Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried says he “never intended to hurt anyone or take anyone’s money.”
“I never thought that what I was doing was illegal. But I tried to hold myself to a high standard, and I certainly didn’t meet that standard,” the disgraced crypto mogul told ABC News in an interview published Monday.
Bankman-Fried was convicted of seven criminal counts, including fraud and money laundering, and sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday.
“He knew it was wrong. He knew it was criminal. He regrets making a very bad bet about the likelihood of getting caught,” US District Judge Lewis Kaplan said of Bankman-Fried on Thursday.
Bankman-Fried, however, expressed remorse for his actions during his interview with ABC News.
“I’m haunted, every day, by what was lost. I never intended to hurt anyone or take anyone’s money,” Bankman-Fried told the outlet. “But I was the CEO of FTX, I was responsible for what happened to the company, and when you’re responsible, it doesn’t matter why it goes bad.”
The implosion of FTX in 2022 ruined its customers’ finances, with some saying that they lost their life savings after the crypto exchange collapsed.
“I’d give anything to be able to help repair even part of the damage. I’m doing what I can from prison, but it’s deeply frustrating not to be able to do more,” he continued.
Representative for Bankman-Fried told BI that they have no further comments on the interview.
Bankman-Fried’s legal team, who’d initially asked for a sentence of 6.5 years, said they would be filing an appeal. Before his Thursday sentencing, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers argued that prosecutors were overstating their client’s offenses.
His attorney, Marc Mukasey, further argued in a sentencing memorandum on February 27 that FTX’s victims “are poised to recover — were always poised to recover — a hundred cents on the dollar.”
In February, lawyers for FTX’s debtors told a Delaware bankruptcy court that creditors and customers can expect to be made whole, per Axios.
But FTX’s new CEO, John Ray III, has disagreed with Bankman-Fried’s claims.
In a letter filed to the New York District Court on March 20, Ray said that the only reason FTX could recover some of their assets was because they’d removed Bankman-Fried from the company.
“Mr. Bankman-Fried continues to live a life of delusion. The ‘business’ he left on November 11, 2022, was neither solvent nor safe,” Ray wrote.
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