Sam Bankman-Fried, the man involved in the largest crypto collapse in history while serving as CEO of the company FTX, has been sentenced to twenty-five years for defrauding FTX investors.
While the thirty-two-year-old Bankman-Fried was facing as many as 110 years for his crimes, prosecutors argued that Sam should receive a sentence of 40 to 50 years. His defense team argued he should only face six and a half years.
In his final statement during the trial, Sam stated that what happened at FTX haunts him and that he had made a lot of mistakes. Bankman-Fried also stated that as the CEO of the company, he was responsible for what happened.
Bankman-Fried’s defense team attempted to draw a distinction from cases like Bernard Madoff’s, where Madoff ran the largest Ponzi scheme. The lawyer also went as far as to say, “Madoff stole from Holocaust survivors. That is not Sam.” Sam’s defense painted the incident as a series of damaging compounding decisions by the company, which led to the largest crypto collapse in history.
“Madoff stole from Holocaust survivors,” his lawyer said. “That is not Sam. He did not want to personally inflict pain on anyone in any way. Sam was not a ruthless financial serial killer. He wasn’t predatory. He makes decisions with math in his head, not malice in his heart.”
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Many victims of those affected by FTX, including some who have claimed to have lost their life savings in the cryptocurrency’s downfall, have submitted letters demanding a harsher sentence.
His trial last fall captivated the financial world. A 12-person jury eventually sided with prosecutors who argued that Bankman-Fried deliberately stole up to $14 billion in customer deposits from his cryptocurrency exchange in a scheme that he carried out with three of his top executives.
The group, prosecutors claimed, allowed Bankman-Fried’s sister crypto trading firm Alameda Research “secret” backdoor access to FTX’s customer deposits, then spent the money on investments, loan repayments, political donations, and real estate.
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