Since Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud final 12 months, he has employed a brand new lawyer identified for courtroom showmanship. A gaggle of sympathetic legislation professors has pushed for a reappraisal of his actions. And his mother and father have turned for assist to former staff of FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency trade he based.
From a federal detention middle in Brooklyn, Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, has continued to combat his case behind the scenes, as he argues for a lenient sentence and prepares to enchantment his conviction. On Tuesday, his legal professionals are scheduled to file a authorized memo within the U.S. District Courtroom in Manhattan, making the case that he doesn’t should go to jail for the remainder of his life.
The submitting is a vital step earlier than Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing on March 28, when the federal choose overseeing his case, Lewis A. Kaplan, will determine how lengthy to imprison the onetime billionaire on costs that carry a most sentence of 110 years. However it’s just one prong of a long-shot technique orchestrated by Mr. Bankman-Fried’s household and mates to reverse his conviction and engineer a public reappraisal of his management at FTX.
Since final 12 months’s trial, Mr. Bankman-Fried has employed Marc Mukasey, who as soon as represented former President Donald J. Trump, to supervise his sentencing, in addition to a separate lawyer on the legislation agency Shapiro Arato Bach to deal with the enchantment. His mother and father, the Stanford College legislation professors Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, have additionally been concerned within the protection, serving to line up folks to put in writing letters for his or her son that will probably be included within the memo.
Natalie Tien, a former assistant to Mr. Bankman-Fried at FTX, mentioned she wrote a letter for his sentencing memo after exchanging emails with Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried.
“I don’t have grudges over him, and I do really feel dangerous for his mother and father,” Ms. Tien mentioned.
A spokesman for Mr. Bankman-Fried declined to remark. Representatives for Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Federal prosecutors are set to stipulate their very own sentencing suggestion in a submitting due March 15. Even when Decide Kaplan decides to not impose the utmost sentence, Mr. Bankman-Fried might face many years behind bars.
The choose “might nonetheless give a really severe sentence given how younger Mr. Bankman-Fried is; say, a 30- or 35-year sentence,” mentioned Miriam Baer, vice dean at Brooklyn Regulation College.
A spokesman for Damian Williams, the U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of New York, declined to remark.
Earlier than FTX collapsed in November 2022, Mr. Bankman-Fried was one of the distinguished figures within the renegade crypto business, a broadly celebrated billionaire whose face was splashed throughout billboards and journal covers.
In October, a federal jury convicted him of stealing $8 billion from FTX’s prospects to finance political contributions, investments in different firms and lavish actual property purchases.
Mr. Bankman-Fried has maintained he’s harmless and pledged to enchantment. This month, he changed his trial legal professionals, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, with Mr. Mukasey, who has a fame for forceful courtroom shows.
Final 12 months, Mr. Mukasey scored a victory in his protection of Trevor Milton, the founding father of the electrical truck producer Nikola, who was convicted in 2022 of defrauding buyers. A federal choose sentenced Mr. Milton in December to 4 years in jail, far lower than the 11 years that prosecutors had requested.
Working in parallel to Mr. Mukasey is an appellate lawyer and former prosecutor, Alexandra Shapiro, a accomplice at Shapiro Arato Bach. She is predicted to file Mr. Bankman-Fried’s enchantment after the sentencing.
Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried have additionally performed a job behind the scenes. Final month, Ms. Tien mentioned, she acquired a textual content from one among Mr. Bankman-Fried’s supporters, asking whether or not she would assist with the memo. Then she received a follow-up e mail from the FTX founder’s mother and father explaining the sentencing course of and urging her to put in writing “from the center” about their son.
They had been “type of like testing the waters,” Ms. Tien mentioned in an interview. “I just about simply mentioned ‘sure’ straight away.”
Regulation professors who know Mr. Bankman-Fried’s mother and father have additionally pressed his case.
In January, two shut household mates, the Yale Regulation professor Ian Ayres and the Stanford Regulation professor John Donohue, wrote an essay for the website Project Syndicate, arguing that “all alongside” FTX had sufficient belongings to make its prospects entire.
“No matter else is perhaps mentioned about Bankman-Fried, he was a superb businessman,” Mr. Ayres and Mr. Donohue wrote.
One other legislation professor, Jonathan Lipson at Temple College, mentioned in an interview that he was working with David Skeel of the College of Pennsylvania legislation college on a tutorial paper criticizing Sullivan & Cromwell, the law firm overseeing FTX’s bankruptcy.
In September, Mr. Lipson co-wrote a short within the chapter case arguing for the appointment of an impartial examiner to evaluate Sullivan & Cromwell’s actions, together with its shut collaboration with federal prosecutors. He mentioned that he spoke with Mr. Bankman-Fried and his mom final 12 months after one other Stanford legislation professor reached out in regards to the case and provided to place them in touch.
Of their article, Mr. Lipson and Mr. Skeel argue that Sullivan & Cromwell “could have distorted the prison justice course of” by giving prosecutors wide-ranging entry to FTX’s assets and knowledge, based on an unpublished draft shared with The New York Occasions.
A Sullivan & Cromwell spokesman declined to remark. In courtroom filings, prosecutors have described the knowledge sharing as “routine practices by firms cooperating in an investigation.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried faces lengthy odds. Legal convictions are hardly ever overturned on enchantment.
Mr. Bankman-Fried has been housed at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Middle since final summer season and has spent a lot of his time engaged on the case, an individual with data of the matter mentioned. He has additionally shared crypto market suggestions with the guards, the particular person mentioned, recommending investments within the digital coin Solana.
This month, Mr. Bankman-Fried left the detention middle for his first public courtroom look because the trial, a listening to to authorize his new authorized illustration. In a Manhattan courtroom, Mr. Bankman-Fried was clean-shaven and wore a loosefitting brown jail uniform. At instances, he circled and smiled on the reporters sitting within the gallery.
J. Edward Moreno contributed reporting.
