Appeals court upholds Sam Bankman-Fried’s 25-year FTX sentence
What’s new: A 2nd Circuit panel rejected his trial challenge, leaving in place convictions tied to about $8 billion in customer losses.
A federal appeals court upheld Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence over the 2022 collapse of FTX, rejecting his bid for a new trial. The three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled that the evidence against the former crypto executive was overwhelming. A jury convicted him in 2023 on seven felony counts after prosecutors argued he diverted about $8 billion in customer funds to cover losses at Alameda Research, his crypto hedge fund. His lawyers had argued that trial judge Lewis Kaplan wrongly blocked evidence they said would support his claim that FTX could have met customer withdrawals. Bankman-Fried is serving his sentence at a low-security federal prison near Santa Barbara, California, and is eligible for release in 2044.