to be convicted of a cryptocurrency fraud damaging enough to be mentioned in the same breath as Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme has been sentenced to 25 years in federal prison.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the so-called “crypto king” oft identified as SBF, appeared before Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Thursday morning to learn his punishment for the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX. By the time the hearing neared its end, it was clear to court watchers that the judge was not buying the defense push for leniency on the notion that victims would necessarily be “made whole” through bankruptcy.
It’s apparent that Judge Kaplan gives no weight to the defense arguments that FTX fraud victims may be made whole via the bankruptcy process.
This sentencing will not go well for SBF.
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) March 28, 2024
Judge Kaplan: For the reasons well articulated by Mr. Ray, that people will be paid back is speculative. So I find the loss amount readily exceeds $550 million, the top tier. I find investors lost $1.7 billion, lenders lost $1.3 billion, and customers, $8 billion
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) March 28, 2024
In mid-March, prosecutors asked the judge to sentence the defendant to 40-50 years in prison for his wire fraud and conspiracy crimes, countering the 6.5 years proposed by the defense. In the government’s sentencing memo, prosecutors emphasized that Bankman-Fried, 32, caused “billions of dollars in losses and significant harm to tens of thousands of victims financially and emotionally,” no matter what the defense claimed about the degree to which victims suffered or continue to suffer.