Sam Bankman Fried

A 25-year FTX-fraud sentence now anchors coverage that has shifted from trial accountability to failed appeals, retrial efforts, and a presidential-pardon bid.

Who they are

Sam Bankman-Fried is the FTX co-founder at the center of coverage of the crypto exchange’s collapse and the movement of customer funds to Alameda. Stories connect him most closely to FTX, Alameda Research, the DOJ, the Bahamas, Binance, and former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, with the legal case defining his public role.

The recent arc

The coverage’s high point came with the FTX collapse in late 2022, then moved through the 2023 criminal trial: a jury found Bankman-Fried guilty on all seven fraud and money-laundering counts in November 2023. The next decisive phase was sentencing in March 2024, when a U.S. judge imposed 25 years in prison and ordered more than $11 billion in forfeiture over the FTX fraud.

The recent arc

Recent coverage has revived around post-conviction efforts rather than new revelations about FTX’s failure. In 2026, he sought a retrial, withdrew that request, saw the court reject it, and then lost his bid to overturn the conviction and sentence. Bloomberg also reported a formal presidential-pardon application, while New York Magazine’s prison interview tied his serialized memoir, Manfred, to public praise for Donald Trump and an asserted shift to the Republican Party.

The tension

The core tension is between a finality-driven fraud case and Bankman-Fried’s continuing attempt to recast or reopen it. His conviction rests in a story involving FTX and Alameda, while Caroline Ellison’s cooperation and testimony remained a major part of the narrative; the recent appeal, retrial, and pardon activity tests how much room remains after a jury verdict and 25-year sentence.

Why it matters

If this trajectory continues, Bankman-Fried’s coverage will remain a test case for whether the FTX collapse ends as a settled accountability story or persists through political and post-conviction channels. The failed court challenges point toward limited judicial avenues in the near term, but the pardon effort and his own public interventions create a separate, less predictable source of attention beyond the crypto industry itself.

Related: FTX · Alameda · Alameda Research · A jury finds Sam Bankman-Fried guilty on all seven counts of fraud and · A US judge sentences Sam Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison for steal