Fallen crypto whiz SBF challenges his conviction
Fallen wonderkind of cryptocurrency According to a court filing made public on Thursday, Sam Bankman-Fried has appealed his federal conviction and 25-year jail sentence in a significant fraud case.
The appeal was filed two weeks after Judge Lewis Kaplan of the US District Court imposed the prison sentence and mandated that Bankman-Fried, or “SBF,” forfeit $11 billion.
Reaching the summit of the cryptocurrency market, Bankman-Fried became a millionaire before turning thirty and built FTX, a small company he cofounded in 2019, into the second-biggest exchange platform globally.
But in November 2022, a wave of customer withdrawals and allegations that billions of dollars had been illegally moved from FTX to Bankman-Fried’s own hedge fund, Alameda Research, brought the rapid rise of the banker to a grinding halt.
In November 2023, a federal jury in New York convicted him of seven charges of fraud, embezzlement, and criminal conspiracy.
Bankman-Fried expressed sadness over the firm’s downfall, which also affected many colleagues, at last month’s sentence hearing.
His words, “It haunts me every day,” “I made a series of bad decisions.”
However, the judge found that Bankman-Fried had not taken full responsibility.
According to Bankman-Fried, Kaplan described the crimes as “brazen” and criticized SBF for his “exceptional flexibility” toward the truth. “Mistakes were made, but never a word of remorse for the commission of a terrible crime,” Kaplan said.