FTX founder Bankman-Fried appeals conviction, prison sentence

FTX founder and convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried on Thursday appealed his conviction and prison sentence.

His attorneys filed the appeal in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and will likely need to persuade that court that U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan improperly deprived the cryptocurrency mogul of his rights during the trial, Reuters reported.

Bankman-Fried received 25 years in prison after being convicted on two counts of conspiracy and five counts of fraud last November. Prosecutors had sought 40-50 years in prison, though Kaplan opted for the shorter term in late March, according to The Hill.

Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency empire collapsed unexpectedly in November of 2022 when the company suffered the equivalent of a bank run in which investors simultaneously lost faith in the firm and attempted withdraw their stakes, leaving it unable to remunerate them.

Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of FTX's sister investment firm Alameda Research, pleaded guilty in 2023 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

In the immediate aftermath of FTX's collapse, FTX CEO John J. Ray III told Congress that the firm was largely devoid of an internal safeguards and lacked proper recordkeeping.

"It's one of the worst from a documentation standpoint. Even in the most failed companies you have a fair roadmap of what happened. We're dealing with literally, sort of a paperless bankruptcy, in terms of how they created the company," he said at the time.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter.