Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the fallen FTX exchange, is batting for a Presidential pardon from U.S. President Donald Trump. The development was reported on Monday by Fox Business citing an interview with crypto mogul who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024. He was found guilty on two counts of wire fraud and five counts of conspiracy after FTX collapsed in 2022 leaving thousands of investors high and dry.
Bankman-Fried, 34, is presently serving his jail sentence at a Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Terminal Island located in California, U.S. He was interviewed at the prison by Fox Business, when he was asked if he wanted a pardon from the White House.
“Absolutely. It would be obviously, you know, ultimately up to the president, not up to me,” Bankman-Fried was quoted as saying.
Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, the parents of the FTX founder have been tackling the legal proceedings on their son’s behald, maintaining their stance on his innocence ever since his conviction. Both worked as law professors at the Stanford University before their stepped away from teaching in December 2022.
When Bankman-Fried was asked if his parents were lobbying the White House, he said he could not speak for them, keeping any significant details under the wraps.
The development comes nearly five months after President Trump publicly denied considering Bankman-Fried for a pardon in January this year.
The pardon precedent
President Trump, over the last one year, has earned himself the reputation of a pro-crypto leader. Not only did he take quick steps towards regulating the crypto sector, but he also made it to the headlines for giving legally challenged crypto figures clean slates to start afresh.
Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao and crypto-friendly dark web marketplace Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht are among notable Web3 figures who were granted clemency by President Trump last year ridding them of their legal battles and punishments.
Both Ulbricht and Zhao were prosecuted for operational and regulatory compliance failures — running an unregulated marketplace and failing to prevent money laundering, respectively.
Bankman-Fried’s case, however, is different. He was convicted of being directly and intentionally involved in orchestrating a multi-billion-dollar fraud and explicitly stealing $8 billion of his own customers’ money.
In January, President Trump was asked if he planned to grant Bankman-Fried a presidential pardon to which he answered with a no.
Despite President Trump’s denial, Bankman-Fried has officially filed for a presidential pardon, government records show.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice/ Office of the Pardon Attorney
Bankman-Fried’s denial
From courting Republican politicians to reaching out to righ-wing figures like Tucker Carlson, Bankman-Fried and his parents have been trying to rope-him out of the 25-year-long prison sentence.
In November last year, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers had appealed his conviction at the U.S. Court of Appeals. No decision on the appeal, has however been finalized. If he loses here, an appeal could be submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In conversation with Fox Business, Bankman-Fried also reportedly said, “I didn’t steal user funds. Customers have been repaid now 170 percent or so on their deposits. It’s one of the very few cases where the platform was over-collateralized, where customers were more than made whole. And yet there was, you know, not just a criminal investigation, but a prosecution. And, you know, dozens of years of sentence[s].”
The collapse of the FTX exchange is largely attributed to Bankman-Fried secretly funnelling billions of dollars in customer deposits to help his hedge fund, Alameda Research, after it made risky trading bets. When this shortfall came under public light via a leaked balance sheet, the exchange witnessed a panic-driven wave of user fund withdrawals — triggering a classic bank run. The company eventually fell and declared bankruptcy in November 2022 soon after the exchange collapsed.
In April this year, a New York judge rejected Bankman-Fried’s retrial bid stating that the “new evidence is baseless”. He had applied for this retrial hoping that new witnesses and evidence could demonstrate that key facts presented during his case were incomplete or misleading.
