Crypto whiz faces daunting jail term

Bloomberg

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of cryptocurrency currency exchange FTX, could be sentenced for up to 115 years in prison if he is convicted on eight charges filed by the US Department of Justice, though he is unlikely to be sentenced to that long a term.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Securities Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have been working "around the clock" to unravel what happened in "one of the biggest financial frauds in American history," Manhattan US attorney Damian Williams said.

The SEC and the CFTC sued Bankman-Fried separately on Tuesday for his alleged role in the collapse of FTX.

White-collar defendants, if convicted, rarely serve statutory maximum sentences.

"Fraud is fraud," FBI New York assistant director Michael Driscoll also said on Tuesday. "It does not matter the complexity of the investment scheme, it does not matter the amount of money involved."

Bankman-Fried, 30, was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday and is accused of misusing billions of dollars in customer money to prop up his Alameda Research crypto fund and influence US public policy, Williams said.

The FTX founder faces two counts of wire fraud, two of wire fraud conspiracy and one of the money-laundering charges. Each carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.