Former FTX CEO faces up to 100 years in prison should the judge hand out the harshest penalty
Sam Bankman-Fried, once the CEO of FTXand a billionaire wunderkind of the cryptocurrency world, will be sentenced to prison time on Thursday in New York City.
Should the judge in his case impose the harshest penalty allowed, the 32-year-old would face more than 100 years and die an incarcerated man, a possibility his lawyer has called “grotesque.”
In advance of the hearing, lawyers for the US Department of Justice and for Bankman-Fried have engaged in bitter back-and-forth over how long of a prison sentence would be appropriate. His lawyers have argued for a minimal sentence of just six years. Prosecutors are advocating for 40-50 yearsfor his “unmatched greed and hubris” in perpetrating the $8bn (£6.3bn) fraud.
“Even now Bankman-Fried refuses to admit what he did was wrong,” Manhattan prosecutors wrote.
There’s the good old “kill Michael Jackson, 4 years in jail”, “upload a Michael Jackson MP3 on the net, 5 years in jail”