Since Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud final 12 months, he has employed a brand new lawyer identified for courtroom showmanship. A gaggle of sympathetic regulation professors has pushed for a reappraisal of his actions. And his mother and father have turned for assist to former staff of FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency trade he based.
From a federal detention heart in Brooklyn, Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, has continued to struggle his case behind the scenes, as he goals for a lenient sentence and prepares to enchantment his conviction. On Tuesday, his legal professionals filed a authorized memo in U.S. District Court docket in Manhattan, arguing that he ought to obtain a jail sentence of between 5 and 1 / 4 and 6 and a half years.
Mr. Bankman-Fried is “deeply, deeply sorry” for “the ache he induced over the past two years,” the memo mentioned. “His sole focus after the collapse of FTX was making prospects entire.”
The submitting was an important step earlier than Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing on March 28, when the federal decide overseeing his case, Lewis A. Kaplan, will determine how lengthy to imprison the onetime billionaire on costs that carry a most sentence of 110 years. But it surely was just one prong of a long-shot technique orchestrated by Mr. Bankman-Fried’s household and associates to reverse his conviction and engineer a public reappraisal of his management at FTX.
Since final 12 months’s trial, Mr. Bankman-Fried has employed Marc Mukasey, who as soon as represented former President Donald J. Trump, to supervise his sentencing, in addition to a separate lawyer on the regulation agency Shapiro Arato Bach to deal with the enchantment. His mother and father, the Stanford College regulation professors Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, have additionally been concerned within the protection, serving to line up individuals to jot down letters vouching for his or her son’s character that have been included within the sentencing memo.
In an interview, Natalie Tien, a former assistant to Mr. Bankman-Fried at FTX, mentioned she had written a letter for the memo after exchanging emails with Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried.
“I don’t have grudges over him, and I do really feel dangerous for his mother and father,” Ms. Tien mentioned.
A spokesman for Mr. Bankman-Fried declined to remark. Representatives for Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Federal prosecutors are set to stipulate their very own sentencing advice in a submitting due March 15. However in accordance with Mr. Bankman-Fried’s memo, a probation officer has already advisable a 100-year sentence, a punishment his legal professionals known as “barbaric.”
Even when Decide Kaplan decides to not impose the utmost sentence, Mr. Bankman-Fried might face many years behind bars.
The decide “might nonetheless give a really severe sentence given how younger Mr. Bankman-Fried is — say, a 30- or 35-year sentence,” mentioned Miriam Baer, vice dean at Brooklyn Legislation Faculty.
A spokesman for Damian Williams, the U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of New York, declined to remark.
Earlier than FTX collapsed in November 2022, Mr. Bankman-Fried was probably the most outstanding figures within the renegade crypto trade, a extensively celebrated billionaire whose face was splashed throughout billboards and journal covers.
In October, a federal jury convicted him of stealing $8 billion from FTX’s prospects to finance political contributions, investments in different firms and lavish actual property purchases.
Mr. Bankman-Fried has maintained he’s harmless and pledged to enchantment. This month, he changed his trial legal professionals, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, with Mr. Mukasey, who’s representing one other fallen crypto mogul in a separate case and has a popularity for forceful courtroom displays.
Final 12 months, Mr. Mukasey scored a victory in his protection of Trevor Milton, the founding father of the electrical truck producer Nikola, who was convicted in 2022 of defrauding traders. A federal decide sentenced Mr. Milton in December to 4 years in jail, far lower than the 11 years that prosecutors had requested.
Working in parallel to Mr. Mukasey is an appellate lawyer and former prosecutor, Alexandra Shapiro, who’s a accomplice at Shapiro Arato Bach. She is predicted to file Mr. Bankman-Fried’s enchantment after the sentencing.
Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried have additionally performed a job behind the scenes. Final month, Ms. Tien mentioned, she acquired a textual content from one among Mr. Bankman-Fried’s supporters, asking whether or not she would assist with the memo. Then she bought a follow-up e mail from the FTX founder’s mother and father explaining the sentencing course of and urging her to jot down “from the center” about their son.
They have been “form of like testing the waters,” Ms. Tien mentioned in an interview. “I just about simply mentioned ‘sure’ instantly.”
Ms. Tien was one among 29 individuals who wrote letters for the memo, together with Mr. Bankman-Fried’s mother and father, his youthful brother and a number of other former colleagues. She known as him variety and empathetic and mentioned he had “by no means acted out of greed or self-interest.”
Within the submitting, Mr. Mukasey cited the letters to color Mr. Bankman-Fried as a hard-working, altruistic billionaire who eschewed the trimmings of fame and wealth. He additionally argued that some oddities within the mogul’s conduct might be defined by “neurodiversity.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried has “outward traits typical of neurodiversity, comparable to inconsistent eye contact,” the memo mentioned. “He will be perceived as abrupt, dismissive, evasive, indifferent or uncaring.”
Exterior the formal court docket course of, regulation professors who know Mr. Bankman-Fried’s mother and father have additionally pressed his case.
In January, two shut household associates, the Yale Legislation professor Ian Ayres and the Stanford Legislation professor John Donohue, wrote an essay for the website Project Syndicate, arguing that “all alongside” FTX had sufficient property to make its prospects entire — a degree that Mr. Mukasey echoed within the memo.
“No matter else is likely to be mentioned about Bankman-Fried, he was a superb businessman,” Mr. Ayres and Mr. Donohue wrote.
One other regulation professor, Jonathan Lipson at Temple College, mentioned in an interview that he was working with David Skeel of the College of Pennsylvania regulation faculty on an educational paper criticizing Sullivan & Cromwell, the regulation agency overseeing FTX’s chapter.
In September, Mr. Lipson co-wrote a quick within the chapter case arguing for the appointment of an impartial examiner to evaluate Sullivan & Cromwell’s actions, together with its shut collaboration with federal prosecutors. He mentioned that he had spoken with Mr. Bankman-Fried and his mom final 12 months after one other Stanford regulation professor reached out concerning the case and supplied to place them in touch.
Of their article, Mr. Lipson and Mr. Skeel argue that Sullivan & Cromwell “could have distorted the prison justice course of” by giving prosecutors wide-ranging entry to FTX’s assets and knowledge, in accordance with an unpublished draft shared with The New York Instances.
A Sullivan & Cromwell spokesman declined to remark. In court docket filings, prosecutors have described the knowledge sharing as “routine practices by firms cooperating in an investigation.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried faces lengthy odds. Legal convictions are not often overturned on enchantment.
Since final summer season, he has been housed on the Metropolitan Detention Heart in Brooklyn, the place he has spent a lot of his time engaged on the case, an individual with data of the matter mentioned. Mr. Bankman-Fried has additionally shared crypto market ideas with the guards, the individual mentioned, recommending investments within the digital coin Solana.
This month, Mr. Bankman-Fried left the detention heart for his first public court docket look for the reason that trial, a listening to to authorize his new authorized illustration. In a Manhattan courtroom, he appeared clean-shaven and wore a loosefitting brown jail uniform. At instances, he circled and smiled on the reporters sitting within the gallery.
J. Edward Moreno contributed reporting.
