A Manhattan judge ripped Sam Bankman-Fried as a “remorseless” scammer obsessed with political power as he sentenced the fallen crypto mogul to 25 years in prison Thursday — five months after he was found guilty of stealing more than $8 billion of funds from customers of his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Judge Lewis Kaplan said the 32-year-old convicted fraudster “presented himself as the good guy” all in favor of “appropriate regulation of the crypto industry” — but it was just an “act.”
“He did it because he wanted to be a hugely, hugely political influential person in this country,” Kaplan said, blasting him as “remorseless.”
“He knew it was wrong, he knew it was criminal, he regrets that he made a very bad bet about the likelihood of being caught,” he continued, as Bankman-Fried stood in front of him with his hands clasped tightly at his waist.
Moments before the judge handed down the lengthy sentence, Bankman-Fried apologized for making “bad decisions” that “failed everyone I care about” — but maintained his actions “weren’t selfish.”
“At the end of the day, I failed everyone that I care about and everything that I care about, too,” he said at the hearing in Manhattan federal court.
“A lot of people feel really let down and, I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what happened at every stage,” the fallen crypto mogul, wearing light tan jail garb, continued.
“I made a series of bad decisions, they weren’t selfish decisions, they weren’t selfless decisions. They were bad decisions.”
Bankman-Fried had emerged as crypto’s friendly face in the US before his platform’s sudden November 2022 meltdown.
With his company worth $40 billion at its peak, the tech mogul flew around on private jets, showered politicians who he thought might be crypto friendly with millions in donations, and even palled around with celebrities at the Super Bowl.
But weeks after his platform’s collapse, he was arrested in the Bahamas and charged with swiping FTX user funds to plug a $8 billion debt at his failing hedge fund Alameda Research.
In November last year, a jury found that the ex crypto golden boy had looted the accounts of what prosecutors called “tens of thousands” of people — including in war-torn and unstable nations — who lost the nest eggs they entrusted to him.
He was also found guilty of defrauding FTX’s lenders by sending them phony balance sheets, and of lying to the company’s investors. He earned roughly $3 billion in ill-gotten gains from those schemes, prosecutors said.
Bankman-Fried has been in jail since August after US District Judge Lewis Kaplan revoked his bail after finding that he tampered with witnesses, including by leaking his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison’s diary to a journalist.
The feds asked Kaplan to sentence Bankman-Fried to 40-to-50 years in prison after his conviction on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy.
Lawyers for the disgraced crypto ace called for him to instead serve only 5¼ to 6½ years.
Bankman-Fried, who swapped out his unkempt look for a coiffed hairdo and suit and tie during the month-long-trial, took the stand in his own defense — which did not go well.
He claimed more than 100 times that he could not “recall” details about his business — like repeatedly promising that his platform was “safe” — before being confronted with a mountain of evidence revealing that he said dozens of things he claimed not to remember.
The fallen crypto prince also gave no indication during his four-day stint on the stand that he felt any remorse for customers whose money vanished during FTX’s implosion.
“Even now Bankman-Fried refuses to admit what he did was wrong,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing earlier this month. “His life in recent years has been one of unmatched greed and hubris; of ambition and rationalization; and courting risk and gambling repeatedly with other people’s money.”
Three of his former business partners — including his ex Ellison, Alameda’s former CEO — pleaded guilty to their own fraud raps and flipped on him, testifying that the cocky math whiz set up a secret system allowing the hedge fund to have “backdoor” access to the exchange’s cash.
Bankman-Fried also used FTX customer funds to make more than $100 million in political contributions before the 2022 elections and to buy a ritzy $40 million Bahamian penthouse where he and his colleagues lived and worked, prosecutors said.
In total, the feds asked the judge to order Bankman-Fried to pay $11 billion in restitution — $8 billion to customers, $1.7 billion to investors and $1.3 billion to lenders — to make everyone whole.
Bankman-Fried has been jailed since August after the judge yanked his bond conditions after finding that he tampered with witnesses.
