Sam Bankman-Fried deserves 40-50 years in prison for FTX fraud, prosecutors say

investing.com:

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Sam Bankman-Fried should spend between 40 and 50 years in prison after being convicted for stealing $8 billion from customers of his now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange, prosecutors said on Friday.

In November, a jury found Bankman-Fried, 32, guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said «thousands of everyday people» including residents of war-torn and unstable countries had entrusted their nest eggs to FTX.

«Even now Bankman-Fried refuses to admit what he did was wrong,» prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. «His life in recent years has been one of unmatched greed and hubris; of ambition and rationalization; and courting risk and gambling repeatedly with other people's money.»

They are seeking $11 billion in forfeiture, to account for losses FTX's investors and Alameda's lenders suffered as well.

The former billionaire's lawyer Marc Mukasey told U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan that a 5-1/4 to 6-1/2 year prison term would be appropriate. They said FTX clients would get most of their money back, and that Bankman-Fried did not set out to steal.

Mark Botnick, a spokesman for Bankman-Fried, said Mukasey would file a response next week to prosecutors' memorandum.

Kaplan is scheduled to sentence Bankman-Fried on March 28 in Manhattan federal court. Bankman-Fried plans to appeal his conviction and sentence.

Bankman-Fried is the son of two Stanford Law School professors. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bankman-Fried worked on Wall Street before riding a boom in the values of digital assets such as bitcoin to a net worth Forbes magazine once estimated at $26 billion.

His fortune evaporated in November 2022, when