Who is Sam Bankman-Fried, the ‘Crypto King’ sentenced to 25 years in prison?

Sam Bankman-Fried has been sentenced to 25 years in jail as a US court noted that he had shown no “real remorse” even in his final pre-sentencing remarks. During the sentencing, the former billionaire, who once was on the cover of financial magazines and financed Super Bowl television ads in 2022, said that he made “a series of bad decisions” but did not acknowledge violating financial laws by knowledge.
Sam Bankman-Fried became a billionaire before 30 and turned FTX, a small start-up he cofounded in 2019, into world’s second largest exchange platform. In November 2022, the company saw a deluge of customer withdrawals following revelations that billions of dollars had been illegally moved from FTX to his personal hedge fund, Alameda Research.
Sam Bankman-Fried said “mistakes were made, but never a word of remorse for the commission of a terrible crime,” the court noted. Calling the violations as “brazen”, the court called out the former billionaire for his “exceptional flexibility” towards the truth.
Sam Bankman-Fried has been given a sentence of 25 years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $11 billion. The US government had sought a 40-50 years sentence but the Justice Department said, “Today’s sentence… is an important message to others who might be tempted to engage in financial crimes that justice will be swift, and the consequences will be severe.”
His parents, Stanford law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, said in a statement as per news agency AFP, “We are heartbroken and will continue to fight for our son.”
In remarks to the court, defense attorney Marc Mukasey said that Sam Bankman-Fried is a well-intended, “awkward math nerd” and “it’s obviously a serious offense, but Sam was not a financial serial killer who set out to hurt people.”
Expressing regret, Sam Bankman-Fried acknowledged how his actions affected many colleagues. They “built something beautiful. And I threw it all away. It haunts me every day. I made a series of bad decisions,” he said.