Since Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud final yr, he has employed a brand new lawyer identified for courtroom showmanship. A gaggle of sympathetic regulation 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 struggle his case behind the scenes, as he goals for a lenient sentence and prepares to enchantment his conviction. On Tuesday, his attorneys filed a authorized memo in U.S. District Court docket 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 ache he triggered during the last two years,” the memo stated. “His sole focus after the collapse of FTX was making clients entire.”
The submitting was an important step earlier than Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing on March 28, when the federal choose overseeing his case, Lewis A. Kaplan, will resolve how lengthy to imprison the onetime billionaire on costs that carry a most sentence of 110 years. Nevertheless 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 regulation agency Shapiro Arato Bach to deal with the enchantment. His mother and father, the Stanford College regulation professors Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, have additionally been concerned within the protection, serving to line up individuals to write 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, stated 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 really feel unhealthy for his mother and father,” Ms. Tien stated.
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. However in keeping with Mr. Bankman-Fried’s memo, a probation officer has already advisable a 100-year sentence, a punishment his attorneys known as “barbaric.”
Even when Decide Kaplan decides to not impose the utmost sentence, Mr. Bankman-Fried might face a long time behind bars.
The choose “might nonetheless give a really critical sentence given how younger Mr. Bankman-Fried is — say, a 30- or 35-year sentence,” stated Miriam Baer, vice dean at Brooklyn Legislation College.
A spokesman for Damian Williams, the U.S. lawyer for the Southern District of New York, declined to remark.
Earlier than FTX collapsed in November 2022, Mr. Bankman-Fried was one of the crucial outstanding figures within the renegade crypto trade, a broadly 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 firms and lavish actual property purchases.
Mr. Bankman-Fried has maintained he’s harmless and pledged to enchantment. This month, he changed his trial attorneys, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, with Mr. Mukasey, who’s representing one other fallen crypto mogul in a separate case and has a repute for forceful courtroom shows.
Final 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 choose 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 accomplice at Shapiro Arato Bach. She is anticipated to file Mr. Bankman-Fried’s enchantment after the sentencing.
Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried have additionally performed a job behind the scenes. Final month, Ms. Tien stated, she obtained a textual content from one in every of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s supporters, asking whether or not she would assist with the memo. Then she acquired a follow-up e-mail from the FTX founder’s mother and father explaining the sentencing course of and urging her to write down “from the guts” about their son.
They have been “type of like testing the waters,” Ms. Tien stated in an interview. “I just about simply stated ‘sure’ straight away.”
Ms. Tien was one in every of 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 type and empathetic and stated he had “by no means acted out of greed or self-interest.”
Within 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 conduct might be defined by “neurodiversity.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried has “outward traits typical of neurodiversity, comparable to inconsistent eye contact,” the memo stated. “He will be perceived as abrupt, dismissive, evasive, indifferent or uncaring.”
Exterior the formal courtroom course of, regulation professors who know Mr. Bankman-Fried’s mother and father have additionally pressed his case.
In January, two shut household mates, the Yale Legislation professor Ian Ayres and the Stanford Legislation professor John Donohue, wrote an essay for the web site Challenge Syndicate, arguing that “all alongside” FTX had sufficient belongings to make its clients entire — a degree that Mr. Mukasey echoed within the memo.
“No matter else is likely to be stated about Bankman-Fried, he was an excellent businessman,” Mr. Ayres and Mr. Donohue wrote.
One other regulation professor, Jonathan Lipson at Temple College, stated in an interview that he was working with David Skeel of the College of Pennsylvania regulation college on a tutorial paper criticizing Sullivan & Cromwell, the regulation agency overseeing FTX’s chapter.
In September, Mr. Lipson co-wrote a quick 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 stated that he had spoken with Mr. Bankman-Fried and his mom final yr after one other Stanford regulation professor reached out in regards to the case and provided to place them in touch.
Of their article, Mr. Lipson and Mr. Skeel argue that Sullivan & Cromwell “could have distorted the felony justice course of” by giving prosecutors wide-ranging entry to FTX’s assets and knowledge, in keeping with an unpublished draft shared with The New York Occasions.
A Sullivan & Cromwell spokesman declined to remark. In courtroom filings, prosecutors have described the knowledge sharing as “routine practices by firms cooperating in an investigation.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried faces lengthy odds. Felony convictions are not often overturned on enchantment.
Since final summer season, he has been housed on the Metropolitan Detention Middle in Brooklyn, the place he has spent a lot of his time engaged on the case, an individual with information of the matter stated. Mr. Bankman-Fried has additionally shared crypto market ideas with the guards, the individual stated, 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 occasions, he rotated and smiled on the reporters sitting within the gallery.
J. Edward Moreno contributed reporting.