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    FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried makes a last ditch attempt to mitigate 110-yr prison sentence

    Synopsis

    FTX founder requests leniency, with his lawyers telling a court that the recommended sentence of 110 years in prison is ‘grotesque and barbaric’.

    Sam Bankman-Fried Makes His Last StandNYT News Service
    FILE -- Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, parents of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, arrive at federal court for their son's trial in Manhattan, Oct., 11, 2023. Since the disgraced cryptocurrency mogul was convicted of fraud last year, his supporters have been maneuvering to secure a lenient sentence and change the public narrative about his case. (Karsten Moran/The New York Times)
    NEW YORK -- Since Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud last year, he has hired a new lawyer known for courtroom showmanship. A group of sympathetic law professors has pushed for a reappraisal of his actions. And his parents have turned for help to former employees of FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange he founded.

    From a federal detention center in Brooklyn, Bankman-Fried, 31, has continued to fight his case behind the scenes, as he argues for a lenient sentence and prepares to appeal his conviction. On Tuesday, his lawyers are scheduled to file a legal memo in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, making the case that he doesn't deserve to go to prison for the rest of his life.

    But it's only one prong of a long-shot strategy orchestrated by Bankman-Fried's family and friends to reverse his conviction and engineer a public reappraisal of his leadership at FTX.

    Since last year's trial, Bankman-Fried has hired Marc Mukasey, who once represented former President Donald Trump, to oversee his sentencing, as well as a separate lawyer at the law firm Shapiro Arato Bach to handle the appeal. His parents, Stanford University law professors Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, have also been involved in the defense, helping line up people to write letters for their son that will be included in the memo.

    Natalie Tien, a former assistant to Bankman-Fried at FTX, said she wrote a letter for his sentencing memo after exchanging emails with Bankman and Fried.

    "I don't have grudges over him, and I do feel bad for his parents," Tien said.

    A spokesperson for Bankman-Fried declined to comment. Representatives for Bankman and Fried did not respond to requests for comment.

    Federal prosecutors are set to outline their own sentencing recommendation in a filing due March 15. Even if Kaplan decides not to impose the maximum sentence, Bankman-Fried could still face decades behind bars.

    The judge "could still give a very serious sentence given how young Mr. Bankman-Fried is; say, a 30- or 35-year sentence," said Miriam Baer, vice dean at Brooklyn Law School.

    A spokesperson for Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, declined to comment.

    Before FTX collapsed in November 2022, Bankman-Fried was one of the most prominent figures in the renegade crypto industry, a widely celebrated billionaire whose face was splashed across billboards and magazine covers.

    In October 2023, a federal jury convicted him of stealing $8 billion from FTX's customers to finance political contributions, investments in other companies and lavish real estate purchases.

    Bankman-Fried has maintained his innocence and pledged to appeal. This month, he replaced his trial lawyers, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, with Mukasey, who has a reputation for forceful courtroom presentations.

    Last year, Mukasey scored a victory in his defense of Trevor Milton, the founder of electric truck manufacturer Nikola, who was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors. A federal judge sentenced Milton in December to four years in prison, far less than the 11 years that prosecutors had requested.

    Working in parallel to Mukasey is an appellate lawyer and former prosecutor, Alexandra Shapiro, a partner at Shapiro Arato Bach. She is expected to file Bankman-Fried's appeal after the sentencing.

    Bankman and Fried have also played a role behind the scenes. Last month, Tien said, she received a text from one of Bankman-Fried's supporters, asking whether she would help with the memo. Then she got a follow-up email from the FTX founder's parents explaining the sentencing process and urging her to write "from the heart" about their son.

    They were "kind of like testing the waters," Tien said in an interview. "I pretty much just said 'yes' right away."

    Law professors who know Bankman-Fried's parents have also pressed his case.

    In January, two close family friends, Yale Law professor Ian Ayres and Stanford Law professor John Donohue, wrote an essay for the website Project Syndicate, arguing that "all along" FTX had enough assets to make its customers whole.

    "Whatever else might be said about Bankman-Fried, he was a brilliant businessman," Ayres and Donohue wrote.

    Another law professor, Jonathan Lipson at Temple University, said in an interview that he was working with David Skeel of the University of Pennsylvania law school on an academic paper criticizing Sullivan & Cromwell, the law firm overseeing FTX's bankruptcy.

    In September, Lipson co-wrote a brief in the bankruptcy case arguing for the appointment of an independent examiner to review Sullivan & Cromwell's actions, including its close collaboration with federal prosecutors. He said that he spoke with Bankman-Fried and his mother last year after another Stanford law professor reached out about the case and offered to put them in contact.

    In their article, Lipson and Skeel argue that Sullivan & Cromwell "may have distorted the criminal justice process" by giving prosecutors wide-ranging access to FTX's resources and data, according to an unpublished draft shared with The New York Times.

    A Sullivan & Cromwell spokesperson declined to comment. In court filings, prosecutors have described the information sharing as "routine practices by companies cooperating in an investigation."

    Bankman-Fried faces long odds. Criminal convictions are rarely overturned on appeal.

    Bankman-Fried has been housed at Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center since last summer and has spent much of his time working on the case, a person with knowledge of the matter said. He has also shared crypto market tips with the guards, the person said, recommending investments in the digital coin solana.

    This month, Bankman-Fried left the detention center for his first public court appearance since the trial, a hearing to authorize his new legal representation. In a Manhattan courtroom, Bankman-Fried was clean-shaven and wore a loosefitting brown prison uniform. At times, he turned around and smiled at the reporters sitting in the gallery.


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