The FTX founder’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for the end of this month
Federal prosecutors have requested prison terms ranging from 40 to 50 years for Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, over mass fraud leading to the company’s collapse.
Lawyers have also asked that the defendant be ordered to pay $11 billion in restitution when he is sentenced on March 28 at the US District Court in Manhattan. The federal probation department separately recommended a 100-year sentence for Bankman-Fried, 32. He faces a maximum possible penalty of 110 years.
In November, Bankman-Fried was found guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy linked to his ill-fated cryptocurrency exchange, the world’s second-largest at the time of its insolvency, and a related hedge fund.
“In every part of his business, and with respect to each crime committed, the defendant demonstrated a brazen disrespect for the rule of law,” prosecutors said in the filing published on Friday. They added that Bankman-Fried’s “historic” crime involved over a million of potential victims and losses of more than $10 billion.
They emphasized that the defendant “understood the rules, but decided they did not apply to him.”
Bankman-Fried was arrested last December on a long list of fraud charges after his once-successful crypto exchange, FTX, abruptly filed for bankruptcy. Prosecutors said he embezzled $8 billion in customers’ money to make investments, buy real estate, and make up for losses at a separate hedge fund, among other things, for which he faced one count of wire fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud, and one count of money laundering conspiracy.