Sam Bankman-Fried appeals his fraud conviction, requests a new trial
The founder of FTX is serving six months of a 25-year prison sentence.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has formally appealed his fraud conviction, requesting a new trial and accusing the judge overseeing his case of being unfairly biased against him.
Last November, a New York jury convicted Bankman-Fried on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange in November 2022. In March, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) sentenced Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison for his crimes.
In the 102-page appeal filed Friday afternoon in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Bankman-Fried’s attorneys argued that Judge Kaplan was unfair to the FTX founder throughout the trial, making “scathing comments that undermined the defense” and “ridiculing” his testimony in front of the jury.
“Sam Bankman-Fried was never found innocent,” his attorney, Alexandra Shapiro, wrote in the filing. “The judge presiding over his trial found him guilty.” Shapiro replaced Bankman-Fried’s trial attorneys, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, after his conviction.
The filing emphasized this point throughout, pointing to the judge’s blocking of certain defense arguments, testimony about Bankman-Fried’s well-performing investments (such as Anthropic), pieces of evidence
Bankman-Fried’s attorneys also alleged procedural violations, saying the judge ordered an “unlawful” seizure and that “Bankman-Fried was wrongly deprived of the Brady material” — evidence that would have favored the defense and that, if deliberately withheld, could result in the case being dismissed.
