During the sentencing hearing on March 28 before federal Judge Lewis Kaplan in New York, his lawyers indicated that he would appeal, which he did on April 1, paying $605, according to the court form.
“SBF”, as he was known at the head of the FTX platform, one of the largest in the world for the exchange of cryptocurrencies, was found guilty by a jury in November of seven counts in a trial for which the New York prosecutor, Damian Williams asked for between 40 and 50 years in prison.
In addition to his prison sentence, “SBF” received a sanction of 11,000 million dollars in compensation for any affected clients.
Judge Kaplan noted in handing down the sentence that the young man “had never had a word of remorse for having committed a terrible crime.”
He claimed, with examples, that “SBF” had committed at least three acts of perjury when testifying during his trial, as well as witness tampering.
The 32-year-old entrepreneur apologized, admitting that he had “made a series of bad decisions.”
A billionaire before the age of 30, Bankman-Fried conquered the world of cryptocurrencies at breakneck speed, turning FTX, a small start-up he co-founded in 2019, into the second largest exchange platform in the world.
But in November 2022, the FTX empire imploded, unable to cope with massive withdrawal requests from customers terrified upon learning that some of the money deposited with the company had been compromised in risky operations.
At the time of its bankruptcy filing, approximately $9 billion was missing.
The group’s liquidators have already recovered some $6.4 billion in cash and plan a full refund to affected customers.
They benefit from the enormous appreciation of cryptocurrencies, which have recovered after a catastrophic 2022 marked by several bankruptcies and the FTX scandal.
Source: With information from AFP.
