Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder and former CEO of failed cryptocurrency exchange Futures Exchange Trading (FTX), was sentenced to 25 years in prison and a forfeiture of $11 billion on Thursday. The sentence follows a five-week trial in November that found Bankman-Fried guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, which carried a maximum penalty of 110 years.
Federal prosecutors sought to sentence Bankman-Fried for 40 to 50 years, while defense lawyers aimed for just six and a half years. Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the sentencing, ultimately cited Bankman-Fried’s risk-seeking, deceitful and irresponsible behavior for the 25-year sentence.
Bankman-Fried’s parents, Stanford Law School (SLS) professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, were present at the sentencing.
“We are heartbroken and will continue to fight for our son,” Bankman and Fried’s spokesperson wrote in a public statement. Bankman-Fried plans to appeal his conviction and sentence.
Bankman-Fried’s sentence comes as one of the harsher sentences for white collar fraud crimes in recent years, topping Stanford dropout and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’s 11-year sentence. Holmes was convicted of wire fraud in January 2022 after a jury found that she had misled investors and consumers about the effectiveness of her company’s blood-testing technology.
Kaplan ordered that Bankman-Fried, who is currently detained in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, be moved to a low or medium security prison in the San Francisco Bay Area closer to his parents’ residence at Stanford.
The Daily has reached out to SLS for comment.