Since Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud final 12 months, he has employed a brand new lawyer identified for courtroom showmanship. A bunch of sympathetic legislation professors has pushed for a reappraisal of his actions. And his dad and mom have turned for assist to former workers of FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency trade he based.
From a federal detention heart in Brooklyn, Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, has continued to combat his case behind the scenes, as he argues for a lenient sentence and prepares to enchantment his conviction. On Tuesday, his attorneys are scheduled to file a authorized memo within the U.S. District Court docket 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 resolve how lengthy to imprison the onetime billionaire on fees that carry a most sentence of 110 years. But it surely’s just one prong of a long-shot technique orchestrated by Mr. Bankman-Fried’s household and associates 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 legislation agency Shapiro Arato Bach to deal with the enchantment. His dad and mom, the Stanford College legislation professors Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, have additionally been concerned within the protection, serving to line up individuals to put in writing letters for his or her son that might 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 dangerous for his dad and mom,” 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 advice in a submitting due March 15. Even when Decide Kaplan decides to not impose the utmost sentence, Mr. Bankman-Fried might nonetheless face a long time 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. lawyer for the Southern District of New York, declined to remark.
Earlier than FTX collapsed in November 2022, Mr. Bankman-Fried was some of the outstanding figures within the renegade crypto trade, a broadly 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 prospects to finance political contributions, investments in different corporations and lavish actual property purchases.
Mr. Bankman-Fried has maintained his innocence and pledged to enchantment. This month, he changed his trial attorneys, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, with Mr. Mukasey, who has a status 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 accomplice at Shapiro Arato Bach. She is predicted to file Mr. Bankman-Fried’s enchantment after the sentencing.
Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried have additionally performed a task 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 electronic mail from the FTX founder’s dad and mom explaining the sentencing course of and urging her to put in writing “from the center” about their son.
They had been “sort 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 dad and mom have additionally pressed his case.
In January, two shut household associates, the Yale Regulation professor Ian Ayres and the Stanford Regulation professor John Donohue, wrote an essay for the web site Challenge Syndicate, arguing that “all alongside” FTX had sufficient belongings to make its prospects entire.
“No matter else could be stated about Bankman-Fried, he was a superb businessman,” Mr. Ayres and Mr. Donohue wrote.
One other legislation professor, Jonathan Lipson at Temple College, stated in an interview that he was working with David Skeel of the College of Pennsylvania legislation college on an educational paper criticizing Sullivan & Cromwell, the legislation agency overseeing FTX’s chapter.
In September, Mr. Lipson co-wrote a quick within the chapter case arguing for the appointment of an unbiased examiner to evaluate 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 legislation professor reached out in regards to the case and supplied to place them in touch.
Of their article, Mr. Lipson and Mr. Skeel argue that Sullivan & Cromwell “could have distorted the felony justice course of” by giving prosecutors wide-ranging entry to FTX’s assets and knowledge, in line with an unpublished draft shared with The New York Occasions.
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. Legal convictions are hardly ever overturned on enchantment.
Mr. Bankman-Fried has been housed at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Middle since final summer season 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 ideas with the guards, the particular person stated, recommending investments within the digital coin Solana.
This month, Mr. Bankman-Fried left the detention heart 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.
