Sam Bankman-Fried has filed an official appeal to overturn his fraud conviction in the case of fallen crypto exchange FTX. The founder of the collapsed FTX exchange was convicted last fall and is serving a 25-year sentence in prison.
In the 102-page appeal, a lawyer for Mr. Bankman-Fried called for a new trial. The defendants pointed to several rulings by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Manhattan that limited Bankman-Fried to introduce evidence and hampered his defense. “Sam Bankman-Fried was never presumed innocent,” wrote the lawyer, Alexandra A.E. Shapiro. “He was presumed guilty by the judge who presided over his trial.”
Sam Bankman-Fried Appeals FTX Conviction
Shapiro’s written appeal also criticized a ruling by Judge Kaplan that prevented Bankman-Fried from arguing in court that FTX’s users had not actually lost money. SBF and his defense argued that users are poised to recover funds in the bankruptcy process. “The government thus presented a false narrative that FTX’s customers, lenders, and investors had permanently lost their money,” the filing said. “The jury was only allowed to see half the picture.” Furthermore, the appeal states that a new trial should be conducted before a different judge.
The Southern District of New York in Manhattan has no plans to comment on the filing, according to a spokesperson.
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Sam Bankman-Fried has maintained he is innocent since the ruling and now hopes to successfully appeal. This is despite claiming responsibility for the losses that FTX holders suffered from. SBF has been serving his sentence at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York.
The collapse of FTX will likely remain one of the biggest controversies in the history of the digital asset sector. Bankman-Fried was convicted by a jury on seven counts of fraud in 2023. Specifically, those charges include his thievery of customer assets when running the cryptocurrency exchange, and his deceit with the firm’s investors and creditors. Altogether, Bankman-Fried was responsible for around $8 billion in customer assets being stolen.