Sam Bankman-Fried’s Trial Drama Reaches Its Final Act

The legal drama of imprisoned Sam Bankman-Fried is waiting on its last act

Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of collapsed crypto exchange FTX, is pushing his case to the U.S. Supreme Court after failing to overturn his conviction in lower courts.

His lawyers are formally asking the Supreme Court to review a decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in June that the trial judge made reasonable calls about what evidence could be presented to the jury. The Supreme Court accepts only a small share of such requests.

If the court declines to take the case—or takes it and rejects the appeal—it could effectively close the remaining path to challenge the conviction in the federal court system, leaving Bankman-Fried to serve the remainder of his sentence.

Bankman-Fried, 32, was convicted in November of fraud and conspiracy tied to the unraveling of FTX, which was once among the world’s best-known platforms for exchanging digital currency. In March, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for what prosecutors described as a massive fraud that cost customers, investors and lenders more than $10 billion.

Prosecutors said Bankman-Fried misappropriated billions of dollars, including by using money from FTX depositors to cover expenses and to support other ventures, including his trading firm Alameda Research. The case marked a dramatic reversal for a former industry figure who, before FTX’s 2022 collapse, had become a high-profile public face for crypto, including through prominent advertising and celebrity endorsements.

The latest Supreme Court filing focuses on the boundaries the trial court set around evidence and argument. According to the defense, the Second Circuit’s decision allowed the government to present evidence that customers lost “large sums of money,” while preventing Bankman-Fried from rebutting that impression by arguing there were “always more than enough assets available to repay customers,” noting that customers “now have been repaid, with substantial interest.”

Separate regulatory actions have also been part of the broader enforcement fallout from FTX’s collapse. The Securities and Exchange Commission has alleged Bankman-Fried misled investors, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission also charged him with fraud.

The Supreme Court step matters beyond Bankman-Fried’s personal legal fight because the FTX case remains one of the most consequential U.S. prosecutions to come out of the crypto industry’s boom-and-bust cycle. It helped shape how the public and policymakers view custody of customer funds, corporate controls at crypto platforms, and the legal risks facing crypto executives when exchange operations and affiliated trading firms are intertwined.

• What’s happening: Bankman-Fried is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case.
• Where it stands: A federal appeals court upheld key trial decisions in June.
• Why it matters: If the Supreme Court declines to intervene, the conviction and 25-year sentence are likely to stand as the final outcome of the federal appeals process.