FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried faces sentencing Thursday in New York federal court for a massive fraud conspiracy that led to the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange and a related hedge fund.
Federal prosecutors want Bankman-Fried sentenced to between 40 to 50 years in prison. His defense team asked Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Kaplan to sentence him to much less than that, between five and six-a-half years behind bars.
Kaplan presided over the trial, which ended in November when a jury found Bankman-Fried, 32, guilty of seven counts and held him responsible for the roughly $10 billion of customer deposits that went missing in 2022.
The charges included wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud against FTX customers and against lenders to sister hedge fund Alameda Research; conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit commodities fraud against FTX investors; and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams has said Bankman-Fried was the mastermind of “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.”
