Sam Bankman-Fried Makes His Last Stand

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 mother and father have turned for assist to former workers of FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency alternate he based.

From a federal detention heart in Brooklyn, Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, has continued to combat his case behind the scenes, as he goals for a lenient sentence and prepares to enchantment his conviction. On Tuesday, his legal professionals filed a authorized memo in U.S. District Court 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 pain he caused over the last two years,” the memo mentioned. “His sole focus after the collapse of FTX was making customers whole.”

The submitting was an important step earlier than Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing on March 28, when the federal decide overseeing his case, Lewis A. Kaplan, will determine how lengthy to imprison the onetime billionaire on costs that carry a most sentence of 110 years. But it was just one prong of a long-shot technique orchestrated by Mr. Bankman-Fried’s household and mates 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 mother and father, the Stanford University legislation professors Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, have additionally been concerned within the protection, serving to line up individuals to jot down letters vouching for his or her son’s character that have been included within the sentencing memo.

In an interview, Natalie Tien, a former assistant to Mr. Bankman-Fried at FTX, mentioned 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 feel bad for his parents,” Ms. Tien mentioned.

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. But in keeping with Mr. Bankman-Fried’s memo, a probation officer has already really useful a 100-year sentence, a punishment his legal professionals known as “barbaric.”

Even if Judge Kaplan decides to not impose the utmost sentence, Mr. Bankman-Fried may face many years behind bars.

The decide “could still give a very serious sentence given how young Mr. Bankman-Fried is — say, a 30- or 35-year sentence,” mentioned Miriam Baer, vice dean at Brooklyn Law School.

A spokesman for Damian Williams, the U.S. lawyer for the Southern District of New York, declined to remark.

Before FTX collapsed in November 2022, Mr. Bankman-Fried was probably the most distinguished figures within the renegade crypto business, 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 clients to finance political contributions, investments in different corporations and lavish actual property purchases.

Mr. Bankman-Fried has maintained he’s harmless and pledged to enchantment. This month, he changed his trial legal professionals, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, with Mr. Mukasey, who’s representing one other fallen crypto mogul in a separate case and has a fame for forceful courtroom displays.

Last 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 decide 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 companion at Shapiro Arato Bach. She is predicted to file Mr. Bankman-Fried’s enchantment after the sentencing.

Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried have additionally performed a task behind the scenes. Last month, Ms. Tien mentioned, she acquired a textual content from one in all Mr. Bankman-Fried’s supporters, asking whether or not she would assist with the memo. Then she obtained a follow-up e-mail from the FTX founder’s mother and father explaining the sentencing course of and urging her to jot down “from the heart” about their son.

They have been “kind of like testing the waters,” Ms. Tien mentioned in an interview. “I pretty much just said ‘yes’ right away.”

Ms. Tien was one in all 29 individuals who wrote letters for the memo, together with Mr. Bankman-Fried’s mother and father, his youthful brother and a number of other former colleagues. She known as him variety and empathetic and mentioned he had “never acted out of greed or self-interest.”

In 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 habits might be defined by “neurodiversity.”

Mr. Bankman-Fried has “outward characteristics typical of neurodiversity, such as inconsistent eye contact,” the memo mentioned. “He can be perceived as abrupt, dismissive, evasive, detached or uncaring.”

Outside the formal courtroom course of, legislation professors who know Mr. Bankman-Fried’s mother and father have additionally pressed his case.

In January, two shut household mates, the Yale Law professor Ian Ayres and the Stanford Law professor John Donohue, wrote an essay for the web site Project Syndicate, arguing that “all along” FTX had sufficient belongings to make its clients complete — a degree that Mr. Mukasey echoed within the memo.

“Whatever else might be said about Bankman-Fried, he was a brilliant businessman,” Mr. Ayres and Mr. Donohue wrote.

Another legislation professor, Jonathan Lipson at Temple University, mentioned in an interview that he was working with David Skeel of the University of Pennsylvania legislation college on a tutorial paper criticizing Sullivan & Cromwell, the legislation agency overseeing FTX’s chapter.

In September, Mr. Lipson co-wrote a short 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 mentioned 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 supplied to place them involved.

In their article, Mr. Lipson and Mr. Skeel argue that Sullivan & Cromwell “may have distorted the criminal justice process” by giving prosecutors wide-ranging entry to FTX’s assets and knowledge, in keeping with an unpublished draft shared with The New York Times.

A Sullivan & Cromwell spokesman declined to remark. In courtroom filings, prosecutors have described the data sharing as “routine practices by companies cooperating in an investigation.”

Mr. Bankman-Fried faces lengthy odds. Criminal convictions are hardly ever overturned on enchantment.

Since final summer season, he has been housed on the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the place he has spent a lot of his time engaged on the case, an individual with information of the matter mentioned. Mr. Bankman-Fried has additionally shared crypto market ideas with the guards, the individual mentioned, recommending investments within the digital coin Solana.

This month, Mr. Bankman-Fried left the detention heart for his first public courtroom look for the reason that 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 instances, he rotated and smiled on the reporters sitting within the gallery.

J. Edward Moreno contributed reporting.