The prosecutors outlined the recommendation in a filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Mr. Bankman-Fried\u2019s sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 28, when Judge Lewis A. Kaplan will decide his fate. He faces a maximum possible penalty of 110 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cJustice requires that he receive a prison sentence commensurate with the extraordinary dimensions of his crimes,\u201d the prosecutors said in a 116-page sentencing memo to the judge.<\/p>\n

The federal probation department separately recommended a 100-year sentence for Mr. Bankman-Fried, 32, effectively a life sentence. But prosecutors said in the filing that sending him to prison for the rest of his life was not warranted, despite the severity of his crime, because of his relative youth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

In a filing last month, lawyers for Mr. Bankman-Fried argued that he should receive a sentence of no more than six and a half years.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Mr. Bankman-Fried said Friday that a lawyer for him will file a response to the government early next week.<\/p>\n

Just 18 months ago, Mr. Bankman-Fried was a high-flying crypto mogul, presiding over the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, a $40 billion business empire. But then FTX collapsed practically overnight, putting him in the cross hairs of law enforcement.<\/p>\n

In November, a federal jury in Manhattan convicted Mr. Bankman-Fried of stealing $8 billion from FTX\u2019s customers to finance political contributions, investments in other companies and lavish real estate purchases.<\/p>\n

FTX\u2019s implosion and Mr. Bankman-Fried\u2019s subsequent arrest and conviction were seen as a historic nadir for the loosely regulated crypto world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

\u201cThe crypto industry might be new,\u201d Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said after the verdict, \u201cbut this kind of fraud, this kind of corruption, is as old as time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, the crypto industry appears to have put Mr. Bankman-Fried\u2019s crimes in the rearview mirror. As he prepares for his sentencing, the prices of most digital assets have soared, with Bitcoin reaching a record high this month.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said in Friday\u2019s filing that a sentence of 40 to 50 years was appropriate given the magnitude of Mr. Bankman-Fried\u2019s fraud and its impact on people around the world, including those who had put some of their retirement money and life savings into FTX.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sheer scale of Bankman-Fried\u2019s fraud calls for severe punishment,\u201d prosecutors wrote. \u201cThe amount of loss \u2014 at least $10 billion \u2014 makes this one of the largest financial frauds of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Mr. Bankman-Fried is given a light sentence, prosecutors said, there is a real risk that he would carry out some future fraud.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

In the sentencing submission, prosecutors included several pages of customer messages sent to Mr. Bankman-Fried on X, formerly Twitter, at the time of FTX\u2019s collapse. In many of the posts, customers expressed anger at not having access to their accounts.<\/p>\n

Marc Mukasey, the lawyer Mr. Bankman-Fried hired to prepare for the sentencing, argued in his legal filing that the 100-year sentence recommended by the probation department would be reminiscent of the 150 years given to Bernard Madoff, who pleaded guilty in 2009 to running one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in history. Any comparisons between the two men are inappropriate, Mr. Mukasey said, given \u201cthe duration and dollars\u201d involved in Mr. Madoff\u2019s crimes \u2014 a 20-year-long fraud that generated $64 billion in paper losses.<\/p>\n

The probation department\u2019s recommendation was \u201cbarbaric\u201d and \u201cgrotesque,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Mukasey also pointed out that it took a court-appointed trustee more than 15 years to return roughly $14 billion to Mr. Madoff\u2019s investors. By contrast, the bankruptcy lawyers overseeing FTX\u2019s unwinding have suggested that customers of Mr. Bankman-Fried\u2019s failed exchange are likely to get back all of their money on a relatively fast timeline.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said in their filing that even if customers of FTX got most of their money back, they would have had to wait for more than two years for that to happen. Prosecutors said that \u201cis of little comfort for those victims who needed the money in November 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the filing, prosecutors asked Judge Kaplan to also order Mr. Bankman-Fried to forfeit more than $10 billion, which represents the losses and stolen money from his crime. Given the millions of potential victims and the complexity of calculating losses, prosecutors said any money turned over by Mr. Bankman-Fried would best be distributed in the FTX bankruptcy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

Judges are not required to follow federal sentencing guidelines. And in imposing a sentence, Judge Kaplan can consider a variety of factors, including Mr. Bankman-Fried\u2019s age, the fact that he is a first-time offender and the potential for him to be rehabilitated.<\/p>\n

But one factor that may work against Mr. Bankman-Fried is that he chose to testify at his trial and seemed evasive at times during cross-examination. If Judge Kaplan concludes that Mr. Bankman-Fried testified falsely, he could take that into account in deciding the sentence.<\/p>\n

In a column this week in The New York Law Journal, John S. Martin, a former federal judge in Manhattan, criticized \u201cirrationally long sentences\u201d for most fraud and white-collar crime. He said 100-year sentences had had \u201cno impact on crime rates.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me be clear, Bankman-Fried deserves to be punished,\u201d Mr. Martin wrote. But he added, \u201cOur extremely long prison sentences are one of the reasons the United States has the largest prison population in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Federal prosecutors said on Friday that Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency mogul who was convicted of masterminding a multibillion-dollar fraud, should receive a prison sentence of 40 to 50 years. The prosecutors outlined the recommendation in a filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Mr. Bankman-Fried\u2019s sentencing hearing is scheduled for March 28, when Judge Lewis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46041"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}