- A new picture of Sam Bankman-Fried just surfaced online, which shows him hanging out with other inmates.
- The former CEO of FTX is about to be sentenced next month at a district court in New York.
- A lighter judgment may be on the table due to FTX’s cooperation in repaying its customers.
A new photo of Sam Bankman-Fried just emerged online, thanks to independent crypto crime creator, Tiffany Fong. The photo was taken on December 17, 2023, which was a month after the former FTX CEO’s conviction and several days following the anniversary of his arrest in the Bahamas.
Fong credited a prisoner as her source of the picture, which shows SBF with other inmates. All except one of his company had their faces censored for privacy. For those who are wondering, the one standing beside the embattled crypto personality is G Lock; who no longer had his face covered because Fong interviewed him earlier.
FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried Saga
SBF used to be one of the richest people in the world of crypto until his empire came crashing down in November 2022. A botched deal with Binance coupled with US agency investigations exposed grave mismanagement of customer funds involving his company, FTX, and its partner firm, Alameda Research.
This stemmed from FTX lending more than half of its customer’s funds to its financially ailing partner before it also fell into a liquidity crisis. Binance expressed its intent to acquire SBF’s crypto exchange but eventually walked out of the deal after finding some lapses in the firm’s accounting books and getting wind of possible trouble with US authorities for fraudulent activities.
In December 2022, Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas and extradited to the US where he was eventually found guilty of seven counts of fraud. A second trial pending the permission of the Bahamas judiciary was supposed to follow, but prosecutors ultimately decided against it so as not to prolong the proceedings and speed up SBF’s sentencing.
Several personalities, including Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal, decried the call of the prosecutors as a “miscarriage of justice” since it would mean SBF would no longer be accountable for the other six cases. Others called it a potential cover-up because the former FTX CEO will no longer be compelled by the court to air the names of politicians whom he funded during their campaigns.
SBF’s Sentence
Sam Bankman-Fried is due for sentencing on March 28 this year under Southern District of New York Senior Judge Lewis Kaplan. It was initially estimated that he could face up to 115 years behind bars for his crimes, but legal experts believe that it could be somewhere between 10 to 20 years due to the commonality in nature of the offenses. This could be further reduced due to FTX’s current efforts to repay its customers.