Sam Bankman-Fried asks Supreme Court to overturn fraud conviction and $11 billion forfeiture

Sam Bankman-Fried has filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his fraud conviction and a forfeiture of $11 billion.

Bankman-Fried, who co-founded and led now-defunct crypto exchange FTX, is serving a 25-year prison sentence after a jury convicted him on seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering for orchestrating a multibillion-dollar scheme to misappropriate customer funds and defraud investors and lenders.

The petition argues the trial court blocked Bankman-Fried from showing that “FTX and Alameda, while temporarily illiquid, held sufficient assets to ultimately make investors and customers whole,” and that “there were always more than enough assets available to repay customers (as they now have been repaid, with substantial interest).”

Bankman-Fried also claims that the order to forfeit $11 billion violates the 8th Amendment, which bars excessive fines.

Kousisis ruling

In June, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the conviction, relying on the Supreme Court's 2025 decision in Kousisis v. United States that ruled an action can constitute wire fraud without the intent of net economic harm. This rejected Bankman-Fried's no-loss argument.

The first question presented in the petition asks: “In a prosecution under the ‘fraudulent inducement’ theory of fraud—under which it is irrelevant whether victims suffered any financial losses—when, if ever, may the trial court admit evidence indicating whether victims suffered such losses?”

The petition answered that such evidence should have been excluded, and that it was an error to allow the government to suggest large customer losses while forbidding the defense from showing customers were repaid. 

The Supreme Court is expected to decide later this year whether to hear the case, according to CNN.