FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Expresses Remorse After Receiving 25-Year Prison Sentence

Updated: 02 April 2024

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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has expressed remorse for his actions after he was sentenced to 25 years in prison on fraud-related charges last week.

“It’s most of what I think about each day,” he said in an email interview with ABC News. “I never thought that what I was doing was illegal.”

Sam Bankman-Fried Responds To Allegation He Showed No Remorse

During his sentencing on Mar. 28, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said the FTX founder was “often evasive” and committed perjury in his testimony. He then criticized Bankman-Fried for not conveying the slightest bit of remorse for committing “terrible crimes.”

In the interview, Bankman-Fried replied to this statement by the Judge and said “of course” he is remorseful. He then went on to share the “pain” he felt as he took what his co-workers had “poured their lives into” and threw it all away.

Sam Bankman-Fried reacts to 25-year prison sentence for financial fraud.

In written responses provided exclusively to @ABC News, Bankman-Fried insists he feels remorse: “I never thought what I was doing was illegal.”

Read more: https://t.co/lAzJKXy0dk pic.twitter.com/DokasUWGhN

— ABC News (@ABC) April 1, 2024

Regarding the thousands of customers impacted by the exchange’s collapse, they “deserve to be paid in full, at current prices,” Bankman-Fried said. He finds it “excruciating” that they have to wait so long, when the payments “could and should have happened in November 2022, “ Bankman-Fried added.

In his statement to the court, the FTX founder said that customers would have been paid long ago if he or another employee had remained in place as CEO at FTX. He also lambasted the company’s decision to not restart the exchange, which he believes could have resulted in long-term value for the company and its affected users.

Legal Team Preparing An Appeal For Unfair Trial

Bankman-Fried accused Sullivan & Cromwell, the firm representing FTX’s new ownership, of working with prosecutors in a court filing last year. He claimed that he had a right to view company documents that the law firm shared with prosecutors and not with him. As such, the former FTX CEO said that he did not have a fair trial.

Bankman-Fried’s defense team will be appealing his conviction after saying that certain trial testimony “greatly misstated what actually happened,” according to Bankman-Fried. Regardless of the potential appeal, he said he has “lost everything” that he had to lose.