BREAKING Crypto boss Sam Bankman Fried must go to prison for 25 years

-->Sam Bankman Fried, the fallen CEO of the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison. Various media reported this this Thursday.

25 years in prison for SBF

Judge Kaplan: It is the judgment of the court that you are sentenced to 240 months then consecutive 60 [etc] for a total of 300 months [25 years]

— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) March 28, 2024

Bankman-Fried was indicted in December 2022 on charges including: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, money laundering and campaign finance law violations. The then 30-year-old is said to have deceived millions of investors through complicated crypto constructions on his own exchange FTX. For example, massive customer funds have been misused by SBT and its team.

In November 2023, SBF was charged with a maximum sentence of 115 years in prison. Now the judge has sentenced him to 25 years in prison.

Addressing the court before sentencing, Bankman-Fried said the collapse of FTX “haunts him every day”. “A lot of people really feel abandoned, and they’re very let down, and I’m sorry for that.” he said, among other things. “I’m sorry for what happened at every stage. And there are things I should have done and things I shouldn’t have done.”

His lawyer, Marc Mukasey, told the judge: “Sam was not a ruthless financial serial killer who went out every morning to hurt people. His real motivations have been misunderstood and misunderstood. Actually, he’s just a clumsy math nerd.”

According to prosecutor Nicholas Roos, the story is different: “Sam Bankman-Fried stole more than $8 billion in customer money, and I emphasize stolen because it was not a liquidity crisis, or active mismanagement, or poor top-down supervision. ”

FTX

Bankman co-founded FTX in May 2019 with Gary Wang. On the platform you could trade a wide range of investment products such as cryptocurrencies, futures, derivatives and with your own utility token (FTT). At the end of November 2022, the stock exchange will encounter deep financial problems. For example, there are insufficient resources to cover customer funds and there has been heavy speculation with customer funds. The unrest led to a run on customer funds and a subsequent bankruptcy of the company. The fall of FTX has had a major impact on the entire crypto market, the bitcoin price briefly dipped to $16,000.