• A letter alleging Sam Bankman-Fried came to the desk of the US District Judge this week, and later the sentencing proceedings took place on Thursday.
  • The former crypto executive was convicted of all seven crimes in November. 4 months passed, and now he is set to learn how long he’ll spend behind bars.
  • Victims have lost a lot of money in the fraud, with some losing 30 years of savings.

Four months after the conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried’s all seven crimes, he will know the final sentence soon.

A letter about FXT fraud appears to the Department of Justice

In a letter to the Department of Justice, a Futures Exchange (FTX) customer who lost $4 million when the exchange filed for bankruptcy in 2022 expressed disgust at a spreading narrative that clients of the crypto exchange would be made whole.

“I have scraped the docket of scheduled claims and calculated the exact amount stolen,” wrote the former FTX customer, whose identity has been concealed by the government. “The total value of customer liabilities is $19,722,911,002.84.”

This letter ended up to the US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who on Thursday will inform FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of his prison sentence out of his role in the collapse of the exchange. The sentencing proceedings will occur in the same place as four months ago—where a jury found the former crypto executive guilty of all seven criminal counts against him.

Also read: FTX to sell majority of stake in Anthropic for US$884 million  

Also read: FTX sells $1B in GBTC, ownership hits zero amid $2B ETF outflows

The final sentencing of Bankman-Fried is weighing

Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud against FTX customers and lenders to sister hedge fund Alameda Research, as well as conspiracy to commit securities fraud and commodities fraud against FTX investors, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Now, he faces a maximum sentence of more than 100 years, but the Government has recommended a sentence of between 40 and 50 years. The defence wants no more than 6.5 years.

For months, Judge Kaplan has been weighing appropriate penalties for offences related to the implosion of Bankman Fried’s $32 billion cryptocurrency empire.

The fraud victim tells the judge: ‘My whole life has been destroyed.’

In the letter, the victim wrote that he had deposited 30 years of savings into FTX three months before its closure and that this had greatly shaken Judge Kaplan ahead of sentencing

“My whole life has been destroyed,” the person wrote. “I have 2 young children, one born right before the collapse. Beyond the money, I lost my happiness, my ability to get out of bed, my desire to continue living. My wife is suicidal and depressed.”

The same sorts of stories were told during Bankman-Fried’s monthlong criminal trial last year. Prosecutors won their case by convincing jurors that Bankman-Fried had stolen at least $8 billion from customers. For some people, that meant financial ruin.