Crypto king, Sam bankman fried has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for committing the worse financial crime in the history of the United States. The 32 years old founded a cryptocurrency exchange , FTX, which made him a billionaire in dollars before it collapsed in spectacular fashion.
He’s been found guilty of fraud and money laundering and has been sentenced to 25 years in prison by a federal courtroom in lower Manhattan, United States District Judge Lewis Kaplan.
Reports are that prior to his 25 years sentence, Prosecutors had sought as much as 50 years, looking at his demeanor, his likelihood of recommitting crimes if he were released earlier. But his legal team argued for no more than six and half years.
Sam, during his trial, had committed other crimes, according to the jury, admitting he made a mistake, showing remorse, but refusing to hold himself accountable for his actions and never admitting to any deliberate criminal guilt.
“It haunts me every day,” he said in a statement. “There are a lot of mistakes that I made”
Bankman-Fried, however, told the court that FTX had the ability to repay customers when it collapsed..
A quick walk through of what Sam Bankman-fried did;
Sam was a crypto golden boy and and founded the cryptocurrency exchange, FTX where customers come trade their dollars and their pounds for crypto currency and he assured those people as he crypto platform was collapsing that their money was safe.
But as those people went to withdraw their funds in November 2022, their funds were not there. And the jury found that that money has been moved to a hedge fund, an investment fund, and that Sam used that money to enrich himself and his inner circle, to make political donations, buy luxury estates and more.
Meanwhile, the prosecutors said Bankman-Fried took more than $10bn (£7.9bn) from unsuspecting customers in “one of the biggest financial frauds” in US history.
FTX was valued at $32bn before it went bankrupt in 2022.
