Federal prosecutors stated on Friday that Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced cryptocurrency tycoon, will have to obtain a 40 to 50-year jail sentence for his conviction on fraud fees.
The prosecutors defined the sentencing advice in a submitting in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing listening to is scheduled for March 28, all over which Judge Lewis A. Kaplan will make a decision his destiny. He faces a most conceivable penalty of 110 years.
“Justice requires that he receive a prison sentence commensurate with the extraordinary dimensions of his crimes,” the prosecutors stated in a 116-page sentencing memo to the pass judgement on.
In a separate submitting final month, attorneys for Mr. Bankman-Fried, 32, argued that he will have to obtain a sentence of not more than six and a part years.
A spokesman for Mr. Bankman-Fried declined to remark.
Just 18 months in the past, Mr. Bankman-Fried was once a high-flying crypto tycoon, presiding over the cryptocurrency trade FTX, a $40 billion industry empire. But then FTX collapsed nearly in a single day, striking him within the move hairs of legislation enforcement.
In November, a federal jury in Manhattan convicted Mr. Bankman-Fried of stealing $8 billion from FTX’s shoppers to finance political contributions, investments in different corporations and indulgent real-estate purchases.
FTX’s implosion and Mr. Bankman-Fried’s next arrest and conviction had been observed as a ancient nadir for the loosely regulated crypto global.
“The crypto industry might be new,” Damian Williams, the U.S. lawyer for the Southern District of New York, stated after the decision, “but this kind of fraud, this kind of corruption, is as old as time.”
Since then, the crypto business seems to have put Mr. Bankman-Fried’s crimes within the rearview replicate. As he prepares for his sentencing, the costs of maximum virtual belongings have soared, with Bitcoin attaining a report excessive this month.
Mr. Bankman-Fried may just face what would quantity to existence in jail. According to courtroom information, a probation officer beneficial a 100-year sentence, simply 10 years lower than the utmost. In the submitting final month, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s attorneys known as that advice “barbaric” and “grotesque.”
Marc Mukasey, the legal professional Mr. Bankman-Fried employed to organize for the sentencing, argued in his criminal submitting {that a} 100-year sentence could be harking back to the 150 years given to Bernard Madoff, who pleaded responsible in 2009 to working one of the vital greatest Ponzi schemes in historical past. Any comparisons between the 2 males are beside the point, Mr. Mukasey stated, given “the duration and dollars” concerned with Mr. Madoff’s crimes — a 20-year-long fraud that generated $64 billion in paper losses.
Mr. Mukasey additionally identified that it took a court-appointed trustee greater than 15 years to go back kind of $14 billion to Mr. Madoff’s traders. By distinction, the chapter attorneys overseeing FTX’s unwinding have recommended that consumers of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s failed trade are prone to get again all in their cash on a rather rapid timeline.
Judges don’t seem to be required to practice federal sentencing pointers. And in implementing a sentence, Judge Kaplan can believe a variety of things, together with Mr. Bankman-Fried’s age, the truth that he’s a first-time culprit and the potential of him to be rehabilitated.
But one issue that can paintings in opposition to Mr. Bankman-Fried is that he selected to testify at his trial and appeared evasive every now and then all over cross-examination. If Judge Kaplan concludes that Mr. Bankman-Fried testified falsely, he may just take that under consideration in deciding the sentence.
