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- Sam Bankman-Fried’s household begged for leniency forward of his upcoming sentencing.
- His legal professionals counsel a 6.5-year sentence, calling the probation workplace’s 100-year advice “barbaric.”
- His dad and mom warned jail might result in violence given his poor skill to grasp social cues.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s members of the family begged the choose who oversaw his criminal trial to provide him a lightweight sentence, arguing that his social awkwardness might put him in “excessive hazard” behind bars.
“I genuinely worry for Sam’s life within the typical jail setting,” Barbara Fried, his mom, wrote in a letter to the choose. “Sam’s outward presentation, his incapacity to learn or reply appropriately to many social cues, and his touching however naive perception within the energy of details and cause to resolve disputes, put him in excessive hazard.”
Letters from Barbara Fried; Sam Bankman-Fried’s father, Joseph Bankman; and his brother, Gabriel Bankman-Fried, have been a part of a bundle of paperwork filed to courtroom simply earlier than a midnight deadline on Tuesday.
Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals filed a sentencing submission, asking for a jail sentence of now not than 78 months — or six-and-a-half-years.
The submitting was supported by 29 letters from Bankman-Fried’s supporters, two intensely private paperwork the place Bankman-Fried grapples with romance and social alienation, and paperwork reflecting his work at FTX — the collapsed cryptocurrency alternate he as soon as led.
Joseph Bankman, in his letter, warned that his son’s “odd” social cues — which his legal professionals mentioned must be attributed to neurodiversity — might be misinterpret by individuals in jail as “disrespect, evasion, or mendacity.”
“Such a setting would put Sam in an setting the place his responses to social cues will generally be seen as odd, inappropriate, and disrespectful; when that occurs, he shall be in important bodily hazard,” Bankman wrote. “Nothing can justify placing him at that threat.
In November, a jury found Bankman-Fried guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy at a Manhattan felony trial overseen by US District Choose Lewis Kaplan.
Prosecutors established that he commingled buyer funds at FTX, the cryptocurrency alternate, with Alameda Analysis, his crypto buying and selling agency. Bankman-Fried and a number of other different executives — who pleaded guilty and testified against him — misappropriated billions of {dollars} of buyer cash and misled clients, buyers, and lenders.
The decision carries a most sentence of 110 years in jail. The US Probation Workplace, which points sentencing reviews that judges sometimes depend on, really helpful 100 years behind bars — which Bankman-Fried’s lawyers called “barbaric.”
“Solely thirty-two years outdated and along with his entire future in entrance of him, Sam now faces the prospect of spending a lot of the remainder of his life in jail,” Barbara Fried wrote in her letter. “His father and I face the very actual risk that we’ll not reside lengthy sufficient to see him freed. There are not any phrases for the grief we really feel.”
Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals mentioned a considerably decrease sentence was warranted as a result of FTX’s clients would doubtless regain a lot of their funds within the firm’s chapter proceedings.
“That advice is grotesque,” Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals wrote. “Sam is a 31-year-old, first-time, non-violent offender, who was joined within the conduct at problem by a minimum of 4 different culpable people, in a matter the place victims are poised to get well — have been at all times poised to get well — 100 cents on the greenback.”
Prosecutors could have an opportunity to submit their very own advice by March 15 earlier than the sentencing listening to for the 31-year-old former FTX govt on March 28.
‘He has by no means felt happiness or pleasure in his Iife’
In a searingly emotional letter, Barbara Fried said her elder son has been wrongly forged as “a cartoonish villain pushed by greed” who perpetrated “the fraud of the century.”
In actuality, she argued, Bankman-Fried devoted his life to altruism, dropped all the things to assist buddies going via household tragedies, and “has battled melancholy his complete life.”
After the collapse of FTX in November 2022, Bankman-Fried shared along with his dad and mom his expertise of anhedonia, she wrote.
“We knew about his melancholy, however he described one thing deeper and sadder: that he has by no means felt happiness or pleasure in his life and doesn’t suppose he’s able to feeling it,” Barbara Fried wrote.
Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals shared private writings the place he displays on being “unlovable” and quotes Macklemore’s rap lyrics.
“I do not really feel pleasure. I do not really feel happiness. One way or the other my reward system by no means clicked,” Bankman-Fried wrote in 2016. “My highest hights, my proudest moments, come and move and I really feel nothing however the aching gap in my mind the place happiness must be.”
In one other piece of writing, closely redacted and showing to be a letter to a former lover, Bankman-Fried apologizes for his conduct and worries about hurting her.
“I hate the ache I’ve brought about you,” wrote within the doc, dated to 2018. “And I hate myself for inflicting it. I actually want I might have recognized learn how to love you higher. I am sorry.”
“I actually want we might have frozen time when issues have been pleased,” he added.
Barbara Fried mentioned in her letter that her son’s conduct and tics throughout the trial — the place he took the witness stand in his personal protection — have been related to “high-functioning individuals” with autism.
