Bankman-Fried Seeks Supreme Court Review of Conviction

Sam Bankman-Fried filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday seeking review of his 2023 fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence. His lawyer, Stanford law professor Jeffrey Fisher, confirmed the filing.

A petition for certiorari is a request that the Supreme Court agree to hear a case; it does not start an appellate hearing. The court may deny such petitions without oral argument.

Bankman-Fried was convicted by a jury in November 2023. In March, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced him to 25 years in prison and ordered an $11 billion forfeiture tied to the collapse of FTX and Alameda Research.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected Bankman-Fried’s appeal on June 12. The appellate court upheld the trial judge’s decision to exclude evidence that FTX might later have repaid customers, writing, “FTX customers were defrauded as soon as Bankman-Fried transferred their money to Alameda regardless of how strongly he believed he might later return the money.”

The certiorari petition was submitted within the 90-day window that followed issuance of the appellate court mandate.

The criminal petition does not affect the administration of the FTX bankruptcy estate. Repayments to creditors and the processing of claims continue under the bankruptcy court. Many customer classes have already recovered claims valued at November 2022 levels.

Bankman-Fried also has a pending clemency application with the executive branch, a separate process that has not produced public action.

The Supreme Court receives thousands of certiorari petitions each term and accepts only a small fraction for review. Most petitions are denied months after filing, typically in brief order without detailed explanation.

If the justices decline to take the case, the conviction, sentence and forfeiture will remain in place subject to any remaining administrative or executive remedies.