Former cryptocurrency tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried has lost his bid to overturn his fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence over the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange he founded. In a unanimous decision on Friday, a three-judge panel of the Manhattan-based 2nd United States Circuit Court of Appeals said prosecutors’ evidence against Bankman-Fried “was, conservatively stated, robust.”
“While he was publicly reassuring customers, investors and regulators that FTX customer funds were safe, he was simultaneously using FTX as his own personal piggy bank, spending customer funds on real estate, political contributions, and investments,” Circuit Judge Barrington Parker wrote on behalf of the panel.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. They may next ask all the active judges on the 2nd Circuit to hear the case, or ask the US Supreme Court to take up the case.
Bankman-Fried is also seeking a pardon from US President Donald Trump, according to the Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney. Neither the White House nor the Justice Department immediately responded to requests for comment. Trump last year pardoned another crypto tycoon, Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance.
Bankman-Fried, who had been one of the cryptocurrency sector’s most influential figures and a multibillionaire before FTX’s spectacular collapse in 2022, was found guilty on seven felony charges by a federal jury in Manhattan in 2023.
Prosecutors said he stole $8 billion from FTX customers to plug losses at his crypto-focused hedge fund, Alameda Research, in what they termed a “fraud of epic proportions.”
Bankman-Fried had pleaded not guilty. At his trial, he admitted to making mistakes running FTX but testified that he never stole funds.
In appealing the conviction, his defense argued that Judge Lewis Kaplan improperly prevented Bankman-Fried from introducing evidence to back up his belief that FTX had enough funds to cover customer withdrawals. The appeals court disagreed, citing legal precedent that fraud occurs the moment a defendant tricks someone into handing over money.
Bankman-Fried is being held at a low-security federal prison near Santa Barbara, California. He is eligible for release in 2044.
Source: www.aljazeera.com