Dethroned crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried to be sentenced for defrauding FTX investors

abcnews.go.com:

A judge deciding how long former crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried will spend in prison has rejected arguments by his lawyer that leniency is warranted because customers will get back money they lost after the 2022 collapse of FTX

NEW YORK — A judge said Thursday that federal sentencing guidelines call for former crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried to spend the rest of his life in prison, but he'll order a sentence of less than life once he decides the penalty Bankman-Fried must pay for his role in the 2022 collapse of FTX, once one of the world's most popular platforms for trading digital currency.

Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted in November of fraud and conspiracy — a dramatic fall from a year earlier when he and his companies seemed to be riding a crest of success that resulted in a Super Bowl advertisement and celebrity endorsements from stars like quarterback Tom Brady and comedian Larry David.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan agreed with prosecutors that Bankman-Fried should not get leniency just because some investors and customers might get some of their lost money back. He called the argument “logically flawed” and “speculative.” He said customers lost about $8 billion, investors lost $1.7 billion and lenders were shorted by $1.3 billion.

Kaplan also cited three instances where he concluded that Bankman-Fried committed perjury during his trial testimony, including when Bankman-Fried testified that he didn't know until just weeks before FTX collapsed into bankruptcy that customer funds were being diverted to a hedge fund offshoot of FTX.

Given a chance to speak, Bankman-Fried stood and apologized in a rambling statement, saying: “A lot of people feel really let down. And they were very let down. And I’m sorry about