Featured Image Credit: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images / Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Topics: News, US News, Cryptocurrency
Gerrard Kaonga
Topics: News, US News, Cryptocurrency
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who was charged with two counts of fraud and five counts of conspiracy, has today been sentenced.
The ex-crypto king's fall from grace has concluded with the former billionaire being sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The sentence was significantly less than the 40-50 years that federal prosecutors wanted for Bankman-Fried. However, it was much more than the five to six-and-a-half years that his lawyers had suggested.
In a month long trial in November last year, the former FTX boss was found guilty after a jury quickly returned their verdict on the first day of deliberations.
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The company was forced to shut down withdrawals in November 2022, with more than $8 billion in customer funds missing.
Judge Lewis Kaplan said he found that in addition to this FTX's equity investors lost $1.7 billion, and that lenders to the Alameda Research hedge fund Bankman-Fried founded lost $1.3 billion.
Prosecutors claimed during an intense trial that Bankman-Fried orchestrated a scheme to siphon FTX customer money into political contributions, real estate purchases and charitable donations.
They also believed he was lying to his venture capital backers and the companies who lent money to FTX.
With all that evidence, the founder was ultimately sent down.
Speaking to the judge during the proceeding this week, Bankman-Fried said of his coworkers: “They built something really beautiful and I threw all of that away.
“It haunts me every day. It’s been excruciating to watch this all unfold Customers don’t deserve this level of pain. I was the CEO of FTX and I was responsible."
Three of Bankman-Fried's former close associates testified as part of the prosecution’s group of witnesses. They said that he had directed them to use FTX customer funds to plug losses at Alameda Research.
Judge Kaplan also said he ‘rejects the entirety of defendant’s argument there was no loss’ at FTX and went on to say that the claim was ‘misleading, logically flawed and speculative.’
Social media users reacting to the news that Bankman-Fried was sentenced have also remarked that he should have got more years.
“I cannot be the only one who thinks 25 years for basically the biggest grift of all time is kinda easy,” one user wrote.
“He got off easy. Should have been at least 40-50 yrs,” another wrote, as a third commented: "Should’ve been 40 years, but anyway, bye bye."
“He got off easy. I thought he was looking at 100+,” a final added.