FTX Founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison over his role in the collapse of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange, after a US judge concluded he had done “enormous harm” by stealing billions of dollars in customer funds to make risky bets.
The sentence of the 32-year-old caps the swift and dramatic downfall of a figure who was once one of the most prominent faces in the crypto industry, courted by celebrities and politicians alike.
Bankman-Fried who was found guilty on seven counts of fraud and money laundering last year, knew his actions were wrong, and “knew it was criminal”, Judge Lewis Kaplan said at Thursday’s hearing in Manhattan federal court, adding that Bankman-Fried showed a “lack of any real remorse”.
“He regrets that he made a very bad bet on the likelihood of getting caught, but he is not going to admit a thing,” Kaplan said. The judge also concluded that Bankman-Fried had tried to tamper with a witness and lied several times while testifying at trial.
Dressed in a tan prison uniform, Bankman-Fried was looking downcast and clasping his hands together,as he expressed some regret in a speech to the court before the sentence was read out. “I made a series of bad decisions,” he said. “I was responsible for FTX, and its collapse is on me”.
But he maintained that there need not have been any harm as a result of those decisions, as FTX still had “enough assets to pay back . . . all customers in full at current prices” and had merely suffered “a liquidity crisis
Known for his cargo shorts and curly hair, Bankman-Fried was once one of the most prominent executives in crypto, portraying himself as the respectable face of an unruly industry and donating millions to politicians from both main US parties in what Kaplan described as an attempt to buy “power and influence”. FTX imploded in November 2022 and swiftly filed for bankruptcy. One year later, Bankman-Fried was convicted by a New York jury.
Damian Williams, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, whose office brought the case, said Bankman-Fried “orchestrated one of the largest financial frauds in history, stealing over $8bn of his customers’ money” and “demonstrated a brazen disregard for customers’ expectations and disrespect for the rule of law”.
He added that the sentence would “prevent the defendant from ever again committing fraud and is an important message to others who might be tempted to engage in financial crimes”.
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