Since Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud final yr, he has employed a brand new lawyer identified for courtroom showmanship. A bunch of sympathetic legislation professors has pushed for a reappraisal of his actions. And his dad and mom have turned for assist to former staff of FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency change he based.
From a federal detention heart in Brooklyn, Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, has continued to battle his case behind the scenes, as he goals for a lenient sentence and prepares to enchantment his conviction. On Tuesday, his attorneys filed a authorized memo in U.S. District Courtroom in Manhattan, arguing that he ought to obtain a jail sentence of between 5 and 1 / 4 and 6 and a half years.
Mr. Bankman-Fried is “deeply, deeply sorry” for “the ache he induced during the last two years,” the memo stated. “His sole focus after the collapse of FTX was making prospects complete.”
The submitting was a vital step earlier than Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing on March 28, when the federal choose overseeing his case, Lewis A. Kaplan, will resolve how lengthy to imprison the onetime billionaire on prices that carry a most sentence of 110 years. However it was just one prong of a long-shot technique orchestrated by Mr. Bankman-Fried’s household and associates to reverse his conviction and engineer a public reappraisal of his management at FTX.
Since final yr’s trial, Mr. Bankman-Fried has employed Marc Mukasey, who as soon as represented former President Donald J. Trump, to supervise his sentencing, in addition to a separate lawyer on the legislation agency Shapiro Arato Bach to deal with the enchantment. His dad and mom, the Stanford College legislation professors Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, have additionally been concerned within the protection, serving to line up folks to write down letters vouching for his or her son’s character that had been included within the sentencing memo.
In an interview, Natalie Tien, a former assistant to Mr. Bankman-Fried at FTX, stated she had written a letter for the memo after exchanging emails with Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried.
“I don’t have grudges over him, and I do really feel dangerous for his dad and mom,” Ms. Tien stated.
A spokesman for Mr. Bankman-Fried declined to remark. Representatives for Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Federal prosecutors are set to stipulate their very own sentencing advice in a submitting due March 15. However in response to Mr. Bankman-Fried’s memo, a probation officer has already advisable a 100-year sentence, a punishment his attorneys known as “barbaric.”
Even when Decide Kaplan decides to not impose the utmost sentence, Mr. Bankman-Fried might face a long time behind bars.
The choose “might nonetheless give a really critical sentence given how younger Mr. Bankman-Fried is — say, a 30- or 35-year sentence,” stated Miriam Baer, vice dean at Brooklyn Regulation College.
A spokesman for Damian Williams, the U.S. lawyer for the Southern District of New York, declined to remark.
Earlier than FTX collapsed in November 2022, Mr. Bankman-Fried was one of the distinguished figures within the renegade crypto trade, a extensively celebrated billionaire whose face was splashed throughout billboards and journal covers.
In October, a federal jury convicted him of stealing $8 billion from FTX’s prospects to finance political contributions, investments in different firms and lavish actual property purchases.
Mr. Bankman-Fried has maintained he’s harmless and pledged to enchantment. This month, he changed his trial attorneys, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, with Mr. Mukasey, who’s representing one other fallen crypto mogul in a separate case and has a popularity for forceful courtroom shows.
Final yr, Mr. Mukasey scored a victory in his protection of Trevor Milton, the founding father of the electrical truck producer Nikola, who was convicted in 2022 of defrauding traders. A federal choose sentenced Mr. Milton in December to 4 years in jail, far lower than the 11 years that prosecutors had requested.
Working in parallel to Mr. Mukasey is an appellate lawyer and former prosecutor, Alexandra Shapiro, who’s a associate at Shapiro Arato Bach. She is anticipated to file Mr. Bankman-Fried’s enchantment after the sentencing.
Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried have additionally performed a job behind the scenes. Final month, Ms. Tien stated, she obtained a textual content from one among Mr. Bankman-Fried’s supporters, asking whether or not she would assist with the memo. Then she bought a follow-up electronic mail from the FTX founder’s dad and mom explaining the sentencing course of and urging her to write down “from the center” about their son.
They had been “sort of like testing the waters,” Ms. Tien stated in an interview. “I just about simply stated ‘sure’ straight away.”
Ms. Tien was one among 29 individuals who wrote letters for the memo, together with Mr. Bankman-Fried’s dad and mom, his youthful brother and several other former colleagues. She known as him type and empathetic and stated he had “by no means acted out of greed or self-interest.”
Within the submitting, Mr. Mukasey cited the letters to color Mr. Bankman-Fried as a hard-working, altruistic billionaire who eschewed the trimmings of fame and wealth. He additionally argued that some oddities within the mogul’s conduct might be defined by “neurodiversity.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried has “outward traits typical of neurodiversity, corresponding to inconsistent eye contact,” the memo stated. “He could be perceived as abrupt, dismissive, evasive, indifferent or uncaring.”
Outdoors the formal court docket course of, legislation professors who know Mr. Bankman-Fried’s dad and mom have additionally pressed his case.
In January, two shut household associates, the Yale Regulation professor Ian Ayres and the Stanford Regulation professor John Donohue, wrote an essay for the web site Undertaking Syndicate, arguing that “all alongside” FTX had sufficient property to make its prospects complete — some extent that Mr. Mukasey echoed within the memo.
“No matter else could be stated about Bankman-Fried, he was a superb businessman,” Mr. Ayres and Mr. Donohue wrote.
One other legislation professor, Jonathan Lipson at Temple College, stated in an interview that he was working with David Skeel of the College of Pennsylvania legislation faculty on a tutorial paper criticizing Sullivan & Cromwell, the legislation agency overseeing FTX’s chapter.
In September, Mr. Lipson co-wrote a quick within the chapter case arguing for the appointment of an unbiased examiner to overview Sullivan & Cromwell’s actions, together with its shut collaboration with federal prosecutors. He stated that he had spoken with Mr. Bankman-Fried and his mom final yr after one other Stanford legislation professor reached out in regards to the case and provided to place them involved.
Of their article, Mr. Lipson and Mr. Skeel argue that Sullivan & Cromwell “might have distorted the prison justice course of” by giving prosecutors wide-ranging entry to FTX’s assets and information, in response to an unpublished draft shared with The New York Occasions.
A Sullivan & Cromwell spokesman declined to remark. In court docket filings, prosecutors have described the data sharing as “routine practices by firms cooperating in an investigation.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried faces lengthy odds. Prison convictions are hardly ever overturned on enchantment.
Since final summer time, he has been housed on the Metropolitan Detention Middle in Brooklyn, the place he has spent a lot of his time engaged on the case, an individual with information of the matter stated. Mr. Bankman-Fried has additionally shared crypto market suggestions with the guards, the individual stated, recommending investments within the digital coin Solana.
This month, Mr. Bankman-Fried left the detention heart for his first public court docket look because the trial, a listening to to authorize his new authorized illustration. In a Manhattan courtroom, he appeared clean-shaven and wore a loosefitting brown jail uniform. At occasions, he circled and smiled on the reporters sitting within the gallery.
J. Edward Moreno contributed reporting.