"Give back every penny": Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty on FTX fraud with a potential 115 serving time, netizens demand donation money back

FTX and Alameda Research founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, once considered a "Crypto King" is now facing up to 115 years in prison. The 31-year-old had previously pleaded not guilty to the seven charges he was facing. However, he was convicted of all the money laundering, fraud, and conspiracy criminal charges he faced, by a New York court on Thursday, November 2, 2023. Bankman-Fried's sentencing is scheduled for March 28, 2024.

Netizens were mad when they found out that he was found guilty of stealing FTX customer funds and using those for donations. People claimed that they wanted every single cent of the donations he made to be returned to them. They took to X, formerly Twitter, to comment about the same, with one person even saying:

Netizens wanted Bankman-Fried's donations gone (Image via X/@CollinRugg)

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Netizens want Sam Bankman-Fried's political donations to be taken away

As mentioned earlier, netizens were furious with Sam Bankman-Fried and they wanted all the money he donated to election campaigns to be forcefully taken from him. Some even pointed fingers at the Democrats who allegedly received millions of dollars in donations from Sam Bankman-Fried.

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Sam Bankman-Fried and the corruption as old as time

The jury decided whether or not Sam Bankman-Fried was guilty or not took four and a half hours on Thursday night to deliberate his conviction. They eventually came to a decision, declaring him guilty and convicting him of all seven counts that he was charged with.

According to a Wired live case update by Lily Hay Newman, Bankman-Fried showed no "visible sign of emotion" once the jury revealed their findings. Both his parents looked extremely devastated, holding their heads and then each other. It is worth noting that the 31-year-old's lawyer parents had maintained his innocence throughout the proceedings.

Wired's Lily Hay Newman spoke about the scene when Bankman-Fried was taken away. She said that he looked back at his parents and acknowledged them with a "small, resigned nod.

"His mother pounded her hand against her heart once, producing a thump that could be heard around the emptying courtroom as Bankman-Fried was led out," Lucy added.

In a briefing that followed the verdicts, Southern District of New York U.S. attorney, Damian Williams said that Bankman-Fried had perpetrated "one of the biggest financial frauds in American history". CNBC quoted him as declaring:

"While the cryptocurrency industry might be new and the players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new, this kind of corruption is as old as time."

He added that the case was always about "lying, cheating, and stealing," that they had no patience for it.

The FTX scandal came to light in November 2022, when what looked like an accounting oversight turned out to be pure fraud. It completely shook the rising world of cryptocurrency, a shake it has still not recovered from. Customers and investors who entrusted their money to FTX lost billions of dollars.

Turmoil simply kept on piling up when it was eventually revealed that customers were being defrauded to support Bankman-Fried's Alameda Research hedge fund. This money was then used to issue monumental political donations, corporate sponsorships, real estate deals, and venture investments, and to cover the hedge fund's losses during the plunge of crypto prices.

Sam Bankman-Fried was accused of allegedly misappropriating $10 billion from FDX customers without consent. He was hit with and convicted of seven counts of charges.

The first two charges were wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, for giving FTX money to Alameda Research, thereby defrauding FTX customers. The next two charges were wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. However, unlike the previous couple, these two charges were for manipulating balance sheets sent to companies that looked forward to sending millions of dollars in borrowed funds to Alameda.

The last three charges were conspiracy to commit securities fraud against FTX’s investors, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud against FTX customers, and Conspiracy to commit money laundering to the fullest extent. All these charges add up to a potential jail time of 115 years. However, Coin Desk experts predicted that in reality, Bankman-Fried might receive 20-30 years of jail time.