Down Angle Symbol A symbol in the form of an angle pointing downwards. Sam Bankman-Fried and his mother Barbara Fried. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images; Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
- Sam Bankman-Fried's family asked for leniency ahead of his upcoming sentencing.
- His lawyers are proposing a prison sentence of 6.5 years, but they call the parole board's 100-year recommendation “barbaric.”
- His parents warned that prison could lead to violence because he had little ability to understand social cues.
Sam Bankman-Fried's family members asked the judge overseeing his criminal trial to give him a lenient sentence, arguing that his social awkwardness could put him in “extreme danger” behind bars.
“I truly fear for Sam’s life in the typical prison environment,” Barbara Fried, his mother, wrote in a letter to the judge. “Sam's physical appearance, his inability to read or respond appropriately to many social cues, and his touching but naive belief in the power of facts and reason to resolve disputes placed him in extreme danger.”
Letters from Barbara Fried; Sam Bankman-Fried's father, Joseph Bankman; and his brother Gabriel Bankman-Fried were part of a package of documents filed with the court on Tuesday just before the midnight deadline.
Bankman-Fried's lawyers filed a criminal complaint asking for a maximum prison sentence of 78 months – or six and a half years.
The filing was supported by 29 letters from Bankman-Fried's supporters, two very personal documents in which Bankman-Fried struggles with romance and social alienation, and documents reflecting his work at FTX – the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange he once ran.
Joseph Bankman warned in his letter that his son's “strange” social signals – which his lawyers said were due to neurodiversity – could be misinterpreted by prison inmates as “disrespect, excuses or lies.”
“Such a situation would place Sam in an environment where his reactions to social cues are sometimes perceived as strange, inappropriate and disrespectful; if that happens, he will be in significant physical danger,” Bankman wrote. “Nothing can justify putting him at this risk.
In November, a jury found Bankman-Fried guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in a criminal trial in Manhattan under the supervision of U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan.
Prosecutors found that he commingled customer funds at FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange, with Alameda Research, his crypto trading firm. Bankman-Fried and several other executives – who pleaded guilty and testified against him – embezzled billions of dollars in client funds and misled customers, investors and lenders.
The verdict carries a maximum penalty of 110 years in prison. The U.S. Probation Office, which issues sentencing reports that judges typically rely on, recommended 100 years in prison – which Bankman-Fried's lawyers called “barbaric.”
“Sam is only 32 years old and has his whole future ahead of him. “He now faces the prospect of spending most of the rest of his life in prison,” Barbara Fried wrote in her letter. “His father and I face the very real possibility that we will not live long enough to see his release. There are no words for the sadness we feel.”
Bankman-Fried's lawyers said a significantly lower penalty was warranted because FTX's customers would likely get much of their funds back in the company's bankruptcy proceedings.
“This recommendation is grotesque,” Bankman-Fried’s lawyers wrote. “Sam is a 31-year-old, non-violent, first-time offender who has been joined by at least four other guilty individuals in the conduct in question, in a matter in which the victims are prepared for recovery – have always been prepared for recovery.” – one hundred cents on the Dollar.”
Prosecutors have until March 15 to submit their own recommendation ahead of the March 28 sentencing hearing for the 31-year-old former FTX executive.
“He never felt happiness or joy in his life.”
In a deeply emotional letter, Barbara Fried said her older son had been falsely portrayed as a “cartoon villain full of greed” who committed “the fraud of the century.”
In reality, she argued, Bankman-Fried had dedicated his life to altruism, giving up everything to help friends going through family tragedies and “battling depression his entire life.”
After FTX collapsed in November 2022, Bankman-Fried shared his experience with anhedonia with his parents, she wrote.
“We knew about his depression, but he described something deeper and sadder: that he had never felt happiness or joy in his life and did not believe he was capable of it,” Barbara Fried wrote.
Bankman-Fried's lawyers have shared personal writings in which he reflects on being “unlovable” and quotes Macklemore's rap lyrics.
“I feel no pleasure. I don't feel happiness. Somehow my reward system never worked,” Bankman-Fried wrote in 2016. “My highest highs, my proudest moments come and go and I feel nothing but the aching hole” in my brain where happiness should be.
Cryptocurrency exchange FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried wears prison garb and speaks with his mother, Stanford Law School professor Barbara Fried, across the low partition between the courtroom and the galley after a hearing. Portal/Jane Rosenberg
In another text that is heavily redacted and appears to be a letter to a former lover, Bankman-Fried apologizes for his behavior and his concern about hurting her.
“I hate the pain I caused you,” the 2018 document reads. “And I hate myself for causing it. I really wish I could have known how to love you better. I'm sorry.”
“I really wish we could have frozen time when things were happy,” he added.
