Sam Bankman-Fried, the once-high-flying founder of FTX, is now facing 25 years behind bars. Judge Lewis Kaplan handed down the sentence—20 years plus an extra 60 months—putting a cap on a saga that’s rocked the crypto world.
Kaplan didn’t just stop at the prison term; he also nailed Bankman-Fried for obstruction of justice, pointing to a text to FTX’s ex-general counsel that reeked of witness tampering. And that line about not knowing Alameda was dipping into FTX customer funds? The judge called it hogwash.
The courtroom got raw when Sunil Kavuri, one of FTX’s victims, took the stand. He laid bare the devastation—how Bankman-Fried’s actions pushed some to the brink, with at least three people taking their own lives after losing everything in the collapse. It was a gut punch to hear, and it hit home how deep the damage ran.
Bankman-Fried didn’t stay quiet before the gavel dropped. He owned up to a string of bad calls that torched years of his team’s hard work, name-dropping colleagues and praising their grit. “They threw themselves into it, then I threw all that away,” he said. “It haunts me every day. I made a series of bad decisions. They weren’t selfish decisions.” He admitted the liquidity crunch was partly on him—Alameda was doomed, he figured, but he thought FTX could ride it out. Spoiler: it didn’t.
This all kicked off last November when a New York federal jury slapped him with seven guilty verdicts—two fraud counts and five conspiracy charges—tied to an $8 billion mess. Since then, he’s been cooling his heels at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, bail long gone after that tampering accusation. The lead-up to sentencing was a tug-of-war: his defense begged for no more than six years, while prosecutors pushed for 40 to 50, slamming his “unparalleled greed and deceit.”
FTX’s November 2022 implosion sent shockwaves everywhere. Reports from 52 customers, filed just yesterday, painted a grim picture of the mental toll—folks crushed by the fallout when Bankman-Fried and his crew mixed FTX’s cash with Alameda Research’s, splurging customer funds on personal whims. That $8 billion hole blew up when withdrawals hit, and the whole house of cards came crashing down. Now, with SBF locked away, the crypto crowd’s left sifting through the wreckage.
