Sam Bankman-Fried Gets 25 Year Prison Sentence
Photo by Cointelegraph, CC BY 3.0
He could have received 110 years, but the FTX cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried was handed only a quarter century of jail time for his $8 billion crimes.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange who was convicted of stealing billions of dollars from customers, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday, capping an extraordinary saga that upended the crypto industry and became a cautionary tale of greed and hubris.
Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentence was shorter than the 40 to 50 years that federal prosecutors had sought after a jury found him guilty of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering — charges that carried a maximum penalty of 110 years behind bars. But the punishment was far above the six and a half years requested by his defense lawyers.
Mr. Bankman-Fried, 32, did not visibly react as Judge Lewis A. Kaplan handed down the sentence in Federal District Court in Manhattan. His parents, the law professors Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, sat two rows from the front, staring at the floor.
“He knew it was wrong. He knew it was criminal,” Judge Kaplan said of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s actions.
Before the sentence was delivered, Mr. Bankman-Fried, cleanshaven and wearing a loosefitting brown jail uniform, apologized to FTX’s customers, investors and employees.
“A lot of people feel really let down, and they were very let down,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what happened at every stage.” He added that his decisions “haunt” him every day.
Mr. Bankman-Fried was also ordered to forfeit about $11 billion in assets.
Credit where due. Jaybird’s guess was spot-on.
I would gladly live in a world where sentences for this sort of thing were shorter but more certainly handed out. (And not just for white-collar crime, but that’s a whole different subject.) We don’t now live in such a world, though, and I see no reason that this jerk should be treated as if we did. So no problem with the sentence.Report
Well, my guess was that that was going to be his sentence but not, like, the amount of time in prison.
The current fun guess would be “how long will it *REALLY* be?”
I give it 50-50 that he’s pardoned before January.Report
This is another area where reporters talking to experts would be useful. There are plenty of lawyers (though I’m not one of them) who could give a solid estimate of actual prison time (assuming good behavior) based on their walking-around knowledge. I’d have to spend hours of research to come to some sort of responsible conclusion and it isn’t worth my while to do that.
When you say “before January” do you mean before the end of January or by December 31? That could make a big difference.Report
“Before Inauguration Day.”Report
Why do you think Biden would pardon him?Report
It has to do with being a donor.Report
Even if you assume that Biden would corruptly bail out a donor, it’s not like SBF has any money now.Report
Well, I’m assuming that it’d be more of a Marc Rich situation.
You don’t help SBF because he’s got money. You help him because the people who have money are watching.
The next SBF is *VERY* interested in what happens to this one.Report
So, you were wrong about him ever being charged because of his connections, you were wrong about him ever going to trial, you were wrong about him being convicted, and you were wrong about his length of sentence.
All because you want a “BSDI” charge of how the Democrat’s are just as corrupt as the GOP, but it kept on failing on you. But, you continued on, because all of your sources were telling it was going to happen this time.
Maybe, just maybe, if ole’ SBF is still behind bars on January 31st, 2025, will you attack to all of your posts form now on, “I was horribly wrong about SBF, and zero of my predictions should be treated as anything but partisan wishes against a group I claim to support, but really don’t like.”Report
In my defense, charges *WERE* dropped.
Just not all of them.
you were wrong about his length of sentence
Not yet, I’m not. My guess was that he’d get an Ebbers.
I somehow chanced into being right about that.
For what it’s worth, I hope I am wrong, wrong, wrong about him only serving a single-digit percent of his sentence. But it remains my guess.Report
25 years is, to my understanding, a SUPER long Federal sentence. This is a thrown book.Report
No parole in the federal system, worth pointing out…Report
So if you’re offering even-money odds that Biden will pardon him or commute his sentence, I’ll take the other side of that bet. How much are you willing to put up?Report
$20 bucks, donation to a charity of the other’s choice. Screenshot of the receipt will do.
I will not feel secure in my bet until the day after election day. (The election is the 50/50, you see.)
If Biden gets re-elected, I won’t want to bet.
