Since Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud conviction last year, he has hired a new lawyer known for his showmanship in the courtroom. It prompted a group of law professors sympathetic to him to reevaluate his actions. His parents have sought help from former employees of FTX, the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange he founded.
From a federal detention center in Brooklyn, Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, has continued his fight behind the scenes, as he aims for a reduced sentence and prepares to appeal his conviction. On Tuesday, his lawyers filed a legal brief with the US District Court in Manhattan, arguing that he should receive a prison sentence of between five and a quarter and six and a half years.
The note said Mr Bankman-Fried was “deeply remorseful” for the “pain he has caused over the past two years”. “His sole focus after the collapse of FTX was to make customers whole.”
The filing was a crucial step before Mr. Bankman-Fried's sentencing on March 28, when the federal judge overseeing his case, Louis A. Kaplan, the time the former billionaire will spend in prison on charges that carry a maximum sentence of 110 years. But that was only one prong of a far-reaching strategy orchestrated by Mr. Bankman-Fried's family and friends to reverse his conviction and engineer a public reevaluation of his leadership at FTX.
Since last year's trial, Mr. Bankman-Fried has appointed Mark Mukasey, who represented former President Donald J. Trump, to oversee his sentencing, as well as a separate attorney at the law firm Shapiro Arato Bach to handle the appeal. His parents, Stanford law professors Joe Bankman and Barbara Freed, also participated in the defense, helping arrange for people to write letters attesting to their son's character that were included in the sentencing memorandum.
In an interview, Natalie Tian, a former assistant to Mr. Bankman-Fried at FTX, said she wrote a letter for the memo after exchanging emails with Mr. Bankman and Ms. Fried.
“I have no grudge against him, and I feel bad for his parents,” Ms. Tian said.
A spokesman for Mr. Bankman-Fried declined to comment. Representatives for Mr. Bankman and Ms. Freed did not respond to requests for comment.
Federal prosecutors are scheduled to outline their sentencing recommendations in a filing scheduled for March 15. But according to Mr Bankman-Fried's memo, his probation officer had already recommended 100 years in prison, a punishment his lawyers described as “barbaric”.
Even if Judge Kaplan decides not to impose the maximum sentence, Mr. Bankman-Fried could face decades behind bars.
The judge “could still hand down a very serious sentence given Mr. Bankman-Fried’s young age — for example, a 30 or 35-year prison sentence,” said Miriam Baer, vice dean of Brooklyn Law School.
A spokesman for Damien Williams, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, declined to comment.
Before FTX's collapse in November 2022, Mr. Bankman-Fried was one of the most prominent figures in the insurgent cryptocurrency industry, a widely celebrated billionaire whose face appeared on billboards and magazine covers.
In October, a federal jury convicted him of stealing $8 billion from FTX clients to fund political contributions, investments in other companies and luxury real estate purchases.
Mr. Bankman-Fried maintained that he was innocent and vowed to appeal. This month, he replaced his lawyers, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdale, with Mr. Mukasey, who represents another fallen cryptocurrency mogul in a separate case and has a reputation for strong courtroom presentations.
Last year, Mr. Mukasey won a victory in his defense of Trevor Milton, the founder of electric truck maker Nikola, who was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors. A federal judge sentenced Milton last December to four years in prison, much less than the 11 years requested by the prosecution.
Running parallel to Mr. Mukasey is appellate lawyer and former prosecutor Alexandra Shapiro, a partner at Shapiro Arato Bach. Mr Bankman-Fried is expected to appeal after the ruling.
Mr. Bankman and Ms. Freed also played a role behind the scenes. Ms. Tian said that last month she received a text message from a supporter of Mr. Bankman-Fried, asking if she would help with the memo. She then received a follow-up email from the FTX founder's parents explaining the sentencing process and urging her to write “from the heart” about their son.
They were “kind of like testing the waters,” Ms. Tian said in an interview. “I just said ‘yes’ right away.”
Ms Tian was one of 29 people who wrote letters for the memo, including Mr Bankman's parents Fred, his younger brother and several former colleagues. She described him as kind and compassionate, and said he “never acted out of greed or self-interest.”
In the filing, Mr. Mukasey cited the letters to portray Mr. Bankman-Fried as a hard-working, altruistic billionaire who eschewed the trappings of fame and fortune. He also argued that some oddities in Mongol behavior could be explained by “neurological diversity.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried had “external characteristics typical of neurodiversity, such as inconsistent eye contact,” the memo said. “He may be perceived as surprised, dismissive, evasive, detached, or indifferent.”
Outside the formal court proceedings, law professors who knew Mr. Bankman-Fried's parents argued his case.
In January, two close family friends, Yale Law Professor Ian Ayres and Stanford Law Professor John Donohue, wrote an article for Project Syndicate in which they argued that FTX “all along” had enough assets To make its customers whole – a point that Mr Mukasey echoed in the memo.
“Whatever may be said about Bankman Fried, he was a brilliant businessman,” Mr. Ayres and Mr. Donohue wrote.
Another law professor, Jonathan Lipson at Temple University, said in an interview that he had been working with David Skeel of the University of Pennsylvania Law School on an academic paper critical of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell overseeing the FTX bankruptcy.
In September, Mr. Lipson co-wrote a bankruptcy brief calling for the appointment of an independent investigator to review the actions of Sullivan & Cromwell, including its close cooperation with federal prosecutors. He said he spoke with Mr. Bankman-Fried and his mother last year after another Stanford law professor reached out about the case and offered to contact them.
In their article, Mr. Lipson and Mr. Skeel argue that Sullivan & Cromwell “may have distorted the criminal justice process” by giving prosecutors broad access to FTX resources and data, according to an unpublished draft shared with The New York Times.
A spokesman for Sullivan and Cromwell declined to comment. In court filings, prosecutors described the information-sharing as “routine practices by companies cooperating in the investigation.”
Mr. Bankman-Fried faces long-term prospects. Criminal convictions are rarely overturned on appeal.
Since last summer, he has been housed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he has spent most of his time working on the case, a person familiar with the matter said. Mr. Bankman-Fried also shared tips about the cryptocurrency market with the guards, and recommended investing in the digital currency Solana, the person said.
This month, Mr Bankman-Fried left the detention center to attend his first public court appearance since the trial, a hearing to allow his new legal representation. In the Manhattan courtroom, he appeared clean-shaven and wearing a baggy brown prison uniform. Sometimes he would turn and smile at the reporters sitting in the gallery.
J. Edward Moreno Contributed to reports.
