New York:
Fallen cryptocurrency prodigy Sam Bankman-Fried has appealed his federal conviction and 25-year prison sentence in a massive fraud case, according to a legal filing released Thursday.
The news comes two weeks after U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan set Bankman-Fried’s sentence and ordered “SBF” to pay $11 billion in forfeitures. News of the appeal.
Bankman-Fried has soared to the top of the crypto world, becoming a billionaire before the age of 30 and turning the small startup he co-founded in 2019, FTX, into the world’s second-largest trading platform.
But by November 2022, Bankman-Fried’s meteoric rise came crashing down with massive customer withdrawals and news that billions of dollars had been illegally transferred from FTX to Bankman-Fried’s personal hedge fund, Alameda Research.
In November 2023, he was convicted by a New York federal jury on seven counts of fraud, corruption and criminal conspiracy.
At last month’s sentencing hearing, Bankman-Fried expressed regret at the company’s demise, which also affected many colleagues.
“It bothers me every day,” he said. “I made a series of bad decisions.”
But the judge said Bankman-Fried did not accept full responsibility.
Kaplan said Bankman-Fried “made mistakes but has never expressed remorse for the horrific crimes he committed.” He described the violations as “brazen” and praised the SBF for being “extraordinarily flexible” about the truth.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
