Bankman Fried faces an extremely difficult situation in his bid to overturn a conviction stemming from the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange.
FTX founder Sam Bankman Fried has appealed his 25-year prison sentence after being found guilty of stealing billions of dollars from customers of a defunct cryptocurrency exchange.
Bankman Fried was convicted in November of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in what U.S. authorities called one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history.
The 32-year-old ex-billionaire was featured on magazine covers and enjoyed audience with members of Congress before the collapse of FTX by speculators amid a flood of customer withdrawals in 2022. It was a tower.
Bankman Freed's attorney, Mark Mukasey, announced his intention to appeal the verdict and sentence at the March 28 sentencing hearing.
During the sentencing, Bankman Freed expressed regret for the way he handled FTX, saying he was “sorry for what happened every step of the way.”
“It bothers me every day,” he said. “I made a series of bad decisions.”
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said Bankman-Fried had not shown true remorse or fully accepted responsibility and that there was a “risk of putting this man in a position to do very bad things in the future.” He said that there is “sexuality”.
Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 40 to 50 years in prison, and Bankman Fried's lawyer asked the judge for a six-year sentence.
Bankman Fried's appeal could take years and would require convincing a higher court that Kaplan made serious errors during the trial that violated his legal rights.
Federal courts in the United States rarely side with criminal defendants seeking to overturn lower court decisions, granting appeals less than 10 percent of the time.
