Samuel Bankman-Fried

The backstory

FTX and Alameda

Bankman-Fried founded Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency hedge fund and trading firm, in 2017 and was its chief executive until 2021; he founded the exchange FTX in 2019 and was its chief executive until shortly before its bankruptcy in November 2022, according to the Second Circuit’s statement of facts.¹ He held large ownership stakes in both companies and controlled them, the court wrote.¹ FTX was Alameda’s largest customer and primary market maker; by 2022 the exchange handled about $10 billion to $15 billion in trades a day.¹ FTX extended Alameda a large line of credit and let it carry negative balances on the exchange’s books.¹

The charges

He was arrested in the Bahamas on Dec. 12, 2022, and the next day the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan unsealed an eight-count indictment.⁶ It charged that, beginning in 2019, he diverted billions of dollars in FTX customer deposits to pay for personal expenses, other investments and the repayment of Alameda’s loans, and that he hid that use of the money from Alameda’s lenders and FTX’s equity investors.⁶ One count, a conspiracy to defraud the United States and violate campaign-finance laws, was dropped in July 2023 after the Bahamas did not include it in the terms of his extradition, the Associated Press reported.³² He was extradited on Dec. 21, 2022, and released the next day on a $250 million bond signed by his parents, on condition that he live with them under electronic monitoring.³³ Prosecutors announced before he landed that Caroline Ellison, who had run Alameda, and Gary Wang, an FTX co-founder, had pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate.³³

On Aug. 11, 2023, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan revoked his bail. “My conclusion is there is probable cause to believe the defendant tried to tamper with witnesses at least twice,” the judge said, according to CNBC.³¹ Prosecutors said he had given private writings by Ellison to the New York Times; the judge said the leak was meant to “hurt” and “discredit” her.³¹

What the government proved

The trial lasted about four weeks.¹ The government’s case, as summarized by the Second Circuit, was that he assured customers their money was safe and would be used only for trading on FTX, but moved billions of dollars from customer accounts to Alameda and elsewhere, where it went to unrelated investments, Alameda’s losses, political contributions, real estate and personal spending, and that business records were falsified to hide it.¹

Three former executives who had pleaded guilty testified against him.²⁸ Ellison, his former girlfriend, testified that he directed her to use FTX customer funds to repay Alameda’s lenders and told her to send a lender a false balance sheet, the appeals court wrote.¹²⁸ Wang testified that he and Bankman-Fried wrote “special privileges” for Alameda into FTX’s code, including a $65 billion line of credit it could draw from the exchange, and that some customer money was deposited into Alameda’s bank account.¹ Nishad Singh, FTX’s former head of engineering, testified that Bankman-Fried was “unsurprised” to learn that Alameda was borrowing $13 billion from FTX, and that Singh had signed “blank checks” used to hide political donations made with customer money.¹ FTX’s former general counsel testified that Bankman-Fried asked him to come up with legal justifications for the transfers, according to the opinion.¹ The opinion also refers to Alameda’s $8 billion negative balance on FTX in October 2022.¹

After the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in 2022 and crypto prices fell, Alameda’s net asset value dropped from more than $40 billion in late 2021 to about $10 billion by June 2022, and lenders recalled loans, the court wrote.¹ On Nov. 2, 2022, the publication of an Alameda balance sheet set off mass withdrawals by FTX customers; he was replaced as chief executive on Nov. 11, and FTX filed for bankruptcy.¹

His testimony

Bankman-Fried testified in his own defense.²⁸ He said he did not “defraud anyone” or “take customer funds” and that he believed Alameda’s assets were greater than its liabilities, according to the Second Circuit.¹ Before he testified in front of the jury, Judge Kaplan held a hearing without the jury to decide what he could say about the involvement of lawyers in FTX’s affairs; the judge allowed testimony only about the lawyers’ role in document-retention policies, the appeals court wrote.¹ NPR reported that the prosecutor’s cross-examination used his past posts, interviews and congressional testimony to point out inconsistencies.²⁸

The verdict

On Nov. 2, 2023, after about five hours of deliberation, the jury convicted him on all seven counts, NPR reported.²⁸ The counts were two of wire fraud, two of wire-fraud conspiracy, and conspiracies to commit securities fraud, commodities fraud and money laundering.¹⁴ His lawyer Mark Cohen said, “Mr. Bankman-Fried maintains his innocence and will continue to vigorously fight the charges against him.”²⁸

The sentence

The government asked for 40 to 50 years.²⁶ His lawyers asked for no more than 6½ years, Fortune reported, and argued he was “uniquely vulnerable in a prison population.”²⁷²⁶ In court he said, “My useful life is probably over. It’s been over for a while now, from before my arrest,” the Associated Press reported.²⁴ He also said of FTX, “I threw it all away. It haunts me every day,” according to CNN.²⁵

On March 28, 2024, Judge Kaplan sentenced him to 25 years in prison and three years of supervised release and ordered him to forfeit $11 billion.⁴ The judge said the sentence reflected “a risk that this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future,” and that it was “not a trivial risk at all,” according to the AP.²⁴ He said Bankman-Fried had offered “never a word of remorse for the commission of terrible crimes,” and the AP reported that he said Bankman-Fried had committed perjury on the stand.²⁵²³ He rejected the argument that customers would suffer no loss, calling it “misleading,” “logically flawed” and “speculative.”²⁵ The Justice Department said the case involved more than $8 billion in customer money, more than $1.7 billion from FTX investors and more than $1.3 billion from Alameda’s lenders.⁴

