Bankman-Fried Worked on Math, Was Not a Predator: Lawyer

Sam Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF in the digital asset space, was sentenced to 25 years behind bars, and his defense attorney, Marc Mukasey, told the court that the disgraced crypto entrepreneur is “misunderstood” and wasn’t driven by predation or malice.

According to the speech posted by Inner City Press on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), Mukasey said that Bankman-Fried did not want to “inflict pain on anyone in any way” and made “decisions with math in his head, not malice in his heart,” while adding:

“He’s an awkward math nerd. He’s into veganism. He has an off-the-chart intellect. He is a beautiful puzzle. He can parse words better than a Talmudic scholar. He was a billionaire unconcerned about material possessions.”

The lawyer said that SBF’s mother, Barbara Fried, “says he is misunderstood,” while adding that it is easy for people to consider him “an old-fashioned story of the greedy swindler.” However, she noted that SBF never “scurried away with money” and “stayed to the end.”

Mukasey further added that Bankman-Fried never “wanted to be the king of crypto” but only sought to impact the world positively.

“At the end of the day, it looks like customers will finally get paid, current value of assets. It’s true for lenders and investors as well. I guess I wish I had been able to do more to help that, I think I failed at that. I’m not sure why, but I do think I did,” said Bankman-Fried.

On the other hand, FTX Exchange has been selling its possessions over the past few months in order to repay its creditors and customers.