Sam Bankman-Fried is going to prison in a New York court case against a founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, as described in his book Going Infinite
A jury in New York found Sam Bankman-Fried guilty of fraud. The founder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX has been convicted on all of the seven counts on which he was tried. He is about to be sentenced.
As a boy coming of age in the most rarefied quarters of the achievement class, he grew up in a family that viewed the celebration of birthdays and holidays as an inefficiency easily forgone. From such a childhood emerged an adult who worked 22 hours a day and submitted the prospect of any interaction with another person to a cost-benefit calculation that frequently left him canceling meetings and other obligations at the last minute, because, as Michael Lewis writes in “Going Infinite,” his book about Mr. Bankman-Fried’s rise and fall, “he had done some math in his head that proved that you weren’t worth the time.”
What would a jury of his peers look like? 12 people sitting on the other side of the witness stand, what would they see when they were in front of him? The prosecution wanted to see a grown man, who was capable of criminal activity, rather than a 31 year old boy who was excited about making billions of dollars. In the end, the jury saw only the duplicitous adult.
The judge who presided over the case, Lewis Kaplan, will sentence Bankman-Fried in a hearing on March 28. Rabbitte thinks that a long prison sentence may be useful for the next would-be SBF. On Telegram, where former FTX customers gather to discuss the progress of the bankruptcy proceeding, others struck a similar tone. “Party time! After the verdict had been announced, a Telegram user wrote to throw the keys away. Jia Yi wrote that he would lock him up for at least 30 years.
The verdict was a “huge relief,” says market analyst Noelle Acheson, formerly of crypto brokerage Genesis. She believes that the fraud at FTX taints the rest of the industry, which has been seen as fair game by regulators and mainstream investors. Bankman-Fried’s conviction will help close the book on this episode, she says.
The amount of funds recovered in the FTX bankruptcy process won’t be affected by the conviction of Bankman-Fried. “I’m delighted,” says Pat Rabbitte, previously a customer of FTX. The US justice system is working.
The duration of deliberation at the end of a trial varies greatly from case to case. The jury was able to find Bankman-Fried guilty on all counts in less than five hours. The jury was convinced by the prosecution’s evidence that Bankman-Fried oversaw a multi-billion dollar fraud.
Where will the next Sam Bankman-Fried be? Theranos founder and his wife, Elizabeth Holmes, and Madoff remain undetected
As long as entrepreneurs like Bankman-Fried—and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and Ponzi fraudster Bernie Madoff before him—are able to “buy a fast pass into the kind of esteem in which they were held by some of the most powerful entities in the country,” says Hillmann, there remains cause for concern. He says that the people he was supposed to be watching were at best sleeping at the wheel and at worst empowering its activities. In all likelihood, he says, “there will be another Sam Bankman-Fried.”