FTX founder sentenced to 25 years in prison for massive crypto fraud 🙄😕

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday for the massive fraud and conspiracy that doomed his cryptocurrency exchange and a related hedge fund.

Bankman-Fried delivered a winding apology statement, saying he made “selfish decisions,” that haunt him “every day.”

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday for the massive fraud and conspiracy that doomed his cryptocurrency exchange and a related hedge fund.

“They built something really beautiful and I threw all of that away,” Bankman-Fried said of his co-workers at FTX. “It haunts me every day.”

“It’s been excruciating to watch this all unfold,” he said. “Customers don’t deserve this level of pain.

“I was the CEO of FTX and I was responsible.”

SBF faced a maximum possible sentence of 110 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines for the massive fraud conspiracy that led to the collapse of FTX and a related hedge fund, a judge ruled Thursday.

Judge Lewis Kaplan increased the sentencing guidelines range for Bankman-Fried after finding that he had perjured himself at his trial and knowingly obstructed justice.

The judge also found Thursday that the total loss of the fraud at FTX exceeded $550 million. Anything more than that is “just gravy,” Kaplan noted, referring to the fact that any more loss would not increase the top end of the guidelines.

However, Kaplan said he “rejects the entirety of defendant’s argument there was no loss” at FTX, calling that claim “misleading, logically flawed and speculative.”

Bankman-Fried’s parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, are in the courtroom for the sentencing hearing.

$FTT