In the end, he said goodbye to his parents with a nod and left the courtroom with his head bowed. Sam Bankman-Fried, once the celebrated star of the crypto industry, was found guilty on all seven counts in New York on Friday night. The public prosecutor's office had charged him, among other things, with fraud in the billions, on suspicion of money laundering and conspiracy to commit fraud. He now faces a long prison sentence.
FTX Founder Fraud Trial: Jury Finds Sam Bankman-Fried Guilty of Billion-Dollar Fraud
Crash of the "Crypto Guru":Sam, the GamblerBy Marcel Rosenbach, Christoph Scheuermann and Regina Steffens
At its peak, Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange FTX was estimated to have eight million customers, hundreds of thousands of them in Germany and Europe. In November 2022, the firm filed for bankruptcy after Bankman-Fried used client funds to plug a huge hole in its balance sheet. The damage to investors and customers is estimated at eight to ten billion dollars.
The New York judge does not want to announce the sentence until March. Legal experts expect Bankman-Fried to face at least 100 years in prison, with a maximum sentence of over <> years.
In a special episode of »Krypto-Guru«, the SPIEGEL original podcast about the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, Regina Steffens, Marcel Rosenbach and Christoph Scheuermann discuss the consequences of the verdict. What does the guilty verdict mean for Bankman-Fried? What are the consequences of this process? What's next for the crypto industry, an industry that tends to be more susceptible to scams than others?
Listen to all five episodes of the SPIEGEL podcast "Crypto Guru" here: