An apologetic FTX co-founder was sentenced Wednesday to no prison time after a prosecutor and federal judge praised his cooperation against Sam Bankman-Fried and his efforts to recover money for victims of cryptocurrency fraud.
Gary Wang testified on three partial days at the Bankman-Fried trial last year, explaining his role as FTX’s chief technology officer in a fraud that Judge Lewis A Kaplan described as one of the two or three largest in U.S. history. Joined.
Kaplan praised Wang for being the first person to cooperate after FTX collapsed in November 2022, sharing information that Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos said allowed prosecutors to quickly extradite Bankman-Fried from the Bahamas in December 2022. .
Bankman-Fried, 32, is serving a 25-year prison sentence for a fraud that misappropriated more than $11 billion in funds belonging to clients, investors and lenders.
FTX once touted itself as a high-flying cryptocurrency pioneer with celebrity endorsements and a Super Bowl ad before a crash in the cryptocurrency market exposed a years-long fraud that doomed companies Bankman- Fried operated from 2017 to 2022.
Given the opportunity to speak, Wang apologized to customers and investors.
“I am deeply sorry for all the people hurt by my actions,” Wang said. “There were so many things I could have done differently.” Wang added that he “took the cowardly path instead of doing the right thing. Nothing I do can make up for it.”
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Roos described Wang’s work since the fraud in heroic terms, saying he was “the first FTX cooperator to walk through the door” even though he played a minimal role in the fraud and did not create the complicated computer code that enabled the fraud. .
On his first day meeting with prosecutors, Wang “basically cracked half the case for us,” he said, adding that it could have taken the government months or years to crack the code.
He said Wang has continued to cooperate with various agencies and those seeking to recover money for FTX investors. He said Wang had also created software that allows prosecutors to find unrelated financial frauds.
In announcing the sentence, Kaplan said Wang had “limited culpability” in the fraud.