Sam Bankman-Fried has vowed to appeal his sentence after he finally faced justice and was ordered to spend 25 years behind bars and forefit $11billion for scamming and defrauding crypto investors.
‘A lot of people feel really let down and they were very let down. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what happened at every stage,’ Bankman-Fried said as he pleaded for a lighter sentence during a Thursday hearing in New York City federal court. ‘Things I should have done, things I shouldn’t have.’
The judge said that one of Bankman-Fried’s famous expressions of ‘I f**ked up’ was pithy, but he added the former FTX boss never uttered ‘a word of remorse for the commission of terrible crimes.’
‘Mr. Bankman-Fried has the right to plead not guilty…but at the end of the day he knew it was wrong. He knew it was criminal,’ Judge Lewis Kaplan said as Bankman-Fried showed little reaction. ‘He regrets that he made a very bad bet about the likelihood of getting caught but he’s not going to admit a thing.’
Kaplan also ripped Bankman-Fried saying he perjured himself three times during the October trial. Kaplan recommended that Bankman-Fried serve his time in a low-to medium-security facility but the ultimate determination will be up to the federal Bureau of Prisons.
Bankman-Fried’s parents were in the courtroom for the sentencing and rushed away after, later saying they were ‘heartbroken.’ The hearing culminated a stunning collapse for FTX. Bankman-Fried was once the poster-boy for the future of crypto, but his scam led to the exchange collapse and his arrest.
‘There is absolutely no doubt that Mr. Bankman-Fried’s name is pretty much mud around the world. But one of the things he is is persistent and a great marketing guy,’ Kaplan said in delivering the sentence.
‘The same skills and drive that had him even after his arrest pitching his story to a huge number of media people demonstrates he knows how to do it and the will is there,’ the judge said.
Kaplan added the 25-year sentence was for the purpose of ‘disabling him for a significant period of time’.
The judge criticized the ‘enormous harm that he did, the brazenness of his actions, his exceptional flexibility with the truth, his apparent lack of any remorse.’
‘I am not prescient. But that there is a risk this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future and it’s not a trivial risk,’ the judge said at one point.
Experienced watchers of this case speculated that Bankman-Fried was headed to prison for as long as 50 years, and with all of Judge Kaplan’s condemnations of Bankman-Fried earlier in the day, the sentence looked like it was going to be a long one.
Instead, the judge imposed 25 years, far less than the government’s request for 40 to 50 years but far more than the defense’s request for a maximum of six-and-a-half years.
Read More: Sam Bankman-Fried sentencing: FTX fraudster vows to appeal his prison sentences