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Sam Bankman-Freed’s family has urged the judge overseeing his criminal trial to give him a lighter sentence, saying his social awkwardness could put him at “extreme risk” in prison. I begged.
“I am truly concerned about Sam’s life in a typical prison environment,” his mother, Barbara Freed, wrote in a letter to the judge. “Sam’s outward expression, inability to read and respond appropriately to many social cues, and his touching but naive belief in the power of facts and reason to resolve conflicts make him extremely dangerous.” are exposed to.”
The letters from Barbara Freed, Sam Bankman Freed’s father Joseph Bankman, and brother Gabriel Bankman Freed were part of a series of documents submitted just before the midnight Tuesday deadline. Ta.
Bankman Fried’s lawyer files suit motion for sentencingseeks a prison sentence of no more than 78 months, or no more than 6 1/2 years.
The application includes 29 letters from Bankman-Fried’s supporters, two deeply personal documents in which Bankman-Fried deals with romance and social exclusion, and documents from Bankman-Fried’s former leadership team. This was backed up by documents reflecting his work at FTX, a collapsed cryptocurrency exchange.
In the letter, Joseph Bankman said his son’s “bizarre” social cues (which his lawyers attribute to his neurodiversity) caused people in prison to “be rude, evasive, or lie.” ” and warned that it could be misunderstood.
“Such an environment would place Sam in an environment where his reactions to social cues would at times be seen as strange, inappropriate, or disrespectful. If this were to occur, he would be in serious physical danger.” ” Bankman wrote. “There is nothing that could justify putting him at such risk.
In November, a jury found Bankman Fried guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in a Manhattan criminal trial overseen by District Judge Lewis Kaplan.
Prosecutors established that he mixed funds from customers of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange, with his cryptocurrency trading company, Alameda Research. Bankman Freed and several other executives who have pleaded guilty and testified against him misappropriated billions of dollars of customer funds and misled customers, investors, and lenders. .
The verdict carries a maximum sentence of 110 years in prison. The U.S. Probation Service, which issues sentencing reports that judges typically rely on, recommended a 100-year sentence. Bankman Fried’s lawyer called the move “barbaric.”
Lawyers for Bankman Freed said FTX’s customers are likely to get back much of their money in the company’s bankruptcy proceedings, which warrants a significantly reduced sentence.
“The recommendation is grotesque,” Bankman Freed’s lawyers wrote. “Sam is a 31-year-old, first-time, non-violent offender who was joined in the act by at least four other offenders and whose victim is ready to bounce back, but always ready to bounce back.” — 100 cents on the dollar. ”
Prosecutors will have until March 15 to submit their own recommendations ahead of the sentencing hearing for the 31-year-old former FTX executive on March 28.
“He has never felt happiness or joy in his life.”
in Barbara Freed said of the intensely emotional letter. Her eldest son was wrongly cast as a “lust-driven cartoonish villain” who committed the “fraud of the century”.
In fact, Ms. Bankman-Fried has dedicated her life to altruism, dropping everything to help a friend experiencing a family tragedy and has “struggled with depression all her life,” she claimed.
After FTX collapsed in November 2022, Bankman Fried told her parents about her experience with anhedonia, she wrote.
“We knew about his depression, but he was saying something deeper and sadder. He had never felt happiness or joy in his life and was able to feel it.” I said I didn’t think so,” Barbara Freed wrote.
Bankman-Freed’s lawyer shared a personal essay that reflected on Bankman-Freed being an “unlovable” person and quoted Macklemore’s rap lyrics.
“I don’t feel joy. I don’t feel happiness. For some reason my compensation structure just didn’t click,” Bankman Fried wrote in 2016. “My greatest highs, my proudest moments, come and go, and all I feel is an aching hole.” In my brain, happiness is where it should be. ”
In another heavily edited text that appears to be a letter to an ex-girlfriend, Bankman-Fried apologizes for his actions and says he worries about hurting her.
The document, dated 2018, reads: “I hate the pain I caused you. And I hate myself for causing that pain. I truly wish I knew how to love you more. I’m sorry.” was.
“I wish I could freeze time when things were happy,” he added.
Barbara Freed said in her letter that her son’s behavior and tics during the trial, during which he testified in her defense, were associated with a “high-functioning individual” with autism.
