Sam Bankman-Fried's family on sentencing: We are heartbroken and will continue to fight for our son

Want to head back down to the courthouse in lower Manhattan. Our Kate Rooney now has a a new statement not only from the District Attorney, I believe, or the prosecutors, Kate, but also from Sam Bankman. Fried’s family, whom you tried to get on camera to respond, but at least they are through a statement. That’s right, Scott. We didn’t get an on camera statement, but we have a statement from the family. I do want to start with US attorneys. Damian Williams on the sentencing of Sam Bankman Fried. He says here Sam Samuel Bankman freed, orchestrated one of the largest financial frauds in history, stealing over $8 billion of his customers money. His deliberate and ongoing lies demonstrated A brazen disregard for customers expectations and disrespect for the rule of law. All this so that he could secretly use his customers money to expand his own power and influence the scale of his crimes as measured not just by the amount of money that was stolen by the extraordinary harm caused to victims here. It’s a pretty long statement, but that’s the crux of it, he says. Again, it’s an important message to others who might be tempted to engage in financial crimes and that justice will be swift and the consequences will be severe. And then Scott, as I mentioned, the statement from Banquet St’s family is brief. We are heartbroken and will continue to fight for our son. That’s from a spokesperson for the family, Scott. But that is the latest here and I’ll send it back to you. We also, I think we’re going to bring in, I understand you have Mackenzie Segalas with you as well. We do, we do. We’ll see. We can we can broaden the shot out so we can see Mackenzie of course for who covers all of this for cnbc.com and you can give us some color from inside the courtroom. Yeah. So it’s just up there. You had his parents in the front row, Sam Bateman freed and both parents looking pretty stoic. It it seemed as though they were braced for this, for this outcome 25 years, right in line with what a lot of federal former, former federal prosecutors were saying. The judge is a no nonsense you know veteran of the Southern District of New York. He said that Sam Bateman freed in his statement today, showed no remorse. It was a continuation of blaming others for things that went wrong today. Sam pointed to the bankruptcy estate as being a a bad actor and the reason that customers of the exchange were not made whole. He said that the money has always been there and continues to be there. And that goes to a larger narrative that came up during the sentencing where Judge Kaplan said, you know I I can name at least three times and he gave 3 examples of when Sam perjured himself on the stand during his trial in October. He said that today’s statement was an extension of that. Again, still not accepting blame for his role in all this. Mackenzie, can you give us an idea of maybe the emotional temperature in the in the courtroom as that sentence was read both from you know, Sam Bankman freed himself but also his parents. It’s really his mom who showed the most emotion today. You saw her, her jaw quivering for the duration of the roughly 2 hour sentencing hearing she would off in at times when the conversation was just was escalated. Lookout the window, look around the 26th floor. You can oversee the the Manhattan skyline almost as an escape from the from the deliberations, her husband seated right next to her just completely, like folded over, just just parents who are are really devastated by saying what’s happened to their son here, they’ve stood by him. They have been, at least when I covered this trial, they were in that courtroom every single day standing by their son Sam. No reaction. He really has just been stoic throughout the proceedings when he was found guilty of all charges after three hours of deliberation. Same reaction is today when he found out that he faces 25 years in prison. And Mackenzie, I wonder too. We’ve been covering this from the get go. Put in context kind of the scale and what this means for the cryptocurrency industry. It’s hard to understate how significant Bankman Freed was, whether it was Washington or just its influence on the overall industry. Put that in perspective from, you know, covering this for about a year now, what’s your take on the long term impact of this criminal fraud trial? I mean, it’s such a great question. You and I both have been covering this. We’ve been covering the implosion of finance’s status in the United States. Chang Peng Zao faces sentencing next month. I think it goes to this larger narrative that, you know, the bad actors are being washed out. Meanwhile, major Titans of Wall Street, you know asset managers like Black Rock are entering the space bringing some of that Trad Fi legitimacy to you know, what was once seen as more of a rogue. And I actually think it’s been a good thing seeing this wash out and just earlier this week do Quan another CEO being tried in this courtroom just behind us also you know being put, you know before a panel it it’s fascinating to see some of the the wash out in the fraud and crime really in this space. It was fascinating too to hear. Hear the defense say, you know this is not or the prosecution rather say this is a simple case of of fraud and crime, not necessarily anything to do with cryptocurrency. Really interesting today. The color from inside the courtroom too. I wonder based on the the lead up to this, this seems to be in line with what folks were expecting. Is that fair to say? Yeah absolutely. So the government wanted 40 to 50 years. I the defense was trying to make the case that he should see a Max sentence of 6 1/2 years because the bankruptcy estate said that they were looking to make all customers whole. They were feeling pretty confident in that. And the judge said, hey, it doesn’t matter if in the last 17 months the estate of FTX has been able to piece back together billions of dollars. At the end of the day, as you said, Kate, great point. It’s just basic fraud, $8 billion of customer money was stolen and misappropriated. I thought that dynamic was fascinating. The blame on Sullivan and Cromwell and the bankruptcy team you heard. Really. Then at least John Ray, who’s with the new CEO of FTX, A, it was a metaphorical dumpster fire. What he took over. So some colorful language there. But Scott, I think we’re going to send it back over to you. Appreciate that very much, Mackenzie. Thank you Kate Rooney to you as well. We’ll come back, of course, as we need to do that.