Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
Soon after the news about Nadeem Anjarwalla escaping from Nigeria here we have another breaking news for the crypto market as Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of crypto exchange FTX, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud and money laundering at FTX.
The sentence is a result of a massive fraud that caused billions (at least $10 billion) in losses and is considered one of the biggest financial crimes ever in the history of the digital world where Fintech is currently growing at a rapid scale and almost every citizen of US is using an online money transfer app while most of the individuals also trade and exchange cryptocurrencies daily.
This is a significant sentence Sam Bankman and also for what prosecutors called "one of the largest financial frauds of all time."
However, this sentence could greatly impact the crypto industry in a bad way, as it serves as a deterrent for future fraud in the market.
Judge Lewis Kaplan said:
"When not lying, he was evasive, hair splitting, trying to get the prosecutors to rephrase questions for him. I’ve been doing this job for close for 30 years. I’ve never seen a performance like that." [Inner City Press]
Both prosecutors and Bankman-Fried's attorneys argued for different sentence lengths, with prosecutors asking for 40-50 years and the defense requesting 63-78 months.
As a way to give some relaxation, Bankman-Fried will likely be able to reduce his sentence slightly through good behavior while incarcerated but it will not be like a 10 reduction or something like that but up to 15% reduction is expected.
In Short:
- Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of FTX cryptocurrency exchange, is sentenced to 25 years in prison.
- The sentence aims to deter future fraud in the crypto industry.
- Despite claims of innocence, Bankman-Fried will likely spend a significant amount of time behind bars, with a chance of a small reduction for good behavior.
Once the #1 and strongest crypto exchange FTX is now a bankrupt company and Sam Bankman-Fried who founded the company and became the owner too is going to jail for 25 years straight. This sounds an alarm for cryptocurrency investors and traders too as it is a volatile market but the platforms like Binance are also facing legal issues as CZ (CEO of Binance) is also going to face a trial in April 2024.