“He’s dangerous at responding to social cues in ‘regular’ methods, uncomfortable wanting individuals within the eye, uncomfortable with outward reveals of emotion,” Fried wrote. “He has no real interest in small speak however will have interaction passionately and relentlessly with concepts to the purpose that may exasperate and exhaust others.”
Whereas these character traits could have let him thrive at MIT, Wall Road, and FTX, they made him appear to be “a freak with evil intentions” within the eyes of the general public, she wrote.
It will be even worse in jail, she wrote.
“It could be that a few of the inmates will come to understand Sam as soon as they get to know him,” Barbara Fried wrote. “However miscommunication in that setting is harmful, and Sam’s traits enormously elevate the probability of its occurring.”
Placing him in solitary confinement to guard him from others is not any resolution, she continued. “It only a extra sure type of homicide, and in some ways, a crueler one, slowly destroying his soul somewhat than his physique.”
Carmine Simpson, a former police officer held in the identical federal Brooklyn jail on child pornography charges, wrote a letter to the choose praising Bankman-Fried’s character. He mentioned Bankman-Fried has already been the topic of “hazing” and “a number of extortion makes an attempt” due to his stature.
“In any setting, Sam is the least bodily intimidating particular person and that is particularly noticeable inside a jail,” Simpson wrote. “This has and can result in him being ceaselessly focused for hazing, harassment, and assault extra so than the typical inmate.
Within the sentencing submission, Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals mentioned Bankman-Fried “has practiced facial expressions” and made different efforts to beat his neurological challenges. However it will be tough, they mentioned, for him to grasp them in jail.
“Jail usually requires inmates to comply with the ‘unwritten guidelines,’ as outlined by different inmates — guidelines which are usually extremely reliant on social and emotional communication of deference and energy and infrequently at battle with the written guidelines,” they wrote. “The social dynamics in jail and the scrutiny he’s receiving is prone to lead to him going through bodily violence.”
In addition they included a US Bureau of Prisons official’s advice that Bankman-Fried be positioned in a low-security jail. That is even when he is given a protracted jail sentence, which usually leads to placement in high-security prisons.
Barbara Fried, in her letter, talked about educating within the San Quentin prison and the way america’s felony justice system is “an excessive outlier amongst all democracies” with its punitive nature.
“I’ve no illusions in regards to the redemptive energy of prisons,” she wrote. “Being consigned to jail for many years will destroy Sam as absolutely as would hanging him, as a result of it’ll take away all the things on this planet that provides his life which means.”
Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals say nobody actually misplaced cash
Joseph Bankman targeted on what he described as his son’s selflessness. Bankman-Fried had devoted his life to philanthropy via the efficient altruism motion, making billions of {dollars} with the plan to provide it away, he wrote.
When FTX collapsed, Bankman-Fried stayed within the Bahamas to work with officers and attempt to get everybody their a refund as quick as doable, he mentioned. When a protection lawyer famous that “there’s most likely a room of vibrant, hard-working and impressive individuals someplace whose objective is put you in jail,” Bankman-Fried mentioned it was “just about irrelevant to me in comparison with serving to depositors,” his father recounted.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s method to veganism illustrated each his selflessness and awkwardness, his youthful brother, Gabriel Bankman-Fried, wrote in a letter to the choose.
“He would not make small discuss your canine, however he’d subsist on bread and water in jail to keep away from consuming an animal,” Gabriel wrote.
“He was by no means good at apologizing, however at all times fast to confess fault,” he continued. “He could be uncomfortable giving me a hug, however I do know he would give me a kidney if I wanted one.
Bankman-Fried recently shook up his legal team, ditching his trial legal professionals and bringing on attorneys Marc Mukasey and Torrey Younger for his sentencing and enchantment.
The sentencing submission provides a preview of the arguments Bankman-Fried will doubtless make when he recordsdata an enchantment.
Attorneys at chapter proceedings have mentioned that FTX might be able to make all of its clients entire, partly due to fluctuations within the firm’s cryptocurrency holdings and Bankman-Fried’s prescient investments within the synthetic intelligence firm Anthropic. However his legal professionals weren’t allowed to lift the problem at trial, with the choose deeming it irrelevant. Within the sentencing submission, Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals argue that “essentially the most affordable estimate” for the way a lot his victims misplaced was “zero.”
Barbara Fried — herself a famend authorized ethics knowledgeable — mentioned that John J. Ray III, the lawyer who took over FTX after it collapsed, inappropriately ignored Bankman-Fried’s efforts to assist direct him to buyer funds throughout the chapter course of, considerably slowing down the restoration course of.
“When John Ray lamented publicly that the inner information of FTX have been so dangerous they might not put collectively an inventory of consumers, Sam positioned the related paperwork instantly and wrote to the Ch 11 crew providing to point out them learn how to entry the preexisting checklist,” she wrote. “They by no means answered his emails.”
