Back
SBF fails to overturn fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence

SBF fails to overturn fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence

A federal appeals court upheld Sam Bankman-Fried’s conviction, sentence, forfeiture and supervised release, rejecting arguments that his trial was unfair or that FTX’s assets could have covered customer withdrawals.

Fact Check
Three independent reports dated 2026-06-12 (BlockBeats citing Reuters, and X posts from WatcherGuru and ZeroHedge both citing Reuters) consistently state that Sam Bankman-Fried lost his appeal and that his fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence were upheld. This is consistent with the documented appeal timeline: the Second Circuit heard arguments on his retrial/appeal motion in November 2025 (CoinDesk, Courthouse News). The convergence of multiple Reuters-attributed reports on the same date strongly supports the claim. Confidence is medium rather than high because the primary Reuters article was not directly fetched, but corroboration is robust.
Summary

Sam Bankman-Fried failed to overturn his fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence after a three-judge panel of the Manhattan-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict on June 12, rejecting his arguments that the trial was unfair. The court said the case against him was “conservatively stated, robust” and agreed with trial judge Lewis Kaplan’s decision to exclude arguments that FTX had sufficient assets to cover customer withdrawals. The ruling leaves intact his November 2023 conviction, March 2024 sentence, $11 billion forfeiture and three years of supervised release.

Terms & Concepts
  • forfeiture: A court-ordered surrender of money or assets connected to a crime.
  • habeas petition: A legal filing that challenges the lawfulness of a person’s detention or imprisonment.
  • proof-of-reserves: A method used by exchanges to show they hold assets matching customer balances.