Appeals court upholds Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud conviction and 25-year sentence
A unanimous appeals ruling left Sam Bankman-Fried’s 25-year sentence intact, sharpening the question of whether crypto executives face the same fraud rules as Wall Street.
A unanimous federal appeals panel shut down Sam Bankman-Fried’s latest bid to escape prison, leaving intact the 25-year sentence that followed the collapse of FTX. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 42-page opinion on June 12, reinforcing the conviction that turned the disgraced crypto founder from one of the industry’s most powerful figures into its clearest criminal symbol.
The three-judge panel rejected Bankman-Fried’s claim that he did not receive a fair trial, including his objections to evidentiary rulings by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in Manhattan. The judges were not persuaded that those rulings distorted the outcome, and they concluded the government’s evidence was robust. Bankman-Fried remains convicted on seven felony counts from the 2023 trial, in which Manhattan prosecutors accused him of stealing $8 billion from FTX customers in what they cast as a fraud of epic proportions.
The ruling matters well beyond Bankman-Fried’s own sentence. It gives fresh force to the post-FTX accountability push and signals that courts are still applying ordinary fraud law to crypto firms when customer money is allegedly misused. For crypto executives, the decision is a warning that novel technology and fast-moving markets do not create a shield against the rules that govern traditional finance. For investors, it is a reminder that the legal fallout from FTX’s 2022 collapse is still shaping how risk, custody and disclosure are judged in the sector. And for an industry that has long argued it should be regulated differently from Wall Street, the opinion is another sign that judges may not be interested in carving out special treatment after the fact.
Bankman-Fried can still ask the full appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, but the unanimous loss makes that road steeper. The decision also comes only days after he formally submitted a request for a presidential pardon from Donald Trump on June 8, adding a political layer to a legal strategy that is increasingly constrained. Meanwhile, the FTX Recovery Trust has continued distributing money to creditors, including a $2.2 billion fourth distribution, while the claims process still runs through verification steps, tax forms and onboarding with a distribution provider. Some creditors continue to argue that repayments based on 2022 valuations leave them short as crypto prices have moved on, keeping the FTX fallout alive as both a criminal case and a financial reckoning.
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