According to the New York Post, on Thursday, Judge Lewis Kaplan denounced Sam Bankman-Fried as a ruthless con artist obsessed with political power. He sentenced the ousted cryptocurrency mogul to 25 years in prison for stealing over 8 billion US dollars from clients of his cryptocurrency company five months ago. His cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, has since gone bankrupt.
Bankman-Fried has also been ordered to repay over 11 billion US dollars to FTX users, investors, and creditors, although it remains unclear how much of this he will be able to repay.
Lewis Kaplan stated that the 32-year-old former billionaire, who once ran the popular FTX trading platform, “painted himself as a good guy,” supporting “appropriate regulation of the crypto industry,” but his friendly image was merely “an act.”
“He did it because he wanted to be a figure of enormous political influence in this country,” Kaplan said in a crowded federal courtroom in Manhattan. The judge then criticized the fallen tycoon for “evidently lacking any genuine remorse.”
Sam Bankman-Fried speaks
Bankman-Fried stated that he cares more about FTX customers waiting for refunds than the “emotional life” or “hypothetical future children” mentioned by lawyers defending him.
“My lifespan may have ended. It's been over for a while now,” said Sam Bankman-Fried, who spent the past six months in the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn.
Bankman-Fried told the court that he wants to turn things around after the “liquidity crisis” caused by the company's own actions (which he referred to as “partly my fault”). He insisted that even if Alameda, which he tried to save with FTX customer funds, is forced to shut down, “FTX will survive”.
He indicated that even though creditors have now indeed received funds, they will be “deprived” of the broader cryptocurrency market gains of the past few months, echoing concerns expressed by FTX creditors in victim impact statements submitted to the Justice Department.
Sam Bankman-Fried praised his three former friends and key government witnesses Nishad Singh, Gary Wang, and Caroline Ellison, and expressed regret for his leading role in the collapse of FTX. “I'm sorry for everything that happened at each stage... In the end, I let down everyone I cared about,” Bankman-Fried added, “I take responsibility.”
Extreme Price Fluctuations of SBF MEMECOIN
Just hours before Bankman-Fried's sentencing, a developer on the Coinbase layer-two network Base launched a meme coin called Sam Baseman Fraud, humorously featuring FTX.
As often happens with many memecoins, the token saw intense selling pressure, dropping over 85% within three hours. As of the time of this writing, the price of the memecoin has stabilized, trading at around $0.06, still down 60% from its all-time high.