“He has difficulty responding to social cues in a ‘normal’ way, is uncomfortable looking people in the eye, and is uncomfortable expressing his emotions,” Freed said. wrote. “He is not interested in small talk, but approaches ideas with such passion and persistence that it frustrates and exhausts others.”
These personality traits may have made him successful at MIT, Wall Street, and FTX, but in the public eye they made him look like “a weirdo with nefarious intentions,” she wrote.
It would be even worse in prison, she wrote.
“Once some inmates get to know Sam, they may start to appreciate him,” Barbara Freed wrote. “But miscommunication in that environment is dangerous, and Sam’s characteristics greatly increase the likelihood of miscommunication occurring.”
She continued that putting him in solitary confinement to protect him from others is not the solution. “This is a more certain form of murder, and in many ways more brutal, one that slowly destroys his soul rather than his body.”
Carmine Simpson is a former police officer held in the same federal prison in Brooklyn. child pornography crime, wrote a letter to the judge praising Bankman Freed’s character. He said Bankman-Fried had already been the subject of “harassment” and “multiple extortion attempts” because of his height.
“Sam is not the most physically intimidating person in any environment, but that’s especially true in prison.” Simpson wrote. “This will likely make him the subject of harassment, harassment and assault more frequently than the average prisoner.
In a sentencing motion, Bankman-Freed’s attorney said Bankman-Freed had been “practicing facial expressions” to overcome neurological problems. But they said it would be difficult to master them in prison.
“Prisons often require inmates to follow ‘unspoken rules’ defined by other inmates. These rules often rely heavily on social and emotional communication of respect and power. “and often contradict written rules,” they wrote. “Due to the social conditions in prison and the intense surveillance he is subject to, he is likely to face physical violence.”
It included a recommendation by U.S. prison officials that Bankman-Freed be placed in a low-security prison. Even if he is sentenced to a long prison term, he will usually be held in a maximum security prison.
In her letter, Barbara Freed talked about her education at San Quentin and how the punitive nature of the U.S. criminal justice system makes it “an extreme outlier among all democracies.” .
“I have no illusions about the redemptive power of prison,” she wrote. “Decades in prison would destroy Sam just as surely as hanging, because it would rob him of everything in the world that gives meaning to his life.”
Bankman Freed’s lawyer claims no one actually lost money
joseph bankman He focused on what he described as his son’s selflessness. Mr. Bankman Fried has dedicated his life to philanthropy through an effective altruistic campaign and has earned billions of dollars from his giving programs, he wrote.
When FTX collapsed, Bankman Freed remained in the Bahamas and worked with authorities to get everyone’s money back as quickly as possible, he said. When the defense attorney pointed out, “There’s probably a room somewhere out there of smart, hard-working, ambitious people whose goal is to put you in prison,” Bankman Freed replied, “Help the depositors.” “It’s almost irrelevant to me compared to that.” his father said.
Sam Bankman Freed’s approach to veganism shows his selflessness, his brother Gabriel Bankman Freed wrote in a letter to the judge. Sam wrote that he “loved meat,” but after seeing factory farms, he thought it was wrong to eat animals.
“He didn’t do it because he felt a sense of belonging to other living things. We didn’t have any pets, and he was not an animalistic person,” Gabriel wrote. “He did it because he believed it was the right thing to do.”
Bankman-Fried recently reorganized her defense team, firing her trial lawyer and bringing in attorneys Mark Mukasey and Torrey Young for sentencing and appeals.
This judgment filing provides a preview of the arguments Bankman Freed will make in its appeal.
Lawyers in bankruptcy proceedings say FTX could regain all of its customers in full due to fluctuations in the company’s crypto holdings and Bankman Fried’s visionary investment in artificial intelligence company Anthropic. He said it might be possible. However, his lawyers were not allowed to raise the issue at trial because the judge deemed it irrelevant. In sentencing submissions, Bankman Freed’s lawyers argued that the “best reasonable estimate” of the victims’ losses was “zero.”
Barbara Freed, a well-known legal ethics expert herself, said that attorney John J. Ray III, who took over FTX after it collapsed, is trying to direct client funds during the bankruptcy process by Bankman Freed. said it inappropriately ignored their efforts and significantly delayed the transaction. recovery process.
“When John Ray publicly lamented that FTX’s internal records were too poor to compile a customer list, Sam quickly tracked down the relevant documents and asked the Ch 11 team to show them how to access the existing list. I wrote a letter,” she wrote. “They didn’t respond to his emails.”