Crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried gets 25 year sentence

The co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Futures Exchange or FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating what the United States authorities said was one of the largest financial frauds in history.

Bankman-Fried or SBF as he is known faced a maximum sentence of 110 years in prison. In pre-sentencing negotiations, the 32-year-old Bankman-Fried had sought a sentence of 5 1/4 to 6 1/2 years. He also maintains his innocence and plans to appeal the sentence.

On top of the 25 years in prison, Bankman-Fried was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay US$11 billion in forfeiture. 

The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, said Bankman-Fried stole over US$8 billion of FTX customers' money.

“His deliberate and ongoing lies demonstrated a brazen disregard for customers’ expectations and disrespect for the rule of law, all so that he could secretly use his customers’ money to expand his own power and influence," Williams said.

"The scale of his crimes is measured not just by the amount of money that was stolen, but by the extraordinary harm caused to victims, who in some cases had their life savings wiped out overnight," Williams added.

FTX was set up in 2019 by Bankman-Fried, and Gary Wang, a computer programmer.

Wang and the former chief executive of Bankman-Fried founded cryptocurrency trading fund Alameda Research, Caroline Ellison, pleaded guilty in 2022 for their roles in the FTX fraud, as part of a deal with US authorities.

Bankman-Fried is said to have channelled billions of dollars of customer deposits at FTX to Alameda, and then used the money for political contributions and buying property and other expenditure for himself.