FTX fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried wants President Donald Trump to let him off the hook.
The 34-year-old crypto poster boy turned convicted felon is currently serving 25 years behind bars and was ordered to turn over $11 billion after misusing investors’ funds.
He has applied for a “pardon after completion of sentence” with the Justice Department’s Pardon Attorney’s Office, which is currently pending, DoJ filings reveal.
He spoke to Fox Business on Wednesday, where he was asked whether he would be open to a pardon from Trump.
“Absolutely,” he said. “It would be, obviously, you know, ultimately up to the president, not up to me.
He said he hadn’t spoken to Trump himself, but when he was asked whether anyone—such as friends or family—had done so on his behalf, he said: “I can’t speak for them.”
Trump told The New York Times in January that he had no intention of pardoning Bankman-Fried.
He was found guilty of two counts of wire fraud and five counts of conspiracy in 2024.
It came two years after FTX collapsed, when a sudden withdrawal of funds revealed the misuse of investors’ money. It ultimately led to FTX’s rapid descent into bankruptcy and the exposure of Bankman-Fried’s crimes, which he still denies.
Bloomberg reports that in all, it cost investors, lenders, and customers more than $10 billion. That money has now been paid back.
Since his incarceration, the fraudster’s X account has posted messages sucking up to Trump, writing last month, “S&P 500 hit another ATH yesterday: 7,365. +22.8 percent since [Trump’s] second inauguration. How about same point in Biden’s term? +7.0 percent.”
Another from March said, “Crypto is the future of AI-native payments. And [Trump] is the first president to see the national strategic potential of both crypto and AI.”
Still, Bankman-Fried denies any wrongdoing.
“I didn’t steal user funds either,” he told Fox. “Customers have been repaid now 170 percent or so on their deposits. It’s one of the very few cases where the platform was over-collateralized, where customers were more than made whole. And yet there was, you know, not just a criminal investigation, but a prosecution. And, you know, dozens of years of sentence[s].”
“I can only tell you what I think and, you know, ultimately, customers have been repaid again nearly twice what they had on the platform,” he added. “And it’s a great disservice to them that it has taken three years.”
He even used the interview to suck up to former first buddy Elon Musk, who Trump has said is back in the fold after the pair’s explosive breakup last year.
“I think SpaceX has extremely large potential,” Bankman-Fried said. “There are some parallels here where… frankly, there are very few companies that are well positioned to play a large role in the space industry.
“It’s one of those very few companies and I foresee it having an extremely large amount of upside, you know, even from where it is today, let alone where it was when we invested. And, you know, very few people have been able to grow companies like Elon has.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Department of Justice for comment.
