Prosecutors asked for 50 years in prison for FTX founder

“His life in recent years was filled with greed and arrogance, unprecedented ambition and rationalization, as well as a desire to take risks and constantly gamble with other people’s money,” Reuters says, citing the sentencing memorandum submitted by prosecutors.

In addition to the prison sentence, the prosecution is asking for the confiscation of $11 billion to compensate for the losses suffered by investors in FTX and the financial company Alameda, affiliated with the crypto exchange.

Prosecutors say “thousands of ordinary people” were victims of deception, including residents of countries “torn by war and instability.”

In the memo, prosecutors pointed to the businessman’s privileged upbringing and elite education as the reason for imposing a particularly harsh sentence, as Bankman-Fried’s upbringing meant he knew the immorality of his actions.

Bankman-Fried’s lawyer, Mark Mukasey, believes that a period of 5 to 6.5 years is appropriate and also assures that FTX clients will recover most of their money, which the head of the bankrupt exchange ” “I had no intention of stealing.”

The defendant’s representative said he would submit his response to the prosecutor’s memo next week. Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan is scheduled to hand down the verdict on March 28, 2024, and Bankaman-Fried’s side is now set to appeal.

In the fall of 2023, a jury found the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried, guilty of all charges: fraud, criminal conspiracy, and theft of $8.9 billion.

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