Federal prosecutors mentioned on Friday that Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency mogul who was convicted of masterminding a multibillion-dollar fraud, ought to obtain a jail sentence of 40 to 50 years.
The prosecutors outlined the advice in a submitting in U.S. District Court docket in Manhattan. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing listening to is scheduled for March 28, when Choose Lewis A. Kaplan will resolve his destiny. He faces a most attainable penalty of 110 years.
“Justice requires that he obtain a jail sentence commensurate with the extraordinary dimensions of his crimes,” the prosecutors mentioned in a 116-page sentencing memo to the choose.
The federal probation division individually advisable a 100-year sentence for Mr. Bankman-Fried, 32, successfully a life sentence. However prosecutors mentioned within the submitting that sending him to jail for the remainder of his life was not warranted, regardless of the severity of his crime, due to his relative youth.
In a filing final month, attorneys for Mr. Bankman-Fried argued that he ought to obtain a sentence of not more than six and a half years.
A spokesman for Mr. Bankman-Fried mentioned Friday {that a} lawyer for him will file a response to the federal government early subsequent week.
Simply 18 months in the past, Mr. Bankman-Fried was a high-flying crypto mogul, presiding over the cryptocurrency trade FTX, a $40 billion enterprise empire. However then FTX collapsed virtually in a single day, placing him within the cross hairs of legislation enforcement.
In November, a federal jury in Manhattan convicted Mr. Bankman-Fried of stealing $8 billion from FTX’s clients to finance political contributions, investments in different corporations and lavish actual property purchases.
FTX’s implosion and Mr. Bankman-Fried’s subsequent arrest and conviction had been seen as a historic nadir for the loosely regulated crypto world.
“The crypto business could be new,” Damian Williams, the U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of New York, mentioned after the decision, “however this type of fraud, this type of corruption, is as outdated as time.”
Since then, the crypto business seems to have put Mr. Bankman-Fried’s crimes within the rearview mirror. As he prepares for his sentencing, the costs of most digital belongings have soared, with Bitcoin reaching a document excessive this month.
Prosecutors mentioned in Friday’s submitting {that a} sentence of 40 to 50 years was acceptable given the magnitude of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s fraud and its impression on individuals all over the world, together with those that had put a few of their retirement cash and life financial savings into FTX.
“The sheer scale of Bankman-Fried’s fraud requires extreme punishment,” prosecutors wrote. “The quantity of loss — a minimum of $10 billion — makes this one of many largest monetary frauds of all time.”
If Mr. Bankman-Fried is given a lightweight sentence, prosecutors mentioned, there’s a actual danger that he would perform some future fraud.
Within the sentencing submission, prosecutors included a number of pages of buyer messages despatched to Mr. Bankman-Fried on X, previously Twitter, on the time of FTX’s collapse. In lots of the posts, clients expressed anger at not accessing their accounts.
Marc Mukasey, the lawyer Mr. Bankman-Fried employed to arrange for the sentencing, argued in his authorized submitting that the 100-year sentence advisable by the probation division can be paying homage to the 150 years given to Bernard Madoff, who pleaded responsible in 2009 to operating one of many greatest Ponzi schemes in historical past. Any comparisons between the 2 males are inappropriate, Mr. Mukasey mentioned, given “the length and {dollars}” concerned in Mr. Madoff’s crimes — a 20-year-long fraud that generated $64 billion in paper losses.
The probation division’s advice was “barbaric” and “grotesque,” he mentioned.
Mr. Mukasey additionally identified that it took a court-appointed trustee greater than 15 years to return roughly $14 billion to Mr. Madoff’s traders. Against this, the chapter attorneys overseeing FTX’s unwinding have urged that clients of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s failed trade are more likely to get again all of their cash on a comparatively quick timeline.
Prosecutors mentioned of their submitting that even when clients of FTX obtained most of their a reimbursement, they’d have needed to look ahead to greater than two years for that to occur. Prosecutors mentioned that “is of little consolation for these victims who wanted the cash in November 2022.”
Within the submitting, prosecutors requested Choose Kaplan to additionally order Mr. Bankman-Fried to forfeit greater than $10 billion, which represents the losses and stolen cash from his crime. Given the thousands and thousands of potential victims and the complexity of calculating losses, prosecutors mentioned any cash turned over by Mr. Bankman-Fried could possibly be distributed within the FTX chapter.
Judges should not required to comply with federal sentencing tips. And in imposing a sentence, Choose Kaplan can take into account a wide range of components, together with Mr. Bankman-Fried’s age, the truth that he’s a first-time offender and the potential for him to be rehabilitated.
However one issue which will work in opposition to Mr. Bankman-Fried is that he selected to testify at his trial and seemed evasive at times throughout cross-examination. If Choose Kaplan concludes that Mr. Bankman-Fried testified falsely, he may take that into consideration in deciding the sentence.
In a column this week in The New York Legislation Journal, John S. Martin, a former federal choose in Manhattan, criticized “irrationally lengthy sentences” for many fraud and white-collar crime. He mentioned 100-year sentences had had “no impression on crime charges.”
“Let me be clear, Bankman-Fried deserves to be punished,” Mr. Martin wrote. However he added, “Our extraordinarily lengthy jail sentences are one of many causes the USA has the biggest jail inhabitants on the earth.”
