Sam Bankman-Fried faces decades in prison as he’s sentenced today for multibillion-dollar fraud
NY Post
Sam Bankman-Fried faces the prospect of decades in prison as he is sentenced on Thursday — five months after being found guilty of stealing more than $8 billion of funds from customers of his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
The 32-year-old convicted fraudster will learn his fate at a Manhattan federal court hearing set for 9:30 a.m., capping an epic and swift fall from grace.
Sporting a now-infamous scruffy hairdo and uniform of a T-shirt and khaki shorts, Bankman-Fried had emerged as crypto’s friendly face in the US before his platform’s sudden November 2022 meltdown.
With his company worth $40 billion at its peak, the tech mogul flew around on private jets, showered politicians who he thought might be crypto friendly with millions in donations, and even palled around with celebrities at the Super Bowl.
But weeks after his platform’s collapse, he was arrested in the Bahamas and charged with swiping FTX user funds to plug a $8 billion debt at his failing hedge fund Alameda Research.
In November last year, a jury found that the ex crypto golden boy had looted the accounts of what prosecutors called “tens of thousands” of people — including in war-torn and unstable nations — who lost the nest eggs they entrusted to him.
