Sam Bankman-Fried Experienced 'Trial By Media'? FTX Co-founder Appeals Conviction

Jailed FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried has filed an appeal to overturn his conviction that resulted in a 25-year sentence. His lawyers argued that he was already presumed guilty "by the media" even before he was charged.

In court documents filed Friday, SBF's lawyers said "everyone rushed to judgment" following the spectacular collapse of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange their client co-founded and led before its fall in 2022.

A Scoop from the Media

The late 2022 fall of FTX started from a CoinDesk scoop that revealed most of the assets held by FTX's sister company Alameda Research, were of tokens controlled by FTX insiders (such as FTT) instead of fiat or other cryptocurrencies that have already been tested by time.

The scoop triggered a wave of asset pullouts from the once-mighty exchange, forcing it to become insolvent. Just over a week after the CoinDesk story's publication, FTX declared bankruptcy. Notably, rival Binance initially offered a buyout to save FTX from its liquidity crisis.

Changpeng Zhao's Binance pulled out just a day after it announced the acquisition plan following a due diligence check on FTX's business. Bankman-Fried was arrested about a month later in the Bahamas.

What followed was a crypto winter after several other crypto firms exposed to FTX went downhill. SBF, as he was fondly called in the cryptocurrency community, a former crypto darling who presented himself as a visionary, was sentenced to 25 years late in March on multiple fraud-related charges over FTX's collapse.

On Friday, his lawyers filed an appeal to overturn his conviction, demanding a new judge as he purportedly didn't get a fair trial before he was found guilty of fraud.

An Apparent 'Trial by Media'?

SBF's lawyers argued that every person accused of crimes in the United States deserved a fair trial by a jury. However, Bankman-Fried allegedly didn't get the fair trial and instead experienced a "sentence first-verdict afterwards" kind of trial.

"Sam Bankman-Fried was never presumed innocent. He was presumed guilty—before he was even charged. He was presumed guilty by the media," his lawyers wrote in the Friday filing.

His lawyers also said the jury was only allowed to see "half the picture" and their client was supposedly convicted on a "false narrative."

The FTX saga and everything that followed after Bankman-Fried's arrest was widely covered by not only crypto-centric outlets but also mainstream media. The Associated Press referred to the FTX collapse as a "colossal failure," BBC News called SBF a "fallen" Crypto King who "defrauded" investors, and The New York Times referred to the ex-crypto darling as "a symbol of crypto's excesses." In general, the focus of many stories was on the victims who lost billions due to FTX's collapse.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan noted how the fallen crypto tycoon showed no "real remorse" throughout the trial and called SBF "brazen" for the crimes committed that led to the investor-victims' losses.

X Users React to SBF Appeal

Responding to the lawyers' claim that the jury didn't see all of the aspects of the issue, one user said "the other half is the unaccounted for billions of dollars and lots of Democrat donations."

Author John Hawkins seemed to agree, saying that if SBF's lawyers' claims were true, "it's only because he got away with a lot of theft that they don't even know about."

One user said that while he can't speak on behalf of the jury that listened to the presentations of the SBF defense and the prosecution, "it doesn't take me very long at all to recognize a snake when I see one."

Meanwhile, FTX's new management said earlier this year that initial plans for a re-launch have been scrapped and the exchange will instead liquidate all of its assets for the purpose of customer repayment.