Sentencing of FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Announced

FTX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, collapsed in late 2022, causing its users to lose billions of dollars. Founder of FTX and known at the time as the “golden boy” of crypto Sam Bankman-Fried He was also arrested and held responsible for what happened. The trial of Fried, who had been held in prison for a while, was ongoing.

Today, this case was officially concluded and the sentence of the famous entrepreneur was announced. Fried, 7 separate fraud and money laundering crimes He was sentenced to imprisonment.

Sam Bankman-Fried, who was asked for 110 years in prison, was sentenced to 25 years in prison

Fried was heard by a judge named Lewis Kaplan at the 4-hour hearing held today in New York. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Although the 32-year-old entrepreneur denied all the accusations, a jury of 12 people found him guilty of defrauding his users and stealing their money.

Sam Bankman-Fried was normally sentenced to up to 110 years in prison. Prosecutors had requested a sentence of 40-50 years. On the other hand, Fried’s lawyers had requested a sentence of 5-6 years. Finally, a decision of 240+60 months of imprisonment was reached.

Investors lost $8 billion

Bankman founded FTX in 2019. The exchange quickly achieved worldwide success and became one of the largest in the sector. However, it started to collapse in November 2022 due to reasons such as liquidity problems and mismanagement of funds. Shortly after, he went bankrupt. During the trial, witnesses stated that FTX changed the numbers to make itself look safer. It was also revealed that Fried granted secret privileges to his own company, Alameda Research, and that this company, which was thought to be independent, was largely affiliated with the exchange’s own token, FTT.

All these events caused investors to suffer. Users, While losing 8 billion dollars the company’s investors $1.7 billion lost. As a result, Fried was found guilty of fraud and money laundering.