Sam Bankman-Fried requests pardon from Donald Trump for 25-year FTX fraud sentence

Sam Bankman-Fried has formally asked Donald Trump for a pardon, according to reports from the BBC and The Independent. The request comes nearly two years after the founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Bankman-Fried, once one of the most prominent figures in crypto, was found guilty on seven criminal counts tied to the misuse of customer money and the collapse of FTX, which prosecutors said wiped out billions of dollars in customer assets. He was sentenced in March 2024 and is currently serving his term in federal prison.

The pardon application is the latest attempt by Bankman-Fried to avoid or reduce the consequences of his conviction. He has already been pursuing an appeal, and the new request places him among a small number of high-profile defendants who have sought clemency from Trump, who has the power to pardon federal crimes.

The move also revives attention on one of the biggest financial scandals in recent U.S. history. FTX’s collapse triggered a wider crisis in the crypto industry and left customers, investors, and creditors fighting over recovered assets through the bankruptcy process. The case became a symbol of the risks and failures that accompanied the industry’s rapid rise.

It is not clear how far the pardon bid will go, and neither report indicates any public response from Trump. But the filing ensures that Bankman-Fried’s case remains in the political spotlight as well as the legal one, with his fate still tied to both the courts and the possibility of presidential clemency.