Susan Li reports on FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried speaking from prison, found guilty of major financial schemes. Susan Li’s exclusive interview reveals SBF wants a White House pardon and defends himself, claiming customers were repaid.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former crypto billionaire convicted for fraud in 2023, lost an appeal to overturn his conviction and 25-year prison sentence Friday, Reuters reported.
A New York jury found Bankman-Fried guilty on two charges of wire fraud and five conspiracy counts in November 2023 for his actions while running FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange that declared bankruptcy in 2022 after once being valued at more than $26 billion.
Bankman-Fried pleaded his case to a three-judge panel of Manhattan’s 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who unanimously rejected his plea on Friday, calling the evidence against him “conservatively stated, robust,” according to Reuters.
“While he was publicly reassuring customers, investors and regulators that FTX customer funds were safe, he was simultaneously using FTX as his own personal piggy bank, spending customer funds on real estate, political contributions, and investments,” Circuit Judge Barrington Parker stated, per Reuters.
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Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange, leaves court in New York, US, on Wednesday, July 26, 2023. (Photographer: Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Bankman-Fried became a prolific political donor in the years leading up to his conviction.
While the one-time crypto magnate appeared to strongly favor Democrats with his donations — his $40 million contributions to Democrats in the 2022 midterms made him the party’s second-biggest donor after George Soros — he poured a significant amount funds into Republican coffers as well.
According to Michael Lewis’ book about Sam Bankman-Fried’s rise and fall, the former crypto billionaire explored whether a large payment could persuade then-former President Donald Trump not to run for president again. Now, Sam Bankman-Fried signaled he’s like a presidential pardon from Trump.
Bankman-Fried made the admission in an interview with Fox Business’ Susan Li, who asked him if he wanted a pardon.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried spoke to FOX Business from prison, saying he’d “absolutely” be interested in a pardon from President Donald Trump. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images / Getty Images)
“Absolutely,” he told Li, adding, “It would be obviously, you know, ultimately up to the president, not up to me.”
Bankman-Fried also insisted he was innocent of defrauding or stealing from his customers.
CONVICTED FTX FOUNDER SAM BANKMAN-FRIED INSISTS HE’S INNOCENT IN EXCLUSIVE PRISON INTERVIEW
“I didn’t steal user funds either,” he told Li. “Customers have been repaid now 170% or so on their deposits. It’s one of the very few cases where the platform was over-collateralized, where customers were more than made whole. And yet there was, you know, not just a criminal investigation, but a prosecution. And, you know, dozens of years of sentence[s].”
From right, Terrence A. Duffy, CEO of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX US Derivatives, Christopher Edmonds, chief development officer of the Intercontinental Exchange, and Christopher Perkins, president of CoinFund, test (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images / Getty Images)
FTX’s bankruptcy estate confirmed to FOX Business that customers are being repaid in full with some getting returns as high as 118%. However, those estimations are calculated using crypto prices from November 2022, a near-bottom in the cryptocurrency market.
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Federal prosecutors alleged during the trial that Bankman-Fried systematically diverted billions of dollars in customer deposits to cover trading losses at his private hedge fund, Alameda Research, orchestrating what they described as a financial fraud of historic proportions.
Fox Business’ Kristen Altus and Susan Li contributed to this report.
