Lawyers for convicted cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried said the recommended 100-year pre-sentence is “grotesque” and “barbaric,” according to One America News.
FTX founder Bankman-Fried was convicted of cheating investors and customers of at least $10 billion late last year.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan is scheduled to sentence Bankman-Fried on March 28th.
FTX Founder Bankman-Fried’s Lawyer Asks Judge To Reject 100-Year Recommended Sentence, Seeks Less Than 7 Years https://t.co/ese2KFCVh2 #oan
— One America News (@OANN) February 28, 2024
On Tuesday, Bankman-Fried’s attorney Marc Mukasey claimed a report by probation officers “improperly” calculated sentencing guidelines and this was what caused them to recommend a 100-year sentence.
Prosecutors, on the other hand, agreed with the 100-year recommendation. They say the sentence was supported by the evidence put forth in the trial, according to OAN.
Bankman-Fried’s meteoric rise and fall in cryptocurrency — which included testimony before Congress, a Super Bowl appearance, and dreams of a future presidential run — hit bottom when a jury convicted him in November of cheating investors of at least $10 billion, according to KTLA 5.
Despite the fraud conviction, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers dispute the assertion that he cost customers billions of dollars, according to OAN.
The court filing cites Bankman-Fried’s “neurodiversity,” selflessness, and “kindness.” They may as well have called him an angel with a dirty face.
“Sam Bankman-Fried has been described as a ‘sociopath,’ a man with no morals, remorse or empathy,’ who is an ‘an ice-cold manipulator, bully, and shameless liar,’” the filing communicated to Manhattan federal court Judge Kaplan. “But they don’t know the true Sam Bankman-Fried.”
The filing went on to claim Bankman-Fried, 31, is “full of regret for the enormous damage that he has caused his (former) friends, family, partners, colleagues, and the causes he cared so deeply about.”
Barbara Fried, the fraudster’s mother, provided a letter that was quoted in the filing. It stated her son “has been wracked with remorse for not having prevented the implosion of FTX and the damage that followed.”
Mukasey asserted an appropriate sentence for his client would be a maximum of five years or six and a half years in prison.
A 100-year sentence recommendation, the filing stated, is “grotesque.”
Mukasey demanded that the judge reject such a “barbaric proposal” for the sentencing of a “brilliant, complex and humane person” who does not use drugs, rarely drinks, and is a first-time offender, according to OAN.
Judge Kaplan may have a different perspective. He concluded Bankman-Fried’s communications as attempts to influence trial witnesses and ordered he be jailed before trial.
In a seemingly desperate plea, Mukasey concluded that regardless of the sentence, Bankman-Fried will never be completely free.
“He will be scorned by many people wherever he goes for the rest of his life,” he wrote.
