Sam Bankman-Fried’s defense on Tuesday presented a collection of letters from interested parties asking for clemency for the former FTX CEO, who will be sentenced this week.
A friend of his from his MIT days said the “vegan” Bankman-Fried would be “an asset to society” if given a lenient sentence, in new court papers.
‘Sam felt deeply for every living thing, including farm animals, to the point that he followed a vegan diet and convinced several others in our life group to also become vegan. “He took every viable measure he could to reduce the suffering,” the friend wrote.
Bankman-Fried’s vegan lifestyle has been well documented, with her lawyers complaining in August 2023 that she subsisted on bread and water in prison because officials did not enforce her dietary restrictions.
Sam Bankman-Fried is pictured leaving court. He will be sentenced this Thursday
Another friend, this time a college roommate of the cryptocurrency founder, told a similar story to the court, again referencing his deep affinity for farm animals.
She also gave Bankman-Fried high marks for doing her chores around the house, saying she “consistently did it very well.”
Two parents of children on the spectrum, with either Asperger’s or autism, wrote sympathetic letters describing their own struggles raising neurodivergent children.
One mother wrote that she didn’t know her son was on the spectrum until he was 31 years old. She explained that children with autism often shut down when presented with chaotic situations.
“Although I have never met Sam, I firmly believe that while he may be an MIT graduate, he did not fully understand the extent of what was going on and had no malicious intentions.”
The FTX collapse in November 2022 was certainly chaotic. It lasted more than a week and culminated in the closing of the stock market and its fall into bankruptcy.
Just three days after tweeting ‘FTX is fine’. Assets are fine,” Bankman-Fried, now X, finally admitted on Twitter that he screwed up and “should have done better.”
And just one day after admitting guilt on November 11, 2022, Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO and FTX filed for bankruptcy.
A mother whose son lost $130,000 on FTX also shared her opinion with the court, writing that she hopes Bankman-Fried “receives a sentence of around 70 months.”
This is in line with the prison sentence the defense has asked the judge to impose.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the imprisoned founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is sworn in and appears in court for the first time since his fraud conviction in November.
Bankman-Fried’s latest attempt at leniency comes amid speculation about how many years the former FTX CEO will be imprisoned and where he will be imprisoned.
Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are asking that Bankman-Fried be sentenced to between 40 and 50 years in prison, but the defense is asking for a much shorter sentence, just over six and a half years.
Experts generally believe he will serve at least twenty years on the low end and 50 years on the high end, and will likely end up in a medium-security prison.
Christopher Zoukis, a federal prisons expert, told DailyMail.com that he believes Bankman-Fried will likely be sent to a West Coast prison, such as FCI Herlong or Mendota.
Zoukis serves as CEO of Zoukis Consulting Group, a firm that, among other things, prepares future federal inmates by educating them about life in a federal prison.
The consulting firm has clients in minimum-security prisons, all the way to ADX Florence in Colorado, a maximum-security facility that houses some of the country’s most notorious criminals.
Zoukis explained that the Federal Bureau of Prisons applies a security point value to prisoners that in part determines what type of prison they will be housed in.
The length of the sentence also greatly influences where a convict will end up.
Generally, public safety factor guidelines stipulate that if someone has 10 or more years of service left, they should end up in a low-security facility. Twenty+ years requires at least a medium security designation, while 30+ years requires at least a high security designation.
In Bankman-Fried’s case, the Bureau of Prisons could apply a public safety factor exemption, something Zoukis explained also happened with Bernie Madoff. This allowed Madoff, despite his 150-year sentence, to serve his sentence in a medium-security prison instead of a high-security one.
With that possibility on the table, Zoukis said that even with a sentence of more than 30 years, Bankman-Fried is likely to end up in a medium-security prison like Madoff.