The cooperators

Ellison was sentenced in September 2024 to two years in prison.²² Singh was sentenced in October 2024 and Wang in November 2024; neither received a prison term, CNBC reported.²¹ Of Wang’s cooperation, Judge Kaplan said, “I’ve never seen anything quite like what happened here.”²¹ Ryan Salame, a former FTX executive who pleaded guilty to separate charges, was sentenced in May 2024 to 7½ years.²²²¹

The new-trial motion

In February 2026, while his appeal was pending, he filed a motion for a new trial on his own, without his lawyers, asking that it be heard by a different judge.¹⁶ He said three people could give testimony supporting his claims that FTX was not insolvent and that customers had been fully compensated.¹⁴ In April he asked to withdraw it, writing to Judge Kaplan, “I do not believe I will get a fair hearing on this topic in front of you.”¹⁷ On April 28, 2026, the judge refused to let him withdraw it and denied it.¹⁵ He found that none of the witnesses was “newly discovered,” since Bankman-Fried knew all three before trial and “could have obtained or at least sought to compel their testimony,” and that the motion “appears to be one part of a plan to rescue his reputation.”¹⁴¹⁶

The appeal

On June 12, 2026, a Second Circuit panel of Judges Barrington D. Parker, Eunice C. Lee and Maria Araújo Kahn affirmed the judgment, in an opinion by Judge Parker.¹ The court held that whether he intended to repay the money was legally immaterial, writing that “FTX customers were defrauded as soon as Bankman-Fried transferred their money to Alameda,” and that any error in the government’s arguments about permanent loss was harmless in light of “overwhelming evidence.”¹ It upheld the jury instructions, the limits Judge Kaplan placed on his testimony about lawyers, and the denial of his requests for discovery from FTX’s bankruptcy estate and its law firm, which it held were not part of the prosecution team.¹ It held that the forfeiture was not “grossly disproportional” to the offense under the Eighth Amendment, writing, “We recognize that $11 billion is a very large amount,” and “we are constrained by the laws Congress enacted.”¹ The court issued its mandate on Aug. 4, 2026.²

The Supreme Court petition

On Sept. 10, 2026, he asked the Supreme Court to review the case; his counsel of record is Jeffrey L. Fisher.³¹⁰ The petition argues that the government’s theory wrongly made customer losses and his intent to repay irrelevant, and that the $11 billion forfeiture violates the Excessive Fines Clause, Cointelegraph reported.⁹ Five amicus briefs supporting review were filed on Oct. 15, 2026, including from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and a group of bankruptcy law professors.³ The Court twice extended the government’s deadline to respond, most recently on Nov. 2, 2026, to Dec. 16.³

Personal backstory

Early life and education

Bankman-Fried was born on March 6, 1992, in Stanford, California, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica.³⁴ His parents are both longtime Stanford Law School professors.²⁹²⁸ He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014, where he became involved in effective altruism, a philosophical movement, Britannica says.³⁴ He traded at the firm Jane Street Capital from 2014 to 2017 before co-founding Alameda.³⁴

His family

His parents attended his trial and the verdict, NPR reported.²⁸ After the sentencing they said in a statement, “We are heartbroken and will continue to fight for our son.”²³ In September 2023, FTX’s bankruptcy estate sued them in the bankruptcy court, seeking to recover money and property it says came from the companies.³⁰ Their lawyers called the claims “completely false.”²⁹ The sources reviewed report no ruling on those claims. In a sworn statement filed with his 2026 new-trial motion, Bankman-Fried said he had shared drafts with his parents, who “made editorial and organizational suggestions.”¹⁶

No mental-health testimony or court findings appear in the sources reviewed, apart from the judge’s remarks on prison placement below.

In custody

He was jailed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn after his bail was revoked in August 2023.³¹²⁰ At sentencing, Judge Kaplan said he would recommend a medium-security prison near San Francisco, citing, according to the AP, his notoriety, his association with great wealth, his autism and his social awkwardness as making him vulnerable in a higher-security prison.²³ In early 2025 he gave an unauthorized video interview to Tucker Carlson and was briefly placed in solitary confinement, ABC News reported, citing sources; in March 2025 he was moved from Brooklyn toward another federal prison.²⁰ By April 2025 he was at the Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island, in California, with a tentative release date in 2044, Cointelegraph reported.¹⁹

In a June 2026 interview with Fox Business he said he “absolutely” wanted a pardon, adding that it was “ultimately up to the president, not up to me.”¹³ He has posted support for the Trump administration on social media from prison, CNN reported.¹² In a January 2026 interview with the New York Times, President Trump said he had no plans to pardon him, The Block reported.¹⁸ In July 2026 the Senate adopted by unanimous consent a resolution sponsored by Senators Cynthia Lummis and Ruben Gallego stating that “under no circumstances” should he receive clemency; Gallego said he had “shown no remorse.”¹¹

No statement from FTX customers or other victims appears in the sources reviewed.