Bankman-Fried appeals FTX fraud conviction, 25-year sentence

NEW YORK: Sam Bankman-Fried, facing the prospect of spending much of his adult life behind bars, on Thursday appealed his conviction and 25-year prison sentence for stealing US$8 billion from customers of the now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange he founded.

Defence lawyer Marc Mukasey had announced plans for the appeal to the Manhattan-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals during Bankman-Fried's Mar 28 sentencing hearing. The 32-year-old former billionaire crypto wunderkind was convicted in November on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in what federal prosecutors have called one of the biggest financial frauds in US history. 

Bankman-Fried's appeal could take years. He faces steep odds, with his lawyers needing to persuade the 2nd Circuit - and potentially the US Supreme Court - that US District Judge Lewis Kaplan made significant errors that deprived Bankman-Fried of his legal rights and made the trial unfair.

The sentence imposed by Kaplan was shorter than the 40- to 50-year term that prosecutors had recommended but longer than the 5-1/4 years or fewer that Mukasey had suggested.

Bankman-Fried's sentencing put an exclamation point on his downfall from an entrepreneur whose meteoric rise prompted adulation, reverence and jealousy from some quarters into the biggest trophy for US prosecutors in their crackdown on excesses in the cryptocurrency markets.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate rode a boom in the values of bitcoin and other digital assets to a US$26 billion net worth before he turned 30, Forbes magazine estimated. 

Bankman-Fried also became a major political donor and an advocate of effective altruism, a movement that encourages talented young people to focus on earning money and giving it away