Cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried has asked Donald Trump for a pardon.
The 34-year-old FTX founder is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for planning a fraud scheme that cost investors, lenders and customers $11bn (£8.7bn).
On Monday, he sent an official request to the US president asking for his sentence to be commuted through the department of justice (DoJ).
The current status of the request is listed as “pending”. Mr Trump, in an interview with The New York Times in January, said he did not plan to issue a pardon to Bankman-Fried.
The US president made the comments after the crypto fraudster’s parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, apparently made their own efforts to secure a pardon for their son.
Mr Bankman and Ms Fried had reportedly been meeting members of Mr Trump’s inner circle in an effort to convince him to commute their son’s sentence.
Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried have been trying to secure a pardon for their son – AP Photo/Seth Wenig
Bankman-Fried denied the offences but was found guilty of syphoning off billions of dollars in customer funds from FTX to fund high-risk investments and luxury purchases.
Since taking office in 2025, Mr Trump has pardoned a number of white-collar criminals, most recently Stephen Buyer, a former Republican congressman from Indiana, who was convicted of insider trading.
Bankman-Fried, known as SBF, became a billionaire before age 30 and turned FTX, a small start-up he co-founded in 2019, into the world’s second-largest crypto exchange platform at one point worth $32bn (£24bn).
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried at his sentencing hearing at the Federal Court in New York City, 2024 – REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg
But in November 2022, Bankman-Fried it was revealed billions of dollars had been illegally moved from FTX to the 34-year-old’s personal hedge fund, Alameda Research.
The cryptocurrency business, which enjoyed celebrity endorsements from the likes of Tom Brady, the American football star, was the second-biggest cryptocurrency exchange before its collapse.
FTX filed for bankruptcy in late 2022 after the multibillion-dollar black hole was uncovered in its accounts, and Bankman-Fried was quickly arrested in the Bahamas before being extradited to the US.
He was convicted by a federal jury in New York in November 2023 on seven counts of fraud, embezzlement and criminal conspiracy.
He has appealed his conviction.
