Crypto king, Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25
years in prison.


American entrepreneur and
crypto king, Sam Bankman-
Fried was sentenced Thursday
to 25 years in prison for his
role in defrauding users of the
collapsed cryptocurrency
exchange FTX.

In a federal courtroom in lower
Manhattan, United States
District Judge Lewis Kaplan
called the defense argument
misleading, logically flawed,
and speculative.

Kaplan said Bankman-Fried had
obstructed justice and
tampered with witnesses in
mounting his defense —
something Kaplan said he
weighed in his sentencing
decision.


After a two-hour hearing the
judge, Lewis Kaplan, said
Bankman-Fried knew what he
was doing was criminal and
regretted making a bad bet
about the likelihood of being
caught.


Bankman-Fried, wearing a
beige jailhouse jumpsuit,
struck an apologetic tone,
saying he had made a series of
“selfish” decisions while
leading FTX and “threw it all
away.”

“It haunts me every day,” he
said in a statement. “There are
a lot of mistakes that I
made.”

Bankman-Fried, however, told
the court that FTX had the
ability to repay customers
when it collapsed.

Meanwhile, the prosecutors
said Bankman-Fried took more
than $10bn (£7.9bn) from
unsuspecting customers in
“one of the biggest financial
frauds” in US history.


FTX was valued at $32bn
before it went bankrupt in
2022 and SBF crafted a public
image that drew in celebrities,
politicians and business titans.
Prosecutors had sought as
much as 50 years, while
Bankman-Fried’s legal team
argued for no more than six
and half years.

He was convicted on seven
criminal counts in November
and has been held at the
Metropolitan Detention Center
in Brooklyn since.