- SBF lawyers have a challenging time ahead convincing a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit US Court of Appeals after a District Judge sentenced him to 20 years.
- The SBF legal team will have another long-short with the US Supreme Court if the Court of Appeals does not rule in his favor.
The recent sentencing of former FTX boss, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), to 25 years largely provided needed relief to the victims as he was ordered to pay $11 billion in forfeiture for the massive fraud. However, SBF and his legal team, with the advice from his parents, are not willing to go down without a fight despite the lenient sentencing.
Furthermore, the legal team has cited unfair sentencing based on the fact that former Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao alias CZ is facing a maximum of 18 months and a fine of $4.3 billion. The argument has been downplayed by most experts since CZ did not misappropriate user funds unlike SBF, who threw away the cryptocurrency exchange.
SBF Lawyers Files Notice of Appeal
On Thursday, the SBF legal team, led by Alexandra Shapiro, filed a notice of appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from the recent judgment by District Court Judge Lewis A Kaplan. Notably, SBF was sentenced on March 28, 2024, after the Judge highlighted that he did not show any remorse to the victim.
As a result, the SBF legal team has an uphill task to convince a three Judge panel at the 2nd Circuit US Court of Appeals in Manhattan that he was wrongly sentenced. If he loses in the 2nd Circuit US Court of Appeals, SBF and his legal team will have one more chance with the United States Supreme Court, which has a slim chance of being overthrown.
Moreover, Judge Kaplan noted that there is a risk that SBF will be in a position to do something very bad in the future based on the resources and knowledge at hand. Already, hundreds of millions of dollars were siphoned from the FTX account the day before SBF filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Additionally, SBF could easily create a meme coin through multi-chain smart contracts and rug-pull the users for revenge.
What Next for FTX Customers
Meanwhile, FTX customers are awaiting the sentencing of the other executives who pleaded guilty but aided in the SBF case. Notably, Ryan Salame is due to be sentenced on May 28, while the dates for Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang are yet to be disclosed.
As Crypto News Flash previously reported, FTX has been liquidating its assets including from Grayscale holdings in a bid to repay the distressed customers.
FTT Price Action
Following the announcement, FTX native coin FTT rallied about 3 percent to trade around $1.69 on Friday. The small-cap altcoin has a fully diluted valuation of about $548 million and an average 24-hour trading volume of about $45 million. Interestingly, FTT has a liquidity of over $130k on Pancakeswap v2 and over 700 holders.
