Founder of FTX cryptocurrency exchange Sam Bankman-Fried was once again in the news. This time due to a fake X post that claimed US President Donald Trump has granted him pardon from his current 25-year jail term. The post went viral on social media on Saturday (July 19) and as a result, the FTX’s native crypto token FTT temporarily surged over 40% reaching $1.3. The viral post also claimed that Bankman-Fried will be released later in the evening after being granted clemency.
Who is he and what did he do?
The former “poster boy” of crypto is serving a jail term for financial fraud. He was sentenced to 25 years of jail term in 2023 after being convicted on multiple counts of wire and securities fraud. He was also convicted of money laundering in the collapse of his crypto exchange.
Bankman-Fried misappropriated customer funds worth billions of dollars deposited with the crypto exchange. According to the US Department of Justice, he defrauded FTX investors of more than $1.7 billion and defrauded lenders to his cryptocurrency trading fund Alameda of more than $1.3 billion.
The 33-year-old has been actively seeking a presidential pardon along with his parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, among others.
Other Presidential pardons
Since Trump started his second term in White House, he has granted Presidential pardon to some other offenders from the crypto industry. In March, Trump pardoned the three co-founders of BitMEX. The co-founders, Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo and Samuel Reed, along with former head of business development Gregory Dwyer, had previously pled guilty of violating the Bank Secrecy Act related to failure to maintain anti-money laundering and KYC programs.
The founders then received criminal sentences of probation of varying lengths and were ordered to pay $30 million as fines related to a lawsuit by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
In January, the President signed a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht who operated Silk Road, the dark web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold. Ulbricht was serving a life term in prison after being convicted in 2015 in New York in a narcotics and money-laundering conspiracy.