Since Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud final 12 months, he has employed a brand new lawyer recognized for courtroom showmanship. A gaggle of sympathetic regulation professors has pushed for a reappraisal of his actions. And his mother and father have turned for assist to former workers of FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency change he based.
From a federal detention middle in Brooklyn, Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, has continued to battle his case behind the scenes, as he argues for a lenient sentence and prepares to attraction his conviction. On Tuesday, his legal professionals are scheduled to file a authorized memo within the U.S. District Courtroom in Manhattan, making the case that he doesn’t should go to jail for the remainder of his life.
The submitting is an important step earlier than Mr. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing on March 28, when the federal decide overseeing his case, Lewis A. Kaplan, will determine how lengthy to imprison the onetime billionaire on prices that carry a most sentence of 110 years. Nevertheless it’s just one prong of a long-shot technique orchestrated by Mr. Bankman-Fried’s household and buddies to reverse his conviction and engineer a public reappraisal of his management at FTX.
Since final 12 months’s trial, Mr. Bankman-Fried has employed Marc Mukasey, who as soon as represented former President Donald J. Trump, to supervise his sentencing, in addition to a separate lawyer on the regulation agency Shapiro Arato Bach to deal with the attraction. His mother and father, the Stanford College regulation professors Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, have additionally been concerned within the protection, serving to line up individuals to write down letters for his or her son that will probably be included within the memo.
Natalie Tien, a former assistant to Mr. Bankman-Fried at FTX, stated she wrote a letter for his sentencing memo after exchanging emails with Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried.
“I don’t have grudges over him, and I do really feel unhealthy for his mother and father,” Ms. Tien stated.
A spokesman for Mr. Bankman-Fried declined to remark. Representatives for Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Federal prosecutors are set to stipulate their very own sentencing suggestion in a submitting due March 15. Even when Choose Kaplan decides to not impose the utmost sentence, Mr. Bankman-Fried might nonetheless face many years behind bars.
The decide “might nonetheless give a really critical sentence given how younger Mr. Bankman-Fried is; say, a 30- or 35-year sentence,” stated Miriam Baer, vice dean at Brooklyn Regulation Faculty.
A spokesman for Damian Williams, the U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of New York, declined to remark.
Earlier than FTX collapsed in November 2022, Mr. Bankman-Fried was one of the vital distinguished figures within the renegade crypto trade, a extensively celebrated billionaire whose face was splashed throughout billboards and journal covers.
In October 2023, a federal jury convicted him of stealing $8 billion from FTX’s clients to finance political contributions, investments in different corporations and lavish actual property purchases.
Mr. Bankman-Fried has maintained his innocence and pledged to attraction. This month, he changed his trial legal professionals, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, with Mr. Mukasey, who has a repute for forceful courtroom shows.
Final 12 months, Mr. Mukasey scored a victory in his protection of Trevor Milton, the founding father of the electrical truck producer Nikola, who was convicted in 2022 of defrauding traders. A federal decide sentenced Mr. Milton in December to 4 years in jail, far lower than the 11 years that prosecutors had requested.
Working in parallel to Mr. Mukasey is an appellate lawyer and former prosecutor, Alexandra Shapiro, a companion at Shapiro Arato Bach. She is predicted to file Mr. Bankman-Fried’s attraction after the sentencing.
Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried have additionally performed a job behind the scenes. Final month, Ms. Tien stated, she acquired a textual content from one in every of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s supporters, asking whether or not she would assist with the memo. Then she acquired a follow-up e-mail from the FTX founder’s mother and father explaining the sentencing course of and urging her to write down “from the center” about their son.
They have been “form of like testing the waters,” Ms. Tien stated in an interview. “I just about simply stated ‘sure’ immediately.”
Regulation professors who know Mr. Bankman-Fried’s mother and father have additionally pressed his case.
In January, two shut household buddies, the Yale Regulation professor Ian Ayres and the Stanford Regulation professor John Donohue, wrote an essay for the website Project Syndicate, arguing that “all alongside” FTX had sufficient property to make its clients complete.
“No matter else may be stated about Bankman-Fried, he was an excellent businessman,” Mr. Ayres and Mr. Donohue wrote.
One other regulation professor, Jonathan Lipson at Temple College, stated in an interview that he was working with David Skeel of the College of Pennsylvania regulation faculty on an educational paper criticizing Sullivan & Cromwell, the law firm overseeing FTX’s bankruptcy.
In September, Mr. Lipson co-wrote a quick within the chapter case arguing for the appointment of an impartial examiner to assessment Sullivan & Cromwell’s actions, together with its shut collaboration with federal prosecutors. He stated that he spoke with Mr. Bankman-Fried and his mom final 12 months after one other Stanford regulation professor reached out concerning the case and supplied to place them involved.
Of their article, Mr. Lipson and Mr. Skeel argue that Sullivan & Cromwell “might have distorted the legal justice course of” by giving prosecutors wide-ranging entry to FTX’s assets and information, in accordance with an unpublished draft shared with The New York Instances.
A Sullivan & Cromwell spokesman declined to remark. In court docket filings, prosecutors have described the knowledge sharing as “routine practices by corporations cooperating in an investigation.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried faces lengthy odds. Felony convictions are hardly ever overturned on attraction.
Mr. Bankman-Fried has been housed at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Heart since final summer time and has spent a lot of his time engaged on the case, an individual with data of the matter stated. He has additionally shared crypto market suggestions with the guards, the particular person stated, recommending investments within the digital coin Solana.
This month, Mr. Bankman-Fried left the detention middle for his first public court docket look for the reason that trial, a listening to to authorize his new authorized illustration. In a Manhattan courtroom, Mr. Bankman-Fried was clean-shaven and wore a loosefitting brown jail uniform. At instances, he rotated and smiled on the reporters sitting within the gallery.
J. Edward Moreno contributed reporting.