Prosecutors search from 40 to 50 years in jail for Sam Bankman-Fried for cryptocurrency fraud

NEW YORK (AP) — FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s orchestration of one in all historical past’s largest monetary frauds in his quest to dominate the cryptocurrency world deserves a jail sentence of 40 to 50 years, federal prosecutors on Friday advised a federal choose.

Prosecutors made the advice in papers filed in Manhattan federal court docket upfront of a March 28 sentencing, the place a choose will even think about a 100-year jail sentence really useful by the court docket’s probation officers and a request by protection attorneys for leniency and a time period of imprisonment to not exceed single digits.

Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted in November on fraud and conspiracy costs after his dramatic fall from a 12 months earlier when he and his firms gave the impression to be driving a crest of success that had resulted in a Tremendous Bowl commercial and celeb endorsements from stars like quarterback Tom Brady and comic Larry David.

A few of his largest successes, although, resulted from stealing no less than $10 billion from buyers and clients between 2017 and 2022 to purchase luxurious actual property, make dangerous investments, dispense outsized charitable donations and political contributions and to purchase reward from celebrities, prosecutors stated.

“His life in recent times has been one in all unmatched greed and hubris; of ambition and rationalization; and courting danger and playing repeatedly with different folks’s cash. And even now Bankman-Fried refuses to confess what he did was flawed,” prosecutors wrote.

“Having set himself on the objective of amassing countless wealth and limitless energy — to the purpose that he thought he may change into President and the world’s first trillionaire — there was little Bankman-Fried didn’t do to realize it,” prosecutors stated.

They stated crimes reflecting a “brazen disrespect for the rule of legislation” had depleted the retirement funds and nest eggs of people that may least afford to lose cash, together with some in war-torn or financially insecure international locations, and had harmed others who sought to “break generational poverty” solely to be left “devastated” and “heartbroken.”

“He knew what society deemed unlawful and unethical, however disregarded that primarily based on a pernicious megalomania guided by the defendant’s personal values and sense of superiority,” prosecutors stated.

Bankman-Fried was extradited to the US in December 2022 from the Bahamas after his firms collapsed a month earlier. Initially permitted to stay at house along with his dad and mom in Palo Alto, California, he was jailed final 12 months weeks earlier than his trial after Choose Lewis A. Kaplan concluded that he had tried to tamper with trial witnesses.

Of their presentence submission, prosecutors described Bankman-Fried’s crimes as “one of many largest monetary frauds in historical past, and what’s probably the most important fraud within the final decade.”

“The defendant victimized tens of hundreds of individuals and firms, throughout a number of continents, over a interval of a number of years. He stole cash from clients who entrusted it to him; he lied to buyers; he despatched fabricated paperwork to lenders; he pumped thousands and thousands of {dollars} in unlawful donations into our political system; and he bribed international officers. Every of those crimes is worthy of a prolonged sentence,” they wrote.

They stated his “illegal political donations to over 300 politicians and political motion teams, amounting to in extra of $100 million, is believed to be the largest-ever marketing campaign finance offense.”

And so they stated his $150 million in bribes to Chinese language authorities officers was one of many single largest by a person.

“Even following FTX’s chapter and his subsequent arrest, Bankman-Fried shirked duty, deflected blame to market occasions and different people, tried to tamper with witnesses, and lied repeatedly below oath,” prosecutors stated, citing his trial testimony.

Two weeks in the past, Bankman-Fried legal professional Marc Mukasey attacked a probation workplace suggestion that their consumer serve 100 years in jail, saying a sentence of that size could be “grotesque” and “barbaric.”

He urged the choose to condemn Bankman-Fried to just some years behind bars after calculating federal sentencing pointers to advocate a time period of 5 to six 1/2 years in jail.

“Sam shouldn’t be the ‘evil genius’ depicted within the media or the grasping villain described at trial,” Mukasey stated, calling his consumer a “first-time, non-violent offender, who was joined within the conduct at concern by no less than 4 different culpable people, in a matter the place victims are poised to recuperate — had been all the time poised to recuperate — 100 cents on the greenback.”

Mukasey stated he’ll reply to the prosecutors’ claims in a submitting subsequent week.