Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Alternate, arrives at courtroom in New York, US, on Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023.
Stephanie Keith | Bloomberg | Getty Pictures
Attorneys for Sam Bankman-Fried are asking a choose for a comparatively quick sentence like “junk bond king” Michael Milken as a substitute of the 100 years {that a} presentence investigation report requires.
In a brand new courtroom submitting, attorneys for Bankman-Fried requested for a sentence of between 63 and 78 months in jail for overseeing the large monetary fraud at his cryptocurrency alternate FTX and associated hedge fund Alameda Analysis.
That submitting, amongst different issues, cites his “neurodiversity,” selflessness and “kindness” — and strongly disputes claims he price his firms’ clients billions of {dollars} with fraud.
“Sam Bankman-Fried has been described as a ‘sociopath,’ ‘a person with no morals, regret or empathy,’ who’s an ‘an ice-cold manipulator, bully and shameless liar,'” his legal professionals instructed Manhattan federal courtroom Decide Lewis Kaplan within the submitting.
“However they do not know the true Sam Bankman-Fried,” the attorneys argued in rebutting the 100-year jail time period beneficial by a presentence investigation report by federal probation officers.
The legal professionals wrote that Bankman-Fried, 31, is “filled with remorse for the big injury that he has triggered his (former) mates, household, companions, colleagues, and the causes he cared so deeply about.”
The submitting quotes a letter from his mom, Barbara Fried, who wrote that her son “has been wracked with regret for not having prevented the implosion of FTX and the injury that adopted.”
“It’s, he has instructed me, the very first thing he thinks about when he wakes up and the very last thing he thinks about when he goes to sleep, and it occupies many moments in between,” wrote Fried, who like her husband, Joseph Bankman, is a Stanford legislation professor.
Bankman-Fried has been in jail since his bail was revoked in August, eight months after he was indicted on a number of fraud prices and different counts associated to the dramatic collapse of FTX in late 2022.
He was convicted at trial in November and is because of be sentenced on March 28.
The Manhattan U.S. legal professional’s workplace, which prosecuted Bankman-Fried, has but to file its sentencing suggestion however is predicted to name for a a lot stiffer sentence than that referred to as for by protection legal professionals of their new submitting.
U.S. Legal professional Damian Williams in November stated, “Bankman-Fried perpetrated one of many largest monetary frauds in American historical past,” and scoffed at the concept the FTX founder’s conduct was motivated by altruism.
“This case has all the time been about mendacity, dishonest, and stealing, and we have now no endurance for it,” Williams stated on the time.
Of their new, almost 100-page doc, protection attorneys marshal an array of arguments designed to get Kaplan to dramatically depart downward from federal sentencing tips, which suggest that he give Bankman-Fried 100 years or extra in jail.
“That suggestion is grotesque,” the protection workforce led by legal professional Marc Mukasey wrote within the submitting.
“This Courtroom ought to reject the [Presentence Investigation Report’s] barbaric proposal.”
The federal tips within the case counsel a draconian sentence for Bankman-Fried largely as the results of the $10 billion loss by FTX and Alameda Analysis clients within the case, because the PSR concluded.
Protection legal professionals of their sentencing submission stated that the loss calculation is unsupported by proof, arguing that “probably the most cheap estimate of loss is zero.”
The submitting notes that final month, debtors’ attorneys within the chapter case of FTX and Alameda stated that “clients and collectors who can show their losses are anticipated to get again all of their cash.”
“The hurt to clients, lenders, and traders is zero,” Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals wrote.
Along with attacking at size the rationale of the sentencing tips’ suggestion, SBF’s legal professionals spent a big chunk of the submitting detailing his private historical past, psychological make-up and “charitable works.”
It says he created Alameda after which FTX as engines to make cash that would then be given to varied altruistic endeavors, in keeping with Bankman-Fried’s embrace of the philosophy generally known as “efficient altruism.”
The submitting describes him as a “shy” little one who “typically struggled socially,” who in highschool “realized he was anhedonic, or unable to expertise pleasure or pleasure.”
“As Sam describes it, he experiences detrimental feelings in methods that aren’t very completely different from many different individuals — neither way more excessive, nor a lot much less detrimental. However he doesn’t really feel pleasure, or happiness, or pleasure, even when one thing superb occurs to him,” the submitting says.
“In faculty, he was formally recognized as affected by anhedonic melancholy and he has been on antidepressant remedy ever since.”
The legal professionals wrote that Bankman-Fried has a “neurodiversity” that “vastly impacts how he perceives and is perceived.”
The submitting doesn’t explicitly name Bankman-Fried autistic or say he’s on the autism spectrum, however a number of occasions mentions his neurodiversity in reference to references to these phrases.
“Neurodiversity is a medical idea that acknowledges the variation in human neurology. It acknowledges that neurological variations, akin to these related to Asperger’s, ASD, and [Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder] are a part of the spectrum of variety of the human mind that exists,” the submitting says.
“Sam’s situation manifests in all kinds of the way. No two people on the spectrum are precisely alike. It’s not a illness or a situation that must be cured,” the legal professionals wrote. “As a substitute, it’s a elementary side of a person’s id—a side to be thought-about at sentencing.”
The submitting says that due to his situation, “Sam is uniquely weak in a jail inhabitants.”
“People with ASD are sometimes at significantly higher danger of bodily hurt and extortion in jail than different inmates,” the legal professionals wrote.
The attorneys argued that Bankman-Fried is “not prone to committing additional crimes,” and had already been harshly punished by the poor circumstances within the Brooklyn, New York, federal jail the place he has been locked up since final summer time.
The submitting urged the choose to condemn Bankman-Fried alongside the traces of the sentence imposed on so-called junk bond king Michael Milken, who obtained a 10-year time period for the fraud he dedicated on the funding financial institution Drexel Burnham Lambert within the Nineteen Eighties, however solely ended up serving two years behind bars.
“Milken was launched from custody at an age when he was younger sufficient to nonetheless make a optimistic influence,” the legal professionals argued. “And he grew to become an incredible drive for good on the earth.”
“Milken’s two-year sentence gave him a second probability. He has modified the lives of numerous others for the higher with that probability,” the submitting stated.
“Given the identical probability, Sam would dedicate his post-prison life to charitable works, discovering the very best methods to assist others, and put them into follow, constant along with his dedication to efficient altruism.”
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