Sam Bankman-Fried has been convicted on all seven counts of criminal fraud in his high-profile court case centering around his mishandling of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange while serving as CEO. The jury only deliberated for four hours before handing down a verdict.
The disgraced crypto guru, who was such a rising star that he reportedly had presidential aspirations, is now facing a maximum sentence of 115 years, according to CNBC.
“Sam Bankman-Fried perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in American history,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a briefing following the verdict. “While the cryptocurrency industry might be new and the players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new, this kind of corruption is as old as time. This case has always been about lying, cheating, and stealing, and we have no patience for it.”
Bankman-Fried presided over FTX when it infamously cratered in November 2022, triggering Bankman-Fried’s ouster as CEO and an investigation into his financial practices, which lost billions of FTX customers’ money. After ending oddly frank DMs to reporters about what went wrong at FTX, Bankman-Fried was eventually arrested in the Bahamas.
Like the collapse of FTX, Bankman-Fried’s trial was also a media circus as his ex-girlfriend testified against him and revealed that Bankman-Fried thought his unkempt hair was the key to his success. That hypothesis didn’t hold.
(Via CNBC)