He did not admit guilt
The founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried, received a 25-year prison sentence for fraud related to «misappropriation» FTX client funds.
The trial, which began at the end of 2022, has ended. The court found the accused guilty. In addition to the huge sentence, he was also awarded an obligation to pay $11 billion. Throughout the trial, Sam Bankman-Freed reportedly maintained that he did nothing wrong intentionally. He referred to the complex analytics in the company and the incompetence of junior staff — they allegedly overlooked Alameda's leverage over FTT.
The judge also noted that throughout the entire trial the accused continued to try to play tricks and make excuses.
When he wasn't lying, he was being evasive, trying to get prosecutors to rephrase questions. I have been doing this work for almost 30 years. I've never seen such a performance.
Recall that Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, essentially ran a Ponzi scheme for the benefit of his personal trading arm, Alameda Research. Throughout this time, FTX has repeatedly transferred its native FTT tokens to Alameda at very low prices, while the exchange itself inflated the value of FTT by using part of its revenue to burn the circulating supply of tokens. Alameda then used its FTT tokens as collateral to borrow client funds from FTX, which were then used to place leveraged bets. This event ended once Alameda's FTT token became public knowledge, prompting Binance to begin dumping its own FTT holdings, driving down the token's price in the process. This led to massive bank runs as customers attempted to exit the exchange, ultimately leading to FTX filing for bankruptcy in November 2022.
As a result, the exchange's clients lost a total of about 8 billion dollars, and the Bankman-Fried scam is called the largest in US history after the notorious Bernard Madoff scam, where financial losses amounted to 17.5 billion.