‘I’d change places with him’ says crypto crook Sam Bankman-Fried’s mother as lawyer seeks just five years

He is the crypto billionaire who is facing up to 110 years behind bars after ‘one of the biggest financial frauds in American history’.

But in a last-ditch bid for clemency ahead of sentencing next month, Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents and legal team are begging the judge to show mercy.

Branding him a ‘selfless’ and ‘altruistic’ man who has ‘committed his life to philanthropy’, his lawyer Marc Mukasey said he should get as little as five-and-a-half years and no more than six-and-a-half. 

In a letter to US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, his law professor parents Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried said they feared for his life in prison.

‘His father and I face the very real possibility that we will not live long enough to see him freed,’ his mother wrote.

‘I would gladly change places with him if I could.’

Bankman-Fried was accused of raiding FTX depositors’ accounts to make risky bets, repay loans and buy property, leaving an £6billion hole in the company’s balance sheet when it collapsed into bankruptcy in 2022, with customers unable to withdraw funds.

Known as ‘SBF’, he had cultivated celebrity and high-profile political relationships, including with Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, but was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in November last year after the collapse of the exchange.

His legal team this week branded the 100-year sentence that has been recommended by probation officers as ‘grotesque’ and ‘barbaric’.