Gary Wang, who was a close friend and colleague of the disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, on Wednesday avoided prison time for his role in the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange after he cooperated with U.S. prosecutors.
Mr. Wang is the second key cooperating witness in the FTX case to receive a sentence that does not involve any prison time. Instead, a federal judge sentenced him to three years of supervised release.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who has presided over the case, told Mr. Wang that he deserved a “world of credit” for the extent of his cooperation. “You immediately did the right thing,” Judge Kaplan said.
Weeks after FTX failed in 2022, Mr. Wang, now 31, pleaded guilty to participating in the theft of $8 billion from the exchange’s customers. He agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, and testified for the government at the 2023 trial of Mr. Bankman-Fried, whom Mr. Wang had known since they were teenagers.
Mr. Bankman-Fried was found guilty on seven counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He has appealed the conviction.
Before Mr. Wang’s sentencing, his lawyers requested that he serve no prison time, while prosecutors also called for leniency.
Mr. Wang is the last of FTX’s top executives to receive a sentence. In September, Caroline Ellison, a crucial figure in the fraud who was also Mr. Bankman-Fried’s on-and-off girlfriend, was sentenced to two years in prison. Nishad Singh, another top FTX executive, received no prison time last month, after the judge in the case praised his cooperation with prosecutors. A fifth executive, Ryan Salame, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for campaign finance fraud.
On Wednesday, Mr. Wang told Judge Kaplan during his sentencing hearing in federal court in Manhattan that he was “deeply sorry” for the role he played in the FTX fraud and the impact it had on the exchange’s customers.
“There are so many things I could have done differently,” Mr. Wang said in a brief statement. He added that he regretted the choices he made and would try to make amends for what he did for the rest of his life.
Ilan Graff, one of his lawyers, who spoke shortly before Mr. Wang, said his client never personally profited from the fraud at FTX or changed his lifestyle in any way.
Among the executives caught up in the FTX fraud, Mr. Wang had one of the longest-standing connections to Mr. Bankman-Fried. They met at a high school math camp and became classmates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they joined the same fraternity.
In 2017, Mr. Wang helped Mr. Bankman-Fried run Alameda Research, a crypto trading firm based in Berkeley, Calif., and later moved with him to Hong Kong to start FTX. Known for his quiet demeanor, Mr. Wang was FTX’s chief technical expert, designing the computer code that powered the company’s popular crypto trading platform.
In that role, Mr. Wang put in place code that helped enable Mr. Bankman-Fried’s fraud, allowing Alameda to borrow virtually unlimited amounts of customer funds from FTX.
After FTX imploded, Mr. Wang traveled to New York to begin working with prosecutors. In a memo to the court, the government called his cooperation “outstanding” and “remarkable.” In addition to his trial testimony, the memo said, Mr. Wang built a computer tool that the government has begun using to detect potential fraud by publicly traded companies.
In another memo submitted to the court, Mr. Wang’s lawyers argued that he had a “limited role” in the FTX fraud and noted that he had pleaded guilty to fewer counts than the other conspirators.
“Gary wants nothing more than to lead a quiet life, in which he continues to try to right the wrong in which he participated,” his lawyers wrote.
Mr. Wang has started a family and begun to rebuild his career, the memo said. In January 2023, he married another former FTX employee, Cheryl Chen. Last year, he also began working full time as a software engineer at Polycam, a company that makes 3-D imaging technology.
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