Futures Exchange (FTX) founder Sam Bankman-Fried bags 25 years prison sentence in Manhattan federal court after a recent ruling by the presiding Judge, Lewis Kaplan.
According to the court verdict, Bankman-Fried will serve 240 months and another 60 months prison term, which invariably implies 25 years behind bars.
Guilty Of Seven Counts Of Finance Related Crimes
Recall that the FTX founder has been facing court trials after he was apprehended in December 2022 in association with the trading platform collapse that wiped away customers' funds, estimated at around $8 billion in November 2022.
Before his sentencing, Backman-Fried was accused of several financial crime-related charges. However, the Judge found him guilty of seven counts of fraud that contributed to the FTX crash.
The FTX boss was found guilty of financial fraud revolving around money laundering and deceit in dealing with the plummeted exchange's investors and creditors.
Punishment Not Enough
Reacting to the court's verdict, many top participants in the crypto space think the FTX founder deserves stricter punishment.
Writing on X, John Deaton, XRP's Lawyer, has expressed dissatisfaction with the court ruling. He noted that considering his experience in the legal field during his active years, Bankman-Fried deserves a fifty-year jail term.“If you commit fraud and steal hard-working people’s life savings, you deserve a harsher prison sentence,” Deaton added.
Also commenting about the verdict, Jake Chervinsky, the Chief Legal Officer at Variant Fund, compared the punishment meted out to the FTX founder and that of Ross Ulbricht.
For context, Ulbricht is currently serving a forty-year prison sentence for his role in the Silk Road, the notorious darknet marketplace.
The Chief Legal Officer argued that while the 25-year prison sentence might seem long, life still lies ahead of the convicted trading platform founder after completing the term. “This is not justice,” Jake added.
Meanwhile, before his sentencing, the FTX boss had publicly apologized for his actions; the recent court ruling will go down in the record books as a significant landmark in the efforts to recover the lost funds.
