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Lawyers for convicted criminal Sam Bankman-Fried are attempting to elicit sympathy for their client ahead of sentencing later this month that could see him put behind bars for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old presided over the November 2022 collapse of Bahamas-based crypto exchange FTX, defrauding customers of billions of dollars in deposits to prop up heavy losses at his separate hedge fund, Alameda Research.<\/p>\n
Writing to Judge Lewis Kaplan,\u00a0lawyer Mark Mukasey\u00a0condemned federal prosecutors\u2019 attempts to unfairly depict Bankman-Fried as a \u201cdepraved super-villain\u201d and warned the justice system would needlessly crush his spirit if the court acceded to their demands for a 40-50 year<\/a> term in prison.<\/p>\n \u201cIt attributes to him dark and megalomaniacal motives that fly in the face of the record; it makes apocalyptic prophesies of\u00a0[repeat offenses]; and it adopts a medieval view of punishment to reach what amounts to a death-in-prison sentencing recommendation,\u201d Mukasey\u00a0wrote on Tuesday<\/a>, adding that \u201cSam has lost everything\u201d already.<\/p>\n The trial lawyer and founding partner of Mukasey Young LLP has instead\u00a0argued<\/a>\u00a0his client ought to receive only a\u00a0fraction<\/a>\u00a0of that.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mukasey went on to say his firm had not found one instance of anyone convicted of a non-violent crime released from prison after such a long time behind bars: \u201cPerhaps because inmates suffer a two-year decline in life expectancy for each year of imprisonment.\u201d<\/p>\n Convicted on the testimony of his former employee and girlfriend Caroline Ellison,\u00a0among others<\/a>, Bankman-Fried faces sentencing in a Manhattan federal court on March 28. The issue of character is important since the punishment will take into account his contrition and the scale of his deception.\u00a0<\/p>\n With his likable demeanor, beaten up Toyota<\/a> Corolla and claims of altruism, Bankman-Fried attracted a number of high profile investors and celebrities including NFL quarterback Tom Brady. Just six weeks before FTX filed for bankruptcy, Sequoia Capital published a glowing tribute to \u201cSBF\u201d, in which the renowned venture capital firm praised his \u201csavior complex\u201d. (It has since been\u00a0removed<\/a>\u00a0but can still be read via\u00a0archived pages<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Few knew at the time that Alameda Research had secretly been plundering FTX customer deposits to cover speculative bets that went south using its own reserves of FTT, the native exchange token issued by FTX, as a\u00a0form of collateral<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n When\u00a0news leaked<\/a>\u00a0Alameda\u2019s balance sheet was built from sand, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao rushed to\u00a0liquidate his holdings<\/a>\u00a0in FTX\u2019s unbacked cryptocurrency. The move sparked a panic, the value of FTT plummeted and the end drew near for Alameda, FTX and Bankman-Fried.\u00a0<\/p>\n The demise of Bankman-Fried\u2019s FTX in November 2022 marked the peak of the crypto winter following a summer of scandals starting with the\u00a0implosion<\/a>\u00a0of Terraluna\u2019s algo-backed stablecoin, the\u00a0failure<\/a>\u00a0of crypto lender Celsius, and the managing partners of Three Arrows Capital\u00a0running from the law<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHellbent on portraying [him] as a monster,\u201d\u00a0Mukasey wrote on Tuesday, \u201cthe government wants to break Sam Bankman-Fried.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\u2018The government wants to break Sam Bankman-Fried\u2019<\/h2>\n
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