OAN’s Abril Elfi
11:27 AM – Wednesday, February 28, 2024
Lawyers for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried have urged a judge for a shorter sentence stating that the 100-year pre-sentence is “grotesque” and “barbaric.”
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On Tuesday, attorney Marc Mukasey stated that a report by probation officers “improperly” calculated sentencing guidelines to recommend a 100-year sentence.
However, prosecutors have agreed with the 100-year recommendation and say it was supported by trial evidence.
The filing cites his “neurodiversity,” selflessness and “kindness” — and strongly disputes claims he cost his companies’ customers billions of dollars with fraud.
“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,’” his lawyers told Manhattan federal court Judge Lewis Kaplan in the filing. “But they don’t know the true Sam Bankman-Fried.”
The lawyers also stated that 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.”
The filing quotes a letter from his mother, Barbara Fried, who wrote that her son “has been wracked with remorse for not having prevented the implosion of FTX and the damage that followed.”
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan is set to sentence Bankman-Fried on March 28th for allegedly cheating investors and customers of at least $10 billion in business he controlled.
Before his FTX trading platform filed for bankruptcy in November 2022—a few weeks before he was extradited from the Bahamas to the United States to stand trial—some in the cryptocurrency community considered it a trailblazer.
He was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy by a jury in November who was not persuaded by Bankman-Tried’s evidence.
Mukasey wrote on Tuesday, claiming that in order to support its recommendation, the probation office had miscalculated federal sentencing guidelines. According to Mukasey, guidelines would dictate a sentence that would be appropriate, with a maximum of five years or six and a half years in prison.
Mukasey said that the Probation office “recommends that the Court sentence Sam to 100 years in prison. That recommendation is grotesque.” He called on the judge to reject the “barbaric proposal” for a “brilliant, complex and humane person” who doesn’t use drugs, rarely drinks and is a first-time offender.
The judge had found Bankman-Fried’s communications as attempts to influence trial witnesses and he was jailed before trial.
Mukasey wrote that Bankman-Fried, regardless of his sentence, will never be totally free.
“He will be scorned by many people wherever he goes for the rest of his life,” he said.
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