Legal professionals for convicted felony Sam Bankman-Fried are trying to elicit sympathy for his or her shopper forward of sentencing later this month that might see him put behind bars for the remainder of his life.
The 32-year-old presided over the November 2022 collapse of Bahamas-based crypto alternate FTX, defrauding prospects of billions of {dollars} in deposits to prop up heavy losses at his separate hedge fund, Alameda Analysis.
Writing to Choose Lewis Kaplan, lawyer Mark Mukasey condemned federal prosecutors’ makes an attempt to unfairly depict Bankman-Fried as a “wicked super-villain” and warned the justice system would needlessly crush his spirit if the courtroom acceded to their calls for for a 40-50 yr time period in jail.
“It attributes to him darkish and megalomaniacal motives that fly within the face of the file; it makes apocalyptic prophesies of [repeat offenses]; and it adopts a medieval view of punishment to succeed in what quantities to a death-in-prison sentencing suggestion,” Mukasey wrote on Tuesday, including that “Sam has misplaced the whole lot” already.
The trial lawyer and founding accomplice of Mukasey Younger LLP has as an alternative argued his shopper must obtain solely a fraction of that.
Mukasey went on to say his agency had not discovered one occasion of anybody convicted of a non-violent crime launched from jail after such a very long time behind bars: “Maybe as a result of inmates endure a two-year decline in life expectancy for every year of imprisonment.”
Convicted on the testimony of his former worker and girlfriend Caroline Ellison, amongst others, Bankman-Fried faces sentencing in a Manhattan federal courtroom on March 28. The problem of character is essential for the reason that punishment will take into consideration his contrition and the size of his deception.
‘The federal government desires to interrupt Sam Bankman-Fried’
Along with his likable demeanor, overwhelmed up Toyota Corolla and claims of altruism, Bankman-Fried attracted plenty of excessive profile traders and celebrities together with NFL quarterback Tom Brady. Simply six weeks earlier than FTX filed for chapter, Sequoia Capital printed a glowing tribute to “SBF”, through which the famend enterprise capital agency praised his “savior advanced”. (It has since been eliminated however can nonetheless be learn through archived pages.)
Few knew on the time that Alameda Analysis had secretly been plundering FTX buyer deposits to cowl speculative bets that went south utilizing its personal reserves of FTT, the native alternate token issued by FTX, as a type of collateral.
When information leaked Alameda’s steadiness sheet was constructed from sand, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao rushed to liquidate his holdings in FTX’s unbacked cryptocurrency. The transfer sparked a panic, the worth of FTT plummeted and the top drew close to for Alameda, FTX and Bankman-Fried.
The demise of Bankman-Fried’s FTX in November 2022 marked the height of the crypto winter following a summer season of scandals beginning with the implosion of Terraluna’s algo-backed stablecoin, the failure of crypto lender Celsius, and the managing companions of Three Arrows Capital working from the legislation.
“Hellbent on portraying [him] as a monster,” Mukasey wrote on Tuesday, “the federal government desires to interrupt Sam Bankman-Fried.”
