Prosecutors in the federal fraud case against Sam Bankman-Fried said Friday that the disgraced FTX founder and former CEO should face 40 to 50 years in prison, $11 billion in fines and asset forfeiture.
According to the sentence, yes. memo The application was filed last Friday with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Southern District of New York. Bankman-Fried was discovered. feeling guilty Seven fraud and conspiracy charges were filed against a prominent cryptocurrency exchange last November. fallen Late 2022.
“Despite the fact that it is unlikely (though not impossible) that the defendant will ever work in finance again, and that he will likely forfeit all of his ill-gotten gains, justice dictates that he should be sentenced to prison for the severity of the crime he committed.” Lawyer Damien Williams said: “For this reason, he should be sentenced to 40 to 50 years in prison for legitimate purposes of punishment.”
Prosecutors said Bankman-Fried and his associates stole billions of dollars worth of customer funds from FTX through FTX’s sister company, the Alameda Research trading company. Bankruptcy lawyers recently revealed that they plan to make customers whole after recovering stolen assets and investments and selling the remaining cryptocurrency held by the exchange.
“All of these actions were intentional. In relation to every part of his business and each crime. “The defendant has demonstrated a blatant disrespect for the rule of law,” Williams said. “He understood the rules, but decided they didn’t apply to him.
“He knew what society considered illegal and unethical, but he ignored it based on the defendant’s harmful megalomania driven by his own values and sense of superiority,” he continued.
Williams pointed out that while federal guidelines for Bankman-Fried’s crime effectively call for a life sentence of more than 100 years, the Justice Department’s sentencing recommendation is based on, among other things: nature criminalSituation, severity.
“Bankman-Fried’s crimes were serious and prolonged, causing billions of dollars in losses. “It has caused financial and emotional loss and severe harm to tens of thousands of victims,” Williams said. “The sheer scale of the loss in this case and the fact that the loss occurred in the form of stealing the victim’s money places Bankman-Fried in the category of defendants for whom a sentence of 40 years or more would be appropriate.”
Editors: Andrew Hayward and Ryan Ozawa.
