🪙 Sam Bankman-Fried: 25 years and an $11B forfeiture over FTX

Sam Bankman-Fried's rise took about five years; the fall from it took days in November 2022. The final number came later: on March 28, 2024, a federal court sentenced him to 25 years in prison and ordered him to forfeit more than $11 billion, a verdict and sentence the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit left standing when it rejected his appeal in 2026.

The build-up

Bankman-Fried cofounded Alameda Research in 2017 and founded the FTX exchange two years later; by the time it collapsed, FTX counted more than 130 affiliated legal entities. Forbes estimated his net worth at $26 billion before it evaporated in the week FTX failed.

The hole

The figure on the public record is $8 billion - the gap that surfaced in FTX's accounts after a CoinDesk report on Alameda's balance sheet triggered a run on deposits, the gap that put FTX, Alameda and more than 130 affiliated entities into Delaware bankruptcy court on November 11, 2022. Reuters, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that Bankman-Fried had months earlier moved at least $4 billion from FTX to Alameda without telling the companies' other executives, and that some of it was customer money. At trial, FTX cofounder Gary Wang testified, under his own guilty plea, that simple changes to the code let Alameda take as much as $65 billion from FTX customers without their knowledge.

"lied about this to the public"

Gary Wang, FTX cofounder, testifying at United States v. Bankman-Fried

The verdict, then the number

A jury returned its verdict on November 2, 2023: guilty on all seven counts of wire fraud, securities fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. On March 28, 2024, Judge Lewis Kaplan handed down the sentence - 25 years in federal prison - plus the forfeiture of more than $11 billion, which the Justice Department tied to the misappropriation of FTX customer funds and the defrauding of FTX's investors and Alameda's lenders.

What came back

By April 2023, FTX had recovered more than $7.3 billion in cash and liquid crypto assets, its attorney told a Delaware bankruptcy court, helped by a rise in crypto prices since the collapse. At the sentencing, Bankman-Fried's lawyer argued that customers would likely be made whole eventually; Judge Kaplan dismissed that as speculative.

Money coming back later is not the same as money not taken.

The appeal, still open

Bankman-Fried appealed the conviction and the sentence on April 11, 2024, and later asked for a new trial, arguing Judge Kaplan had been biased against his defense. The Second Circuit rejected his appeal in 2026. In September 2026, he petitioned the Supreme Court for a new trial, arguing the trial court wrongly barred evidence that his investments were sound and would have covered any customer losses, and that the forfeiture itself violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on excessive fines. The Supreme Court is set to review the petition later this year.

His side of it

Bankman-Fried has not gone quiet on the record. In a March 2025 jailhouse interview with Tucker Carlson that the Bureau of Prisons said was not approved - and after which he was placed in solitary confinement - he argued he had been closer to Washington Republicans than Democrats when he was arrested, and voiced optimism about how President Trump would treat the crypto industry, the New York Times reported. His parents, both Stanford law professors, have been pressing a long-shot campaign for a presidential pardon, consulting a lawyer with ties to Trump.

"The prosecution told a story about FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried that is not correct."

Kory Langhofer, lawyer advising Bankman-Fried's parents, to the New York Times

The numbers, in order