FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison for cryptocurrency fraud

Sam Bankman Fried pictured leaving a courthouse in Manhattan New York in March 2023

FTX FOUNDER SAM Sam Bankman-Fried has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for a cryptocurrency fraud that a prosecutor has described as one of the biggest financial frauds in the US.

US prosecutors were seeking a prison term of 40-50 years after a New York jury found Bankman-Fried, known by his initials SBF, guilty in November following a five-week trial that probed the one-time high roller’s spectacular fall.

The jury reached its decision in just five hours.

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a billionaire before the age of 30, Bankman-Fried conquered the crypto world at breakneck speed, turning FTX, a small start-up he co-founded in 2019, into the world’s second-largest exchange platform.

But in November 2022, the FTX empire imploded, unable to cope with massive withdrawal requests from customers panicked to learn that some of the funds stored at the company had been committed to risky operations at Bankman-Fried’s personal hedge fund, Alameda Research.

Some of his closest associates testified during the trial that he was key to all the decisions that saw $8 billion (€7.53b) vanish from his FTX trading platform.

Bankman-Fried admitted during his trial he had made “mistakes” but denied that he had ever tried to defraud anyone.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated