After being arrested in the Bahamas this week, Sam Bankman-Fried could be spending the rest of his life in prison thanks to a litany of charges stemming from his disastrous mismanagement of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. According to a statement from the Department of Justice, Bankman-Fried is staring down the barrel of a 115 years behind bars should he be convicted and hit with the maximum sentence for each of the charges:
SAMUEL BANKMAN-FRIED, 30, of Stanford, California, is charged with two counts of wire fraud conspiracy, two counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. He is also charged with conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the United States and commit campaign finance violations, each of which carries a maximum sentence of five years.
At issue is Bankman-Fried running the crypto exchange like his own “personal fiefdom,” which resulted in him being forced to file for bankruptcy and stripped of his CEO position. Upon taking over the company, new management discovered that billions in assets are missing due to Bankman-Fried’s shady dealings. Lawyers for FTX did not mince words about where they think the money went.
“[The assets] may have been stolen as a run on customer deposits and a liquidity crunch precipitated a crisis of leadership and led the firm to collapse,” FTX’s current legal team told a judge during a bankruptcy hearing.
It also didn’t help Bankman-Fried’s case that he began openly blabbing to reporters about his problems. In one surreal instance, the fallen crypto guru straight up admitted to doing “sketchy stuff” and bragged that all the “ethics stuff” was a “front.” The prosecutors at the DOJ probably loved that.
(Via Department of Justice)