Ex-cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison for massive fraud

The disgraced cryptocurrency prodigy, Sam Bankman-Fried, He was sentenced to 25 years in prison this Thursday after pleading guilty in one of the biggest financial fraud cases in history.

US prosecutors had sought a prison sentence of 40 to 50 years after a New York jury in November convicted Bankman-Fried of his namesake SBF following a five-week trial that probed the spectacular collapse of the one-time gambling giant.

Disgraced cryptocurrency mogul pleads guilty to fraud in November Sam Bankman-Fried It represents what may be the longest streak in the history of white collar crime in the United States.

Known by the nickname “SBF”, he used the deposits of the platform’s customers without their consent to carry out risky transactions in his hedge fund, Alameda Researchand for outrageous real estate purchases and political donations.

A billionaire before the age of 30, Bankman-Fried has taken the cryptocurrency world by storm, turning FTX, a small start-up he co-founded in 2019, into the world’s second-largest exchange platform.

But in November 2022, the FTX empire collapsed, unable to cope with massive withdrawal requests from panicked customers after learning that some of the funds deposited in the company had been compromised in a risky operation.

At the time of its bankruptcy filing, approx 9 billion dollars.

The group’s liquidators have already recovered about $6.4 billion in cash and plan full refunds to affected customers.

They benefit from the wild appreciation of cryptocurrencies, which have recovered after a disastrous 2022 marked by several bankruptcies and the FTX scandal.

Attracted by the influx of investors and the launch of new investment products, the undisputed leader of cryptocurrencies, BitcoinThe record has been broken since March.

Lawyers for Sam Bankman-Fried, 32, tried to portray a more humane “SBF” rather than the manipulative image that emerged throughout the trial.

“Those who know Sam know that he is selfless, altruistic.”His defenders wrote in a document presented to federal judge Louis Kaplan ahead of the hearing, along with dozens of letters of support from those close to him.

Those who know him “understand that his behavior was ‘never motivated by greed or a thirst for prestige,'” his lawyers added, citing testimony to support their request.

The truth is that this former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student has never been accused of personal enrichment and has kept most of his wealth in FTX shares, which have evaporated in value.

During the trial, which lasted five weeks, his lawyers presented him as a young businessman overwhelmed by his workload and the victim of errors in judgment by his partners and employees.

In seeking clemency from a federal magistrate, they also mentioned that he suffers from autism spectrum disorder, which, according to them, makes him “vulnerable in the prison population.”

Based on these elements, the defense has proposed a prison sentence of only five to six-and-a-half years.

Since he was convicted, Sam Bankman-Fried changed his legal team and hired the services of Mark Mukasey, who was more outgoing and offensive than his previous defender, Mark Cohen.

“In every aspect of his activity and for every crime committed, the accused has shown an open lack of respect for the law,” the team of prosecutors asserted. Williams.

In the process, “SBF’s” defense was undermined by the testimony of three former directors of FTX and Alameda, including his ex-girlfriend, who provided detailed evidence of the defendant’s key role in the fraud.

“He understood the rules, but decided they did not apply to him,” the prosecutor’s office asserted in a document sent to the judge, citing “pernicious megalomania” and a “superiority complex.”

(With information from AFP)