FTX exchange founder faces 40-50 years in prison

Nhà sáng lập sàn giao dịch FTX đối diện 40-50 năm tù giam- Ảnh 1. — FTX Cryptocurrency Exchange Founder Sam Bankman-Fried

Prosecutors in the US on March 15 proposed a 40-50 year prison sentence for the founder of digital currency exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried for stealing $8 billion from customers.

In November 2023, a jury in New York state (USA) convicted Bankman-Fried of defrauding customers and investors.

According to Reuters, federal prosecutors in Manhattan (New York) said that "thousands of people every day", including people in war zones and unstable countries, trusted to invest in FTX.

FTX, once the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, collapsed into bankruptcy in 2022.

"To this day Bankman-Fried refuses to admit what he did was wrong. His life in recent years has been one of unprecedented greed and arrogance, of ambition and rationalization, of risk-taking and repeated bets with other people's money," prosecutors said.

They are asking for $11 billion in forfeiture to compensate victims for their losses.

Bankman-Fried’s attorney, Marc Mukasey, said a prison sentence of between five years and three months and six years and six months was appropriate. He argued that FTX customers would get most of the money back, and that his client had no intention of stealing.

Mr. Bankman-Fried's spokesman, Mark Botnick, said Mr. Mukasey will file a response to prosecutors next week.

Bankman-Fried is scheduled to be sentenced on March 28 in federal court in Manhattan and will appeal.

Mr. Bankman-Fried, whose parents were both Stanford Law School professors, graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked on Wall Street before riding the boom in the value of digital assets like bitcoin, building a conglomerate whose net worth Forbes once estimated at $26 billion.

CEO of FTX cryptocurrency exchange discovers "unprecedented" violations in his career

His fortune evaporated in November 2022, when FTX declared bankruptcy following a wave of customer withdrawals.

Before his arrest, he was a major political donor. In the 2022 US midterm elections, he contributed $40 million to Democratic candidates, but he also admitted to being a Republican donor.

In a podcast in May 2022, the FTX founder said he planned to fund more than $100 million in the 2024 presidential election and the cap could go up to $1 billion if Mr. Trump runs for re-election, according to NBC News.

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