If Trump gets (re-?)elected, I’ll be happy to.Report
Now you’re changing the bet. The election results are irrelevant. You said it was 50-50 that SBF would be pardoned before Inauguration Day. Biden is the only person who could pardon him before Inauguration Day, and he can do it whether he’s re-elected or not. Maybe he won’t bother if he’s re-elected, but that’s not the betting proposition. The betting proposition is that Biden pardons SBF, which can’t be settled until either he does it or he’s no longer President and can’t do it anymore.Report
The 50-50 was based one which party would get elected.
If you agree with my take on the upcoming election, dude. Seriously. I’m good with that.
Do you see my take as accurate?
And if not “accurate”, worth complaining about the other party as having substantially changed the bet?Report
So tell us in plain English what the betting proposition is on which you’re offering even money odds. Is it that Biden will pardon SBF or not?Report
If Biden loses the election, he’ll pardon SBF.Report
So if Biden wins it’s a push?Report
It’d be a push until post-November 2028 *OR* if he happens to no longer be president for whatever reason, we’ll find an autopenned pardon having been signed the night before.Report
The more you explain, the less I understand.Report
Yeah, if you don’t remember the Marc Rich pardon, it’s probably incomprehensible.Report
I remember the Marc Rich pardon. What I don’t understand is what your betting proposition is. That’s not a question of my memory, but of your ability or willingness to say something clear enough to bet on.Report
Biden’s pardon will happen before he leaves office. That might be in January of next year. It might be in 2029. It might be between those two dates for a host of reasons. “The pardon will come from Biden before he is no longer president” is my thought.
“But what if he doesn’t win the election?”
“Well, then. It’ll happen before inauguration day.”
“WHAT IF HE DOES?!?”
“Well, then. It’ll happen before he stops being president whether that be in January 2029 or whether it be on one of the days between 2025 and 2029 and there are a host of reasons that he might not be president until 2029.”
“WHAT IF HE DIES?!?”
“Yes. That’s one of the potential reasons that he might not be president. They will find that the pardon happened the night before and it was signed by autopen or something.”
“BUT WHAT IF HE WINS THE ELECTION?!?!?”
“Didn’t we answer that already?”
“I can’t comprehend what you’re saying.”
“I am not seeing this as a ‘me’ problem.”Report
So you’re saying that at some point Joe fishin’ Biden is gonna pardon SBF? Seems wildly, insanely unlikely.Report
Yes. That is what I am saying.
I am also saying that it will take place in such a way that the blame lies solely on him and no one else and after defenders will be able to say “well, it’s not like he’s president anymore”.Report
Or, wait. I find that I have been pushed into a stronger position than the one I actually hold. It’s not that Biden will necessarily pardon SBF.
My strong position is that SBF won’t see 30 months in the pen (10% of the 25 year sentence).
“A pardon” is the first answer to pop into my head when I think “How will he wiggle out of his sentence prior to 30 months?”
There are other ways that he would get out prior to 10% of his sentence passing.
That’s what strikes me as exceedingly likely.
A pardon? Eh. 50-50 odds on that.Report
I feel like we need to revisit this next predictions thread.Report
Absolutely.Report
So your betting proposition is that sometime during Biden’s presidency, however long that lasts, he will pardon SBF? That’s simple and understandable, so that probably isn’t it.Report
Yeah, it’s cool. You don’t understand my position. That’s fine. Not everybody does.Report
And this is why.Report
Why do we imprison people who commit high-level fraud? In general, they do not have the technical skills necessary to do much damage acting alone. They do damage by lying to people. Once they’re exposed and widely known to be con artists, they’re essentially defanged, right?
So why imprison them? If incapacitation isn’t important, the only reasons to imprison them are revenge and deterrence, and I’m told by my betters that revenge is barbaric and deterrence doesn’t work.Report
I don’t know that that’s true. If the Wolf of Wall Street guy wandered back into finance, I’m pretty sure that he’d have a yacht again within 3 years paid for by retirees that he had pantsed. Again.Report