FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyer on Tuesday requested that a judge give a lenient sentence following his client’s conviction for stealing $8 billion from customers of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, claiming that FTX’s clients would have most of their funds returned.
Lawyer Marc Mukasey told U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in a sentencing submission that a guidelines range of five and a quarter to six and a half years would be an appropriate prison term. Mukasey’s suggestion is significantly less than the maximum sentence of 110 years he could face after a jury found him guilty in November on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy.
Bankman-Fried, 31, pleaded not guilty and is expected to appeal his conviction and sentence. He acknowledged making mistakes running FTX but testified at trial that he never meant to steal funds from his customers.
Kaplan is scheduled to sentence Bankman-Fried on March 28.
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Mukasey’s submission was accompanied by letters of support from Bankman-Fried’s parents, a psychiatrist and others.
The former billionaire’s parents, Stanford law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, said their son was not interested in material wealth and worked hard to return money to customers in the time between FTX’s collapse in November 2022 and his arrest on fraud charges a month later.
“Barbara and I … witnessed firsthand his single-minded focus on getting money back to depositors, long after there was any possibility he would be able to save any of his equity or wealth,” Joseph Bankman wrote.
Mukasey called a 100-year guidelines range determined by probation officers “barbaric,” arguing that it was based partly on a faulty assertion that FTX’s customers lost billions.
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The lawyer cited the company’s recent claim that it expected to repay all customers in full, as he argued that Bankman-Fried did not intend to steal.
“The conviction does not address whether Sam intended to pay the money back. He did,” Mukasey wrote.
The probation officers’ calculation is not binding on Kaplan, and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan is expected to make its own sentencing recommendation by March 15.
Reuters contributed to this report.