Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers say proposed 50-year sentence portrays him as ‘supervillain’
NY Post
Sam Bankman-Fried is no “supervillain,” his lawyers argued this week — while ripping federal prosecutors’ request to put the crypto crook away for 40 to 50 years as being “marked with hostility.”
Lawyers for Bankman-Fried — who was convicted in November of stealing $8 billion from customers of his now-defunct FTX cryptocurrency exchange — said the feds’ court papers from Friday unfairly painted their client like a “supervillain” with “megalomaniacal motives.”
Prosecutors have a “medieval view of punishment” in asking for the decades-long sentence that “amounts to a death-in-prison” penalty, Bankman-Fried’s lawyer Marc Mukasey wrote in a letter filed in Manhattan federal court Tuesday.
Bankman-Fried, 32, is set to be sentenced on March 28, when his side will argue he should only be imprisoned for 5¼ to 6½ years.
Mukasey accused the feds of wanting “to break” his client and said he hadn’t found another instance of a non-violent convict serving such a lengthy term and getting set free after.
“Perhaps because inmates suffer a two-year decline in life expectancy for each year of imprisonment,” Mukasey wrote. “Crushing Sam in this way is unnecessary.”
Legal threat from Mario Gabelli was ‘major factor’ in collapse of Paramount’s $8B deal with Skydance
A legal threat from investor Mario Gabelli was a “major factor” in this week’s implosion of Shari Redstone’s $8 billion deal to merge Paramount Global with its “Mission: Impossible” production partner Skydance Media, The Post has learned.