U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan handed down the sentence at a hearing in Manhattan District Court after Fried denied the allegation that FTX investors lost money. Kaplan accused him of perjury during the trial.
“He committed one of the biggest frauds in US history”
“Sam Bankman Fried committed one of the largest frauds in US history,” Damian Williams, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said late last year. “A multi-billion dollar scheme to make him king of cryptocurrencies.”
It was a success for the prosecution, which buried the king of cryptocurrencies under millions of documents, many of them incriminating, as well as under the testimony of three of his former close associates, including his ex-girlfriend, writes the quoted source.
They all claimed that they acted under the direction of their former boss, who was at the helm of all the key decisions that allowed him to embezzle clients’ money and take unsuspected risks.
“Who was in control? That is the question,” Deputy Attorney General Nicolas Roos said at the hearing in November 2023. “There was only one person: the accused.”
The former billionaire, whose fortune grew with the implosion of FTX and Alameda, tried to plead good faith, presenting the image of a young and inexperienced entrepreneur rather than that of a criminal. He admitted “big mistakes” but always denied knowingly breaking the law.
His lawyer, Mark Cohen, accused the prosecutor, during the hearing, of presenting him as a “monster”, a “villain”, caricaturing his actions and personality.
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Tags: Crypto King Sam BankmanFried Sentenced Years Prison Billion Fraud
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