(New York Post) A Manhattan judge ripped Sam Bankman-Fried as a “remorseless” scammer obsessed with political power as he sentenced the fallen crypto mogul to 25 years in prison Thursday — five months after he was found guilty of stealing more than $8 billion from customers of his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Judge Lewis Kaplan said the 32-year-old convicted fraudster “presented himself as the good guy” all in favor of “appropriate regulation of the crypto industry” — but it was just an “act.”
“He did it because he wanted to be a hugely, hugely political influential person in this country,” Kaplan said, blasting him as “remorseless.”
“He knew it was wrong, he knew it was criminal, he regrets that he made a very bad bet about the likelihood of being caught,” he continued, as Bankman-Fried stood in front of him with his hands clasped tightly at his waist.
The disgraced crypto king was also ordered to pay more than $11 billion. Kaplan said his forfeited assets can be used to help fund the repayment.
Moments before the judge handed down the lengthy sentence, Bankman-Fried apologized for making “bad decisions” that “failed everyone I care about” — but maintained his actions “weren’t selfish.”
“At the end of the day, I failed everyone that I care about and everything that I care about, too,” he said at the hearing in Manhattan federal court.
“A lot of people feel really let down and, I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what happened at every stage,” the fallen crypto mogul, wearing light tan jail garb, continued.
“I made a series of bad decisions, they weren’t selfish decisions, they weren’t selfless decisions. They were bad decisions.”
Bankman-Fried had emerged as crypto’s friendly face in the US before his platform’s sudden November 2022 meltdown.
With his company worth $40 billion at its peak, the tech mogul flew around on private jets, showered politicians who he thought might be crypto-friendly with millions in donations, and even palled around with celebrities at the Super Bowl.
But weeks after his platform’s collapse, he was arrested in the Bahamas and charged with swiping FTX user funds to plug an $8 billion debt at his failing hedge fund Alameda Research.
