A US appeals court on Friday upheld the conviction for fraud of former cryptocurrency kingpin Sam Bankman-Fried.
A three-judge panel from an appeals court in New York brushed aside claims from Bankman-Fried's lawyers that his 2023 trial was unfair and that customers might have eventually been repaid thanks to the long-term value of FTX-related investments.
The court found no reason to reverse his conviction, which came from one of the most closely followed financial fraud trials in recent years. Judge Barrington Parker stated that the evidence against Bankman-Fried was overwhelmingly strong.
With this decision, the 34-year-old's options for legal recourse are becoming even more limited while he serves his 25-year sentence in a US prison.
FTX, one of the largest trading centres for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, collapsed spectacularly at the end of 2022. Bankman-Fried, the former chief executive of FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas and extradited to the United States, where he was ultimately charged with embezzling customer assets.
Bankman-Fried was also behind a hedge fund called Alameda Research, which made risky transactions and borrowed funds from FTX when collateral should in fact have been deposited.
There were computer systems that were supposed to take care of this, but the software made a secret exception for Alameda, which allowed the hedge fund to go as far into the red as it wanted with FTX. When the Alameda trades went wrong, there was a multibillion-dollar hole in FTX's coffers.
Bankman-Fried claims that, while FTX was in a liquidity crisis, it was fundamentally solvent.
