FTX founder faces 110 years in prison

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried told the judge at his criminal sentencing hearing that he made a “series of selfish decisions” on the failed cryptocurrency exchange.

“They built something really beautiful, and I took all of that away,” Bankman-Fred said of his colleagues at FTX. “It haunts me every day.”

“It was painful to see all of this unfold,” he said. “Customers do not deserve this level of pain.

“I was the CEO of FTX and I was in charge.”

SBF faces a potential maximum sentence of 110 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines for the massive fraud conspiracy that led to the collapse of FTX and a related hedge fund, a judge ruled Thursday.

Judge Lewis Kaplan expanded Bankman-Fried's sentencing guidelines after finding that he perjured himself during his trial and willfully obstructed justice.

Kaplan, who will sentence SBF later Thursday in Manhattan federal court, is not obligated to give him that amount of time. But the ruling highlights the risk that Bankman-Fried could spend decades in prison.

The judge also found Thursday that FTX's total fraud loss exceeded $550 million. Anything more than that is “just gravy,” Kaplan noted, referring to the fact that any further loss would not increase the maximum guidelines.

However, Kaplan said he “rejects the entirety of defendant's no-loss argument” in FTX, calling that claim “misleading, logically flawed and speculative.”

After Kaplan ruled on strengthening the guidelines, many of Bankman-Fried's victims began speaking out about the effects of his crimes.

Bankman Freed, wearing a beige prison jumpsuit, looked at the victims as they spoke to the judge.

Federal prosecutors want Bankman-Fried to be sentenced to 40 to 50 years in prison. His defense team asked Kaplan to sentence him to a much shorter sentence, meaning between five and six and a half years behind bars.

Kaplan presided over the trial, which ended in November when a jury found Bankman-Fried, 32, guilty of seven charges and held him responsible for nearly $10 billion in customer deposits that disappeared in 2022.

The charges included wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud against FTX clients and against lenders to sister hedge fund Alameda Research; conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit commodity fraud against FTX investors; And conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Bankman-Fried's parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Freed, are in the courtroom for the sentencing hearing.