Sam Bankman-Fried's lawyer urged a judge on Tuesday to impose a lenient sentence for the FTX founder's conviction for stealing $8 billion from customers of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, arguing clients would get most of their funds back, Reuters reports. In a sentencing memo, Bankman-Fried's lawyer Marc Mukasey told U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan that a guidelines range between 5-1/4 and 6-1/2 years would be an appropriate prison term. That is far less than the maximum sentence of 110 years he faces after a jury found him guilty in November on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, in what prosecutors have called one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history. Bankman-Fried is expected to appeal his conviction and sentence. He acknowledged making mistakes running FTX, but testified at trial that he never intended to steal customer funds. Kaplan is set to sentence the former billionaire, who turns 32 next week, on March 28.
Mukasey called a 100-year guidelines range calculated by probation officers "barbaric", saying it was based partly on a faulty assertion that FTX's customers lost billions. He pointed to the bankrupt company's assertion that it expected to repay all customers in full to back up the argument that Bankman-Fried did not set out to steal. "The conviction does not address whether Sam intended to pay the money back. He did," Mukasey wrote. The probation officers' calculation is not binding on Kaplan. The U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan is expected to make its own sentencing recommendation by March 15. At his trial, three former close associates testified that Bankman-Fried directed them to help loot FTX customer funds to plug losses at his Alameda Research hedge fund, even while presenting himself publicly as a responsible steward in the volatile cryptocurrency market. Prosecutors said Bankman-Fried used customer funds to buy luxury real estate in the Bahamas and to donate to U.S. politicians who might support cryptocurrency-friendly regulations. Bankman-Fried testified that he did not realize how much Alameda owed to FTX until shortly before both failed.
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