How long could Sam Bankman-Fried go to jail for? Crypto lawyers weigh in

“I think he’ll get the maximum sentence” — one lawyer predicts the former FTX CEO could look at life behind bars if convicted of all seven charges.

FTX founder Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried, once described as the “golden boy” of crypto, is set to stare down a jury next week for his role in the collapse of his $32-billion crypto exchange.

After a jury selection process on Oct. 3, the trial begins in earnest on Oct. 4, with Bankman-Fried facing seven charges. If found guilty on all counts, he faces a maximum sentence of 115 years in prison.

However, the judge won’t likely go easy on him, crypto lawyers told Cointelegraph.

In mid-November last year, Bankman-Fried suffered one of the most rapid and public reputational declines of all time when his crypto exchange and its sister hedge fund, Alameda Research, collapsed and filed for bankruptcy, leaving a $10-billion hole in its wake.

Life behind bars?

Now less than a week out from the trial, Michael Kanovitz, a partner at Loevy & Loevy law firm, told Cointelegraph that things don’t look particularly good for Bankman-Fried.

He predicts that if the government finds him guilty of committing fraud, he’s likely looking at spending the rest of his life behind bars.

Kanovitz also noted that courts reserve some discretion to be lenient during sentencing if the defendant “behaves themself” before the court. However, Kanovitz believes Bankman-Fried hasn’t been doing that.

Kanovitz explained that government prosecutors are likely aware that they won’t be able to prove that Bankman-Fried was personally involved in every aspect of the FTX and Alameda violations, which is where the conspiracy charges come in.

However, if the prosecution can prove the conspiracy allegations, Bankman-Fried will be on the hook for the full brunt of the charges, he said.

“Whatever actions others took to achieve those illegal goals, the law treats it as if Bankman-Fried had done those things himself,” Kanovitz said.

SBF’s likely defense

Commercial litigator Joe Carlasare argues that Bankman-Fried’s lawyers are already running a “distraction and confusion playbook.”

Similarly, Kanovitz said that the defense will seek to wrap SBF in a cloak of incompetence and uncertainty by claiming that the other major custodians were doing similar things to FTX and that rules governing crypto were so unclear that he couldn’t knowingly violate them.

“He’ll bring forward evidence that other major crypto custodians were doing essentially the same thing and so he thought it was ok, which is the legal equivalent of telling the teacher, ‘But CZ [Changpeng Zhao] was doing it, too!’”

Ultimately, however, Kanovitz predicts that these defenses will fall short, regardless of whether there are shadows of truth contained within them, saying:

“How are you going to convince a jury of regular people that a man who built a multibillion-dollar fortune for himself was merely a bumbler when it came to taking care of other people’s money?”

And finishing by adding:

“In that sense, he’ll be a victim of his own success.”