Bankman-Fried was required to stand and face the jury as guilty verdicts on all seven counts were read. He kept his hands clasped tightly in front of him. When he sat down after the reading, he kept his head tilted down for several minutes. After the judge set a sentencing date of March 28, Bankman-Fried’s parents moved to the front row behind him. His father put his arm around his wife. As Bankman-Fried was led out of the courtroom, he looked back and nodded towards his mother, who nodded back and then became emotional, wiping her hand across her face after he left the room. ‘His crimes caught up to him. His crimes have been exposed.’Assistant US attorney Danielle Sassoon The trial attracted intense interest with its focus on a fraud on a scale not seen since the 2009 prosecution of Bernard Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme over decades cheated thousands of investors out of about $US20 billion. Madoff pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 150 years in prison, where he died in 2021. The prosecution of Bankman-Fried, 31, put a spotlight on the emerging industry of cryptocurrency and a group of young executives in their 20s who lived together in a $US30 million luxury apartment in the Bahamas as they dreamed of becoming the most powerful player in a new financial field.
FTX founder Sam-Bankman-Fried convicted of defrauding cryptocurrency customers
