Judge Thrashes Sam Bankman-fried For Claiming Ftx Customers Didn't Lose Any Money Before Handing Down 25-year Sentence

Sam Bankman-Fried, the jailed founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, sits with his lawyers Torrey Young and Marc Mukasey.REUTERS/Jane RosenbergSam Bankman-Fried's lawyers claimed that FTX customers had "zero" losses when the exchange collapsed.They argued in favor of a light sentence for the convicted crypto mogul on Thursday.The judge was not persuaded.The federal judge who oversaw Sam Bankman-Fried's criminal case sharply criticized his legal team during the disgraced cryptocurrency mogul's sentencing hearing Thursday, saying he "rejected entirely" their claims about "zero" losses for FTX customers."The defendant's assertion that FTX customers will be made whole is misleading, it is legally flawed, it is speculative," US District Judge Lewis Kaplan said near the start of the hearing in Manhattan federal court, where he sentenced Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison.Bankman-Fried — who was found guilty of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering by a jury in November — has long claimed that bankruptcy lawyers, not him, were to blame for customers being unable to get their money from FTX, his cryptocurrency exchange that collapsed in November 2022.Federal prosecutors demonstrated that he used customer deposits to fuel personal spending and investments and prop up losses at Alameda Research, the cryptocurrency trading firm he also controlled.In Bankman-Fried's trial, other FTX and Alameda executives — who had pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the plot — walked jurors through spreadsheets, computer code, text messages, and internal documents that demonstrated how they used deposits from ordinary FTX customers for their own purposes, rather than protecting customers' funds.At the sentencing hearing, Kaplan said it didn't matter if some of Bankman-Fried's "speculative investments" paid off and if cryptocurrency prices have risen since FTX's bankruptcy.