The family of one of the most infamous cryptocurrency convicts is reportedly seeking a presidential pardon for their son. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents are in talks with lawyers and other people who have connections with President Donald Trump, Bloomberg reported, citing a “person familiar with the matter.”
Stanford Law School professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried are meeting about potentially securing clemency for their 32-year-old son. Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay $11 billion in restitution. He was found guilty of orchestrating a scheme that included illegally taking customer funds from his crypto exchange, FTX, to cover losses for its sister company.
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What happened with SBF and FTX?
FTX filed for bankruptcy in 2022 after a tumultuous week that sent shockwaves through the crypto world. A surge of FTX customers tried withdrawing funds after stories dropped about shady accounting. FTX couldn’t meet the demand and collapsed.
Bankman-Fried, commonly referred to as SBF, lost control of the company. Corporate turnaround specialist John J. Ray III took over to shepherd the company through bankruptcy. Ray is famous for his role in recovering funds from the Enron scandal.
“This is really old-fashioned embezzlement,” Ray told Congress. “This is just taking money from customers and using it for your own purpose. Not sophisticated at all. Sophisticated, perhaps, in the way they were able to sort of hide it from people, frankly, right in front of their eyes.”
In August 2024, a U.S. court ordered FTX to pay $12.7 billion in relief funds to victims.
In October, a court approved its bankruptcy plan, which allows FTX to use as much as $16.5 billion in assets to repay customers.
In September, SBF filed an appeal to overturn his fraud conviction. In the appeal, his attorney blasted Judge Lewis Kaplan for not giving him a fair trial. He argued the judge hampered SBF’s defense by not allowing him to argue that FTX users didn’t actually lose money since they are set to recover funds from the bankruptcy process.
Which other crypto convict did Trump already pardon?
The president made a slew of pardons his first week in office, including one pushed by the crypto industry and libertarians.
At the Libertarian National Convention ahead of the election, Trump promised he would pardon Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the dark web black market site, Silk Road.
“If you vote for me, on day one, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbrich to a sentence of time served,” Trump said at the time. “He’s already served 11 years; we’re going to get them home.”
Ulbricht was convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering and computer hacking. The government said he also solicited six murder-for-hire schemes, including one against a former Silk Road employee.
However, Ulbricht had the strong support of the crypto community. Silk Road was an early marketplace to exclusively use Bitcoin. Bankman-Fried doesn’t seem to have the same type of advocacy movement behind him, but he may have common ground with Trump.
The judge who sentenced SBF is the same one who presided over the president’s sexual assault case brought by E. Jean Carroll. Trump previously called Kaplan a “bully” and “abusive.”
Trump’s use of pardons early in his term contrasts with what he did in his first term. Most of his clemency orders came toward the end of his presidency. The pardons seen so far mostly line up with campaign promises, like pardoning roughly 1,500 supporters connected to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
