Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, arrives in court as lawyers push to convince the judge overseeing his fraud case not to jail him before trial, in a New York courtroom, on August 11, 2023.
Eduardo Muñoz | Reuters
An attorney for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on Thursday appealed his federal conviction for fraud and conspiracy and his 25-year prison sentence.
Bankman-Fried’s appeal came two weeks after he was convicted in U.S. District Court in Manhattan and ordered to pay $11 billion in forfeiture for the massive fraud against cryptocurrency exchange FTX and a related hedge fund , Alameda Research. According to the prosecutor’s office, it was one of the largest financial frauds in history.
The appeal, as expected, will be heard by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which is based in Manhattan.
Criminal defendants face very high odds of having their convictions overturned in federal court, obtaining an overturn in less than 10% of appeals. If Bankman-Fried lost at the 2nd Circuit, she would have to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her appeal, which is an even longer shot.
Alexandra Shapiro, the attorney who filed Bankman-Fried’s appeal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted at trial in November on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the embezzlement of about $10 billion in client money.
The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office said Bankman-Fried oversaw a conspiracy that plundered client funds to make investments and finance political donations to Democrats and Republicans. She also used the swindled funds for personal expenses and to repay loans she took out from Alameda Research, prosecutors said.
When sentencing Bankman-Fried, Judge Lewis Kaplan said: “There is a risk that this man will find himself in a position to do something very bad in the future.”
“And it’s not a trivial risk at all,” added Kaplan, who noted that he had never heard “a word of remorse for committing terrible crimes” from Bankman-Fried.
Bankman-Fried, the son of Stanford law professors, suggested that FTX lost billions of dollars in customer funds due to a “liquidity crisis” or “mismanagement.”
Four other top executives from FTX and Alameda had previously pleaded guilty.
One of them, Ryan Salame, will be sentenced May 28 in Kaplan.
Sentencing dates have yet to be set for Caroline Ellison, who was Alameda’s CEO; FTX Chief Technology Officer Gary Wang; and Nishad Singh, who was the technical lead of FTX.