Barbara Fried said in her letter that her son's behavior and tics during the trial in which he took the witness stand in his own defense were associated with “high-functioning people” with autism.
“He is poor at responding to social cues in 'normal' ways, uncomfortable looking people in the eye, and uncomfortable outwardly displaying emotion,” Fried wrote. “He has no interest in small talk, but engages passionately and tirelessly with ideas, to the point that he can annoy and exhaust others.”
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
While these traits may have made him successful at MIT, Wall Street and FTX, they made him look like “a freak with evil intentions” in the eyes of the public, she wrote.
Things would be even worse in prison, she wrote.
“It may be that some of the inmates come to appreciate Sam as they get to know him,” wrote Barbara Fried. “But misunderstandings in this environment are dangerous, and Sam's characteristics greatly increase the likelihood of them occurring.”
Putting him in solitary confinement to protect him from others is not a solution, she continued. “It's simply a safer form of murder and in many ways a more cruel one, slowly destroying his soul rather than his body.”
Carmine Simpson, a former police officer who was incarcerated on child pornography charges at the same federal prison in Brooklyn, wrote a letter to the judge praising Bankman-Fried's character. He said Bankman-Fried had already been the subject of “harassment” and “multiple blackmail attempts” because of his stature.
“In any situation, Sam is the least physically intimidating person, and this is especially noticeable in prison,” Simpson wrote. “This has and will result in him being the target of bullying, harassment and attacks more frequently than the average inmate.”
In the sentencing, Bankman-Fried's lawyers said Bankman-Fried “practiced facial expressions” and made other efforts to overcome his neurological problems. But it will be difficult for him to cope in prison, they said.
“Prisons often require that inmates follow the 'unwritten rules' as defined by other inmates – rules that often rely heavily on the social and emotional communication of deference and power and are often at odds with the written rules,” wrote she. “The social dynamics in prison and the control he faces are likely to result in his exposure to physical violence.”
That included a recommendation from a U.S. Bureau of Prisons official that Bankman-Fried be placed in a low-security prison. Even if he is sentenced to a long prison sentence, which usually entails being placed in maximum security prisons.
Barbara Fried spoke in her letter about teaching at San Quentin Prison and how the United States criminal justice system, with its punitive nature, is “an extreme outlier among all democracies.”
“I have no illusions about the redemptive power of prisons,” she wrote. “A decade-long prison sentence will destroy Sam as much as hanging, because it will take away everything in the world that gives his life meaning.”
Bankman-Fried's lawyers say no one actually lost any money
Joseph Bankman focused on what he described as his son's selflessness. Bankman-Fried dedicated his life to philanthropy through the effective altruism movement and made billions of dollars with the plan to give it away, he wrote.
When FTX collapsed, Bankman-Fried remained in the Bahamas to work with authorities and try to get everyone their money back as quickly as possible, he said. When a defense attorney noted that “there's probably a room somewhere of smart, hard-working, ambitious people whose goal is to put you in prison,” Bankman-Fried said that “to me, compared to helping depositors, “It’s pretty irrelevant,” Father said.
Sam Bankman-Fried's approach to veganism illustrates both his selflessness and his clumsiness, his younger brother Gabriel Bankman-Fried wrote in a letter to the judge.
“He wouldn’t make small talk about your dog, but he would subsist on bread and water in prison to avoid eating an animal,” Gabriel wrote.
“He was never good at apologizing, but he was always quick to admit mistakes,” he continued. “He would be uncomfortable hugging me, but I know he would give me a kidney if I needed one.”
Sam-Bankman Fried's parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried. Seth Wenig, AP
Bankman-Fried recently reshuffled its legal team, firing its trial lawyers and hiring trial and appeal attorneys Marc Mukasey and Torrey Young.
The ruling provides a preview of the arguments Bankman-Fried is likely to make if he appeals.
Lawyers in the bankruptcy case said FTX may be able to save all of its customers due in part to fluctuations in the company's cryptocurrency holdings and Bankman-Fried's forward-thinking investments in artificial intelligence company Anthropic. But his lawyers were not allowed to raise the matter in court because the judge deemed it irrelevant. In the ruling, Bankman-Fried's lawyers argue that the “most reasonable estimate” of his victims' losses is “zero.”
Barbara Fried – herself a renowned expert on legal ethics – said that John J. Ray III, the lawyer who took over FTX after its collapse, improperly ignored Bankman-Fried's efforts to direct him to client funds during the bankruptcy proceedings, which ended the process Significantly slowed down the recovery process.
“When John Ray publicly complained that FTX's internal records were so poor that they couldn't create a customer list, Sam immediately found the relevant documents and wrote to the Ch 11 team, offering to show them how can access the already existing list.” she wrote. “They never responded to his emails.”
