NEW YORK – Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers said US prosecutors’ proposal to put him in prison for as long as 50 years “distorts reality” and paints him as a “depraved super-villain”.

Prosecutors have argued that a sentence ranging from 40 to 50 years is necessary for the FTX co-founder’s “historic” crime involving more than 1 million victims and losses of more than US$10 billion (S$13.4 billion) in the collapse of his crypto empire. 

The Manhattan US attorney argued to the judge who will sentence Bankman-Fried on March 28 that he showed “unmatched greed and hubris” and broke the law based on a “pernicious megalomania guided by the defendant’s own values and sense of superiority”. The government’s request is far less than the 100 years recommended in US criminal sentencing guidelines, but much more than the 6½ years Bankman-Fried’s lawyers suggested.

In a response on March 19, the defence lawyers called the prosecutors’ filing “disturbing” and claimed the government “wants to break” the 32-year-old.

“With marked hostility, the memorandum distorts reality to support its precious ‘loss’ narrative and casts Sam as a depraved super villain; it attributes to him dark and megalomaniacal motives that fly in the face of the record; it makes apocalyptic prophecies of recidivism; and it adopts a mediaeval view of punishment to reach what amounts to a death-in-prison sentencing recommendation,” Bankman-Fried’s lawyers wrote. “That is not justice.”

A jury in Manhattan convicted Bankman-Fried in November 2023 of seven charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy. Prosecutors said he directed the transfer of FTX customer money into Alameda Research, an affiliated hedge fund, for risky investments, political donations and expensive real estate before both companies collapsed into bankruptcy in 2022. Before then, FTX was valued at US$32 billion. BLOOMBERG