Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, arrives in court as lawyers try to persuade the judge overseeing his fraud case not to jail him before his trial, at a courthouse in justice of New York, August 11, 2023.
Eduardo Munoz | Reuters
An attorney for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on Thursday filed a notice of appeal of his federal fraud and conspiracy conviction and 25-year prison sentence.
Bankman-Fried’s appeal comes two weeks after he was convicted in U.S. District Court in Manhattan and ordered to pay $11 billion in forfeiture for the massive fraud that occurred on the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and a associated hedge fund, Alameda Research. Prosecutors said it was one of the largest financial frauds in history.
The appeal, which was expected, will be heard by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which sits in Manhattan.
Criminal defendants have a very high chance of having their convictions overturned in federal court, obtaining a reversal in less than 10% of appeals. If Bankman-Fried loses at the 2nd Circuit, he would have to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to appeal, which is even longer.
Alexandra Shapiro, the attorney who filed Bankman-Fried’s notice of appeal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted at his trial in November of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the embezzlement of approximately $10 billion of clients’ money.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan said Bankman-Fried oversaw a conspiracy to plunder client funds to make investments and finance political donations to Democrats and Republicans. He also used the defrauded funds for personal expenses and to repay loans taken out by Alameda Research, prosecutors said.
When sentencing Bankman-Fried, Judge Lewis Kaplan said: “There is a risk that this man could be in a position to do something very serious in the future. »
“And this is not a trivial risk at all,” added Kaplan, who stressed that he had never heard “a word of remorse for the commission of terrible crimes” from Bankman-Fried.
Bankman-Fried, the son of Stanford law professors, suggested that FTX lost billions of dollars in customer funds due to a “liquidity crisis” or “mismanagement.”
Four other top executives from FTX and Alameda had already pleaded guilty.
One of them, Ryan Salame, is scheduled to be sentenced May 28 by Kaplan.
Sentencing dates have not yet been set for Caroline Ellison, who was CEO of Alameda; Gary Wang, FTX Chief Technology Officer; and Nishad Singh, who was the head of engineering at FTX.
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