SBF prison experiment: Second instance appeal rejected, amnesty application hopeless, still insisting not guilty and seeking release from prison
Comparatively, according to an in-depth report in “New York” magazine, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is currently in custody at the Lompoc federal prison in California and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud and conspiracy in March 2024. On June 12 of this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected its formal appeal, further reducing its legal remedy space; in the same month, the SBF officially submitted a presidential amnesty application. According to Polymarket data, the probability that it will be pardoned before 2027 is about 14%.
At the level of the prison campaign, SBF's parents have hired two Republican lobbyists to lobby the Trump administration. Her mother, Barbara Freed, continues to post complaints on Substack, and the anonymous website freesbf.org and several X accounts are also building momentum for them. However, Trump made it clear earlier this year that he did not plan to pardon the SBF, and Cynthia Ramis, a well-known pro-crypto member of the Republican Party, also publicly opposed it, and its political prospects are not optimistic. It is worth comparing that CZ, who was also convicted of money laundering, has been pardoned by Trump. One reason is that its trading platform supports the Trump family's crypto project World Liberty Financial.
SBF in prison maintained a great deal of writing and legal activity: serializing the memoir “Manfred” in prison, and writing where the money went documents to try to prove that FTX was solvent at the time and filed a motion for a new trial on its own behalf (which was rejected). He insisted that approximately $8 billion in lost customer funds stemmed from unintentional accounting omissions rather than deliberate fraud, and pointed out that the FTX bankruptcy process has so far repaid victims more than $10 billion. At the same time, he actively showed goodwill to Trump, posted pro-Republican content through his father's X account, and was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. For this reason, he was imprisoned for a while.
In terms of life in prison, SBF lost about 30 pounds, insisted on a vegan diet, played about 6,000 pixel dungeon games every day, taught chess lessons, was obsessed with pickleball, and chose independence by refusing to join a racing team of any race. According to former inmates, he helped many inmates prepare legal documents. He was well liked by inmates, and was hailed as a peaceful person with a counterintuitive attitude. SBF's biggest fear is not to serve a long time in prison, but to train his brain to only search for Oreo's neurons during his long prison term, which is to lose the ability to think and influence the outside world.
