Lawyers for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried submitted a letter to District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Tuesday challenging the Justice Department’s sentencing proposal last week.
“With considerable hostility, the memorandum distorts reality and casts Sam as a depraved supervillain to support its cherished ‘loss’ narrative. I think it’s a dark, megalomaniacal motivation for him to go against the record. It makes an apocalyptic prediction about recidivism. And to reach the level of recommending the death penalty, we adopted a medieval view of punishment.” filing said.
In a memorandum submitted last Friday, U.S. prosecutors said asked the court Former FTX CEO sentenced to 40 to 50 years in prison. “That is not justice,” Bankman-Fried’s defense team said in a recent filing.
The filing argued that Bankman-Fried showed no signs of reoffending, noting that the college-educated former cryptocurrency mogul had no criminal history. It also claimed that FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings would restore assets lost in the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse, something the government said was downplaying it to smear Bankman-Fried.
Request shorter sentences
Sam Bankman-Fried’s sentencing on the charges is scheduled for March 28. Bankman-Fried’s legal advisor I’ve asked this before The court imposed a “just sentence” of 63 to 78 months.
“We have yet to identify a federal defendant who was convicted of a non-violent crime, sentenced to 40 to 50 years in prison, and released. Perhaps this is because the life expectancy of prisoners decreases by two years every year,” the filing said Tuesday. said. “It’s unnecessary to trample on Sam like this.”
Bankman-Fried was convicted last year of defrauding investors at FTX and Alameda Research in what prosecutors called “one of the largest financial frauds in American history.”
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About the author
Danny Park is The Block’s East Asia reporter, writing about topics including Web3 development and cryptocurrency regulation in the region. He previously worked as a reporter for Forkast.News, where he actively covered the fall of Terra-Luna and FTX. Based in Seoul, Danny previously produced written and video content for media companies in Korea, Hong Kong and China. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Business Marketing from the University of Hong Kong.