Summary
- Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX founder serving 25 years for fraud, has formally applied for a presidential pardon.
- The former crypto billionaire recently expressed support for Trump from prison despite previously donating heavily to Democratic campaigns.
- Trump said in January he did not plan to pardon Bankman-Fried, who was convicted of orchestrating one of history’s largest financial frauds.
AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former crypto billionaire who orchestrated one of the largest financial frauds in history, officially asked President Donald Trump for a pardon, according to the Justice Department’s website.
Bankman-Fried, 34, co-founded the disgraced crypto exchange FTX and was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024. Bankman-Fried’s application with the Justice Department, first reported by Bloomberg, is for a “pardon after completion of sentence.”
Such a pardon would not erase Bankman-Fried’s conviction but would instead restore certain civil liberties — such as the right to vote or to serve on a jury — after he serves out his prison sentence, according to the DOJ’s website. The pardon would also lift barriers to licensing, employment, housing or education, if granted.
As CEO of FTX, Bankman-Fried became one of the largest donors to Democratic campaigns and causes. However, while serving in federal prison, he has posted support of the Trump administration on social media. In an interview with Fox Business published on Monday, Bankman-Fried said he “absolutely” wants a presidential pardon.
According to the DOJ’s website, Bankman-Fried submitted his pardon request sometime in 2026, though the exact date is not publicly listed.
A White House spokesperson declined CNN’s request for comment but pointed to a January interview Trump gave to the New York Times, in which he said he wouldn’t pardon Bankman-Fried.
Bankman-Fried was once known as a cryptocurrency whiz kid, and his company FTX was valued at $32 billion at its peak. But his empire began to crumble in 2022 when FTX filed for bankruptcy after experiencing billions of dollars in net withdrawals, fueling panic in the crypto industry.
Prosecutors alleged that Bankman-Fried had secretly diverted billions of dollars in customer funds from FTX to his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, where the funds were used for risky investments, political donations, and real estate purchases, among other things.
Bankman-Fried was convicted of multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy, including wire fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
As part of his sentence, Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Bankman-Fried to forfeit more than $11 billion in assets and proceeds tied to the fraud.
When announcing the sentence in 2024, Kaplan said there was a risk “that this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future, and it’s not a trivial risk.”
