The FTX founder’s family said Sam Bankman-Fried’s inability to read social cues could get him into violent trouble in prison.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s family members begged the judge who oversaw his criminal trial to give him a light sentence, arguing that his social awkwardness could put him in „extreme danger“ behind bars.
„I genuinely fear for Sam’s life in the typical prison environment,“ Barbara Fried, his mother, wrote in a letter to the judge. „Sam’s outward presentation, his inability to read or respond appropriately to many social cues, and his touching but naive belief in the power of facts and reason to resolve disputes, put him in extreme danger.“
Letters from Barbara Fried; Sam Bankman-Fried’s father, Joseph Bankman; and his brother, Gabriel Bankman-Fried, were part of a package of documents filed to court just before a midnight deadline on Tuesday.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyers filed a sentencing submission, asking for a prison sentence of no longer than 78 months — or six-and-a-half-years.
The filing was supported by 29 letters from Bankman-Fried’s supporters, two intensely personal documents where Bankman-Fried grapples with romance and social alienation, and documents reflecting his work at FTX — the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange he once led.
Joseph Bankman, in his letter, warned that his son’s „odd“ social cues — which his lawyers said should be attributed to neurodiversity — could be misread by people in prison as „disrespect, evasion, or lying.“
„Such a setting would put Sam in an environment where his responses to social cues will sometimes be seen as odd, inappropriate, and disrespectful; when that happens, he will be in significant physical danger,“ Bankman wrote. „Nothing can justify putting him at that risk.
In November, a jury found Bankman-Fried guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy at a Manhattan criminal trial overseen by US District Judge Lewis Kaplan.
Prosecutors established that he commingled customer funds at FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange, with Alameda Research, his crypto trading firm. Bankman-Fried and several other executives — who pleaded guilty and testified against him — misappropriated billions of dollars of customer money and misled customers, investors, and lenders.
The verdict carries a maximum sentence of 110 years in prison. The US Probation Office, which issues sentencing reports that judges typically rely on, recommended 100 years behind bars — which Bankman-Fried’s lawyers called „barbaric.“
„Only thirty-two years old and with his whole future in front of him, Sam now faces the prospect of spending much of the rest of his life in prison,“ Barbara Fried wrote in her letter. „His father and I face the very real possibility that we will not live long enough to see him freed. There are no words for the grief we feel.“
Bankman-Fried’s lawyers said a significantly lower sentence was warranted because FTX’s customers would likely regain much of their funds in the company’s bankruptcy proceedings.
„That recommendation is grotesque,“ Bankman-Fried’s lawyers wrote. „Sam is a 31-year-old, first-time, non-violent offender, who was joined in the conduct at issue by at least four other culpable individuals, in a matter where victims are poised to recover — were always poised to recover — a hundred cents on the dollar.“
Prosecutors will have a chance to submit their own recommendation by March 15 before the sentencing hearing for the 31-year-old former FTX executive on March 28.
In a searingly emotional letter, Barbara Fried said her elder son has been wrongly cast as „a cartoonish villain driven by greed“ who perpetrated „the fraud of the century.
