Crypto-scammer Sam Bankman-Fried may be going away for a long, long time.
Prosecutors are recommending a 40 to 50 year sentence for the FTX founder who bilked investors out of billions of dollars. People have speculated that he might get off with little to no jail time due to his political donations, which went overwhelmingly to Democrats.
Now he is looking at half a century behind bars.
The FOX Business Network reports:
Prosecutors want a 40- to 50-year prison sentence for Sam Bankman-Fried
Sam Bankman-Fried should spend 40 to 50 years in prison after being convicted of stealing $8 billion from customers of his now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange, prosecutors said Friday.
The FTX founder was found guilty on all charges in November related to the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange in the first of two criminal trials against the former CEO.
A jury in a Manhattan federal court agreed with prosecutors that Bankman-Fried defrauded investors, customers and lenders during the collapse of his crypto empire.
“Even now, Bankman-Fried refuses to admit what he did was wrong,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “His life in recent years has been one of unmatched greed and hubris; of ambition and rationalization; and courting risk and gambling repeatedly with other people’s money.”…
Prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried, who founded and controlled both FTX and sister hedge fund Alameda Research, of misappropriating and embezzling billions of dollars in FTX customer deposits, scheming to mislead investors and instructing other executives at his businesses to do the same.
These prosecutors are not playing around.
NEW — The sentencing memo from the federal government against Sam Bankman-Fried just dropped.
They want him to go away to prison for 40 to 50 years.https://t.co/EUIGAt3lxi pic.twitter.com/kIwGJUyVEt
— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) March 15, 2024
His defense wanted a sentence of only six years. Not going to happen.
Federal prosecutors argued in their Sentencing Memorandum that Sam Bankman-Fried should spend 40 to 50 years in prison for the FTX fraud, pushing back against a request by defense counsel for a sentence of roughly six years.
The Sentencing Memorandum said Bankman-Fried should be… pic.twitter.com/37j6eYHxhE
— John Reed Stark (@JohnReedStark) March 16, 2024
He will likely be a much older man by the time he gets out of prison.