Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, arrives in court at a courthouse in New York on August 11, 2023, as lawyers push to convince the judge overseeing his fraud case not to send him to trial before trial to bring to prison.
Eduardo Munoz | Reuters
An attorney for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried appealed his federal fraud and conspiracy conviction and 25-year prison sentence on Thursday.
Bankman-Fried’s appeal came two weeks after he was ordered by U.S. District Court in Manhattan to pay $11 billion in bail for the massive fraud on cryptocurrency exchange FTX and a related hedge fund, Alameda Research . Prosecutors said it was one of the largest financial fraud cases in history.
The expected appeal will be heard by a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Manhattan.
The likelihood that criminal convictions will be overturned in federal court is very high; they win overturning in less than 10% of appeals. If Bankman-Fried loses in the 2nd Circuit, he would have to petition the U.S. Supreme Court for an appeal, which would take even longer.
Alexandra Shapiro, the attorney who filed Bankman-Fried’s appeal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted in November of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in connection with the misappropriation of about $10 billion in customer funds.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan said Bankman-Fried oversaw a conspiracy to plunder customer funds to make investments and finance political contributions to Democrats and Republicans. He also used the defrauded funds for personal expenses and to repay loans taken out by Alameda Research, prosecutors said.
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In sentencing Bankman-Fried, Judge Lewis Kaplan said: “There is a danger that this man will be capable of doing something very bad in the future.”
“And it’s not a trivial risk at all,” added Kaplan, who noted that he had never heard from Bankman-Fried “a word of remorse for committing terrible crimes.”
Bankman-Fried, the son of Stanford law professors, has suggested that FTX lost billions of dollars in customer funds due to a “liquidity crisis” or “mismanagement.”
Four other top executives from FTX and Alameda had previously pleaded guilty.
One of them, Ryan Salame, is scheduled to be sentenced by Kaplan on May 28.
Sentencing dates for Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison have not yet been set; FTX Chief Technology Officer Gary Wang; and Nishad Singh, FTX’s chief technical officer.
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2024-04-12 03:26:04
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