New York (CNN) — On Tuesday, attorneys for Sam Bankman-Fried submitted a memorandum to the federal court in Manhattan, stating that their client does not deserve to spend the rest of his life in jail. They referred to a sentence of one hundred years as “barbaric” and “grotesque.”
Bankman-Fried, who is 31 years old, was found guilty in November of seven charges of fraud and conspiracy for his part in the collapse of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange that he co-founded and which went bankrupt. In accordance with the criteria for federal punishment, he might be sentenced to a maximum of 110 years.
Bankman-Fried’s attorney, Marc Mukasey, requests that the judge presiding over the case disregard the pre-sentencing report that the Probation Department produced. The study suggests that Bankman-Fried should be sentenced to one hundred years in prison.
He argues that “that recommendation is grotesque,” pointing out that Bankman-Fried is a nonviolent criminal who received assistance from “at least four other culpable individuals.” He also mentions that she was a victim of the crime. In addition, Mukasey mentions that victims, around one million of whom have had their accounts frozen while FTX is going through the bankruptcy court process, are anticipated to be made whole.
Mukasey suggests that Bankman-Fried be sentenced to a jail term that falls anywhere between five and six and a half years, taking into consideration the “charitable works and demonstrated commitment to others.”
The date of his sentence is set for March 28th. Since the revocation of his bond in August, Bankman-Fried has been incarcerated in a prison in Brooklyn, where he has been since then.
Up until the autumn of 2022, Bankman-Fried had been riding high as the wealthy prodigy behind FTX, the firm that featured A-list celebrity sponsors and a clean interface that enticed millions of individuals to try their hand at cryptocurrency trading. Until that time, Bankman-Fried found himself in a promising position. In spite of this, Bankman-Fried has been held up by some as a symbol of a completely unregulated sector that was constructed on the unstable basis of highly speculative assets in the more than a year that has passed since FTX went out of business.
In the days leading up to the sentence, the note is a typical submission. When making a decision on Bankman-Fried’s sentence, the judge who is handling the case, Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York, will take into consideration a number of criteria. These elements include the arguments presented by the prosecution, the defence counsel, and the recommendations made by the Probation Department.
One issue that is up for debate is the method of calculating the damages that victims have sustained. When it comes to white-collar crimes, the length of the sentence is often proportional to the amount of money that was lost. Defendants often contest the ways in which the government has calculated the amount of damage they have sustained.
“The pre-sentencing report is defective and “adopts the government’s story completely,” Mukasey says in the letter. “The government’s narrative is wholesale.”
In the beginning of this month, attorneys representing the estate of FTX said in front of a bankruptcy court that consumers and creditors were likely to recover the majority of the money that was lost as a result of the collapse of the exchange. However, this was not a guarantee.
In his capacity as a partner at Kramer Levin, Jordan Estes, who had previously worked as a federal prosecutor for the United States Attorney’s Office, expressed his belief that the matter is likely to be disputed. It is possible that the government would argue that this is irrelevant and that what is true is the loss that was meant to occur or the loss that occurred at the time.
When it comes down to it, the choice is ultimately up to Kaplan’s judgement.
“Defendants in white-collar cases in the Southern District are frequently sentenced to sentences that are below the guidelines, and certainly not 110 years,” said Estes. “This is a common occurrence.” However, this is a crime that is a little bit out of the ordinary. Thus, it is difficult to predict what will take place.
