NEW YORK (AP) — FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s orchestration of considered one of historical past’s largest monetary frauds in his quest to dominate the cryptocurrency world deserves a prison sentence of 40 to 50 years, federal prosecutors on Friday informed a federal choose.
Prosecutors made the advice in papers filed in Manhattan federal courtroom in advance of a March 28 sentencing, the place a choose can even take into account a 100-year prison sentence advisable by the courtroom’s probation officers and a request by protection legal professionals for leniency and a time period of imprisonment not to exceed single digits.
Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted in November on fraud and conspiracy prices after his dramatic fall from a yr earlier when he and his firms appeared to be driving a crest of success that had resulted in a Tremendous Bowl commercial and superstar endorsements from stars like quarterback Tom Brady and comic Larry David.
A few of his largest successes, although, resulted from stealing at the very least $10 billion from buyers and clients between 2017 and 2022 to purchase luxurious actual property, make dangerous investments, dispense outsized charitable donations and political contributions and to purchase reward from celebrities, prosecutors mentioned.
“His life in current years has been considered one of unmatched greed and hubris; of ambition and rationalization; and courting threat and playing repeatedly with different individuals’s cash. And even now Bankman-Fried refuses to admit what he did was mistaken,” prosecutors wrote.
“Having set himself on the purpose of amassing limitless wealth and limitless energy — to the purpose that he thought he may turn out to be President and the world’s first trillionaire — there was little Bankman-Fried didn’t do to obtain it,” prosecutors mentioned.
They mentioned crimes reflecting a “brazen disrespect for the rule of regulation” had depleted the retirement funds and nest eggs of people that might least afford to lose cash, together with some in war-torn or financially insecure international locations, and had harmed others who sought to “break generational poverty” solely to be left “devastated” and “heartbroken.”
“He knew what society deemed unlawful and unethical, however disregarded that primarily based on a pernicious megalomania guided by the defendant’s personal values and sense of superiority,” prosecutors mentioned.
Bankman-Fried was extradited to the USA in December 2022 from the Bahamas after his firms collapsed a month earlier. Initially permitted to stay at house along with his dad and mom in Palo Alto, California, he was jailed final yr weeks earlier than his trial after Choose Lewis A. Kaplan concluded that he had tried to tamper with trial witnesses.
Of their presentence submission, prosecutors described Bankman-Fried’s crimes as “one of many largest monetary frauds in historical past, and what’s probably the biggest fraud in the final decade.”
“The defendant victimized tens of 1000’s of individuals and firms, throughout a number of continents, over a interval of a number of years. He stole cash from clients who entrusted it to him; he lied to buyers; he despatched fabricated paperwork to lenders; he pumped tens of millions of {dollars} in unlawful donations into our political system; and he bribed overseas officers. Every of those crimes is worthy of a prolonged sentence,” they wrote.
They mentioned his “illegal political donations to over 300 politicians and political motion teams, amounting to in extra of $100 million, is believed to be the largest-ever marketing campaign finance offense.”
And so they mentioned his $150 million in bribes to Chinese language authorities officers was one of many single largest by a person.
“Even following FTX’s chapter and his subsequent arrest, Bankman-Fried shirked accountability, deflected blame to market occasions and different people, tried to tamper with witnesses, and lied repeatedly underneath oath,” prosecutors mentioned, citing his trial testimony.
Two weeks in the past, Bankman-Fried legal professional Marc Mukasey attacked a probation workplace advice that their consumer serve 100 years in prison, saying a sentence of that size can be “grotesque” and “barbaric.”
He urged the choose to sentence Bankman-Fried to just some years behind bars after calculating federal sentencing pointers to suggest a time period of 5 to 6 1/2 years in prison.
“Sam shouldn’t be the ‘evil genius’ depicted in the media or the grasping villain described at trial,” Mukasey mentioned, calling his consumer a “first-time, non-violent offender, who was joined in the conduct at difficulty by at the very least 4 different culpable people, in a matter the place victims are poised to recuperate — have been at all times poised to recuperate — 100 cents on the greenback.”
Mukasey mentioned he’ll reply to the prosecutors’ claims in a submitting subsequent week.