Sam Bankman-Fried is taking his FTX collapse saga to its highest possible court. The former crypto executive has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence, according to a petition reviewed by The New York Times.
The appeal faces steep odds. The Supreme Court says it accepts and hears arguments in roughly 1% of the cases submitted during each term, making review far from automatic.
At the center of the petition is a disputed question about FTX customers: whether Bankman-Fried should have been allowed to argue that they ultimately suffered no financial loss.
His lawyers say there were “always more than enough assets available to repay customers (as they now have been repaid, with substantial interest),” and argue that the Supreme Court review is “urgently necessary.”
Prosecutors see the issue very differently. At sentencing, the Justice Department said Bankman-Fried orchestrated a scheme that involved misappropriating billions of dollars belonging to FTX customers. The government’s case did not depend on whether those customers were eventually repaid.
And the criminal case went beyond customer funds. Prosecutors also accused Bankman-Fried of defrauding FTX investors of $1.7 billion and Alameda Research lenders of another $1.3 billion. Those amounts were separate from customer deposits.
The eventual repayments came through FTX’s bankruptcy process, which valued customer claims in U.S. dollars based on November 2022 prices. At the time, Bitcoin was trading at roughly $16,000.
Sam Bankman-Fried Is Also Fighting an $11 Billion Bill
The Supreme Court petition takes aim at another part of the punishment: an $11 billion forfeiture. Bankman-Fried’s attorneys describe the amount as a “crushing fine” and argue that it violates the Eighth Amendment’s protections against excessive fines.
The legal campaign does not stop there. Sam Bankman-Fried has also sought clemency from U.S. President Donald Trump, submitting an application in June. The Office of the Pardon Attorney still lists the request as pending, although the filing categorizes it as a pardon to be granted after completion of his sentence.
That designation is striking for someone facing more than two decades behind bars. Trump had already said in January that he would not consider pardoning Bankman-Fried, according to The New York Times. In July, the Senate unanimously rejected clemency in a separate vote.
Bankman-Fried’s political history adds another layer to the story. He donated nearly $40 million during the 2021–22 election cycle, making him the second-largest donor to Democrats after George Soros, according to OpenSecrets.
FTX itself once looked almost untouchable. Bankman-Fried launched the exchange in 2019 and helped turn it into a company valued at $32 billion, boosted by aggressive marketing, celebrity endorsements and stadium naming rights.
Then, in November 2022, the image cracked. FTX entered a liquidity crisis after reports emerged that customer funds had been used to cover losses at Alameda Research, the trading firm Bankman-Fried also founded.
He was arrested in the Bahamas the following month. A year later, after a month-long trial in Manhattan, a jury convicted him on fraud charges and related offenses.
In June, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction. Bankman-Fried has continued to maintain that he is innocent, although he withdrew a motion seeking a new trial earlier this year.
Now the Supreme Court has the final say on whether the case gets another courtroom. So far, it has offered no indication that it plans to take it.