Sam Bankman-Fried, the convicted FTX co-founder serving a 25-year prison sentence, has formally applied for a presidential pardon after months of trying to make his case in public, Bloomberg has learned, referring to the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney.
- The filing moves Bankman-Fried's clemency push from media interviews into the formal Justice Department process, though President Donald Trump has often used his pardon power outside that regular channel during his second term.
- Amid the news, the price of the FTT token, the native token of the FTX crypto exchange, jumped 43% to $0.34, per CoinGecko data.
The formal pardon filing also follows Bankman-Fried's latest prison interview with Fox Business correspondent Susan Li, where he said he "absolutely" wants White House clemency.
"I assume that you would want a pardon from the White House?" Li asked. "Absolutely," Bankman-Fried replied. "It would be obviously, you know, ultimately up to the president, not up to me."
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When asked whether his parents or anyone close to him had been in contact with the administration, Bankman-Fried refused to answer directly. "I can't speak for them," he said.
- Bankman-Fried was sentenced in March 2024 to 25 years in prison.
- A jury found the FTX founder guilty of two counts of wire fraud and five counts of conspiracy tied to the collapse of FTX, the crypto exchange he founded, and Alameda Research, his trading firm.
- The court found that FTX customers lost $8 billion, FTX equity investors lost $1.7 billion and Alameda lenders lost $1.3 billion, according to Fox Business.
Bankman-Fried is still arguing that the case was unfair because FTX customers are now receiving more money back through the bankruptcy process as crypto prices recovered.
"I didn't steal user funds either," he told Fox Business. "Customers have been repaid now 170% or so on their deposits."
He called it "one of the very few cases where the platform was over-collateralized," saying customers were "more than made whole" while he still faced "dozens of years" in prison.