Former cryptocurrency prodigy Sam Bankman-Fried has lodged an appeal against his federal conviction and 25-year prison sentence in a wide-reaching fraud case, as revealed in a legal document released on Thursday.
The appeal follows two weeks after US District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan issued the prison term and mandated Bankman-Fried, known as “SBF,” to forfeit $11 billion.
Bankman-Fried had experienced a meteoric rise in the cryptocurrency realm, amassing billionaire status before the age of 30 and transforming FTX, a startup he co-founded in 2019, into the world’s second-largest exchange platform.
However, Bankman-Fried’s rapid ascent came crashing down in November 2022, amid a flurry of customer withdrawals and revelations of billions of dollars being illicitly transferred from FTX to Bankman-Fried’s personal hedge fund, Alameda Research.
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In November 2023, a federal jury in New York convicted Bankman-Fried on seven counts of fraud, embezzlement, and criminal conspiracy.
During the sentencing hearing last month, Bankman-Fried expressed remorse over the downfall of the firm, which also impacted numerous colleagues. “It haunts me every day,” he admitted. “I made a series of bad decisions.”
However, the judge noted that Bankman-Fried had not fully taken responsibility. Kaplan criticized Bankman-Fried for showing “exceptional flexibility” towards the truth and lacking any “word of remorse for the commission of a terrible crime.”
