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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison for $10 billion fraud

Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News on

Published in News & Features

NEW YORK — Disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay $11 billion in forfeiture on Thursday for victimizing hundreds of thousands of people around the world in what the feds called one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history.

“There is a risk that this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future, and it’s not a trivial risk, not a trivial risk at all,” Manhattan Federal Court Judge Lewis Kaplan said before announcing his decision.

“In part, my sentence will be for the purpose of disabling him — to the extent that can be done — for a significant amount of time.”

The fallen FTX CEO and founder, whose catastrophic downfall came soon after he was positioned as the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, faced a maximum of 110 years in prison.

Bankman-Fried hung his head and looked somber as he learned his fate, showing little emotion as U.S. marshals escorted him shackled out of the courtroom minutes later. He’s been incarcerated at Brooklyn’s federal jail since Kaplan revoked his $100 bond last August for alleged witness tampering.

Kaplan announced the sentence after hearing from Bankman-Fried, his lawyers, the government, and one of more than 200 victims who contacted him before the proceeding.

 

“A lot of crying, sleepless nights. I have a new baby son and another toddler,” Sunil Kavuri, who traveled from London for the hearing, said, noting he was among countless FTX customers worldwide whose dreams were “destroyed” after losing everything.

“The money which I wanted to spend on a family home (was) taken away, as well as my children’s education,” he said, lamenting the complexities of FTX’s bankruptcy case. “I suffered every day, every week for the past few years.”

A jury in November found the 32-year-old Bankman-Fried, from Palo Alto, Calif., guilty of wire fraud, money laundering conspiracy, and related counts for siphoning billions from customers of his global cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, to plug losses of its sister hedge fund, Alameda Research, splurge on Caribbean real estate, influence crypto legislation in Washington, and bribe Chinese officials to unfreeze his accounts.

The forfeiture number Kaplan came up with represented $8 billion Bankman-Fried stole from FTX customers, the $1.7 billion he lost from his investors, and the $1.3 billion taken from now-bankrupt lenders.

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