Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, arrives at court as lawyers push to persuade the judge overseeing his fraud case not to jail him ahead of trial, at a courthouse in New York, August 11, 2023.
Eduardo Munoz | Reuters
The judges in a federal appeals court in New York on Tuesday were skeptical of arguments by a lawyer for Sam Bankman-Fried that his conviction for a multi-billion-dollar fraud related to his cryptocurrency exchange FTX and an associated hedge fund should be tossed out.
Bankman-Fried’s attorney, Alexandra Shapiro, was almost immediately and then repeatedly interrupted by the three-judge panel on the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals as she tried to make her case that SBF deserved a new trial because the first one was “fundamentally unfair.”
“From my reading of the record, [there was] very substantial evidence of guilt,” Judge Barringon Parker told Shapiro.
“Are you seriously suggesting to us that if your client had been able to testify about the role that attorneys played in preparing these various documents, the not-guilty verdicts would have rolled in?” Parker asked, as Bankman-Fried’s parents looked on from the courtroom gallery.
Bankman-Fried, 33, was convicted in November 2023 of seven criminal counts for fraud against customers of FTX and lenders to the hedge fund Alameda Research. He is serving a 25-year prison sentence.
Defense lawyer Alexandra Shapiro makes oral arguments before United States Circuit Judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Barington D. Parker Jr., Eunice C. Lee and Maria Araujo Kahn during former cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman-Fried’s appeal of his fraud conviction in New York City, U.S., November 4, 2025 in a courtroom sketch.
Jane Rosenberg | Reuters
Shapiro argued that rulings by the trial judge, Lewis Kaplan of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, which included limiting what SBF could testify about, unfairly favored prosecutors.
That “allowed the prosecution to present this morally compelling tale, but prevented the defense from showing that the story wasn’t true,” she said.
“The defense was cut off at the knees by the judge’s rulings,” Shapiro told the panel.
She said prosecutors were allowed to falsely argue at trial that customers and lenders had lost billions of dollars, and would never be able to recover that money.
In reality, she said, it was her understanding that 98% of all FTX creditors have received 120% of their investments plus interest, and that the FTX estate has already paid $8 billion to creditors and another $1 billion in legal fees. She added that there is another $8 billion left to cover $2 billion in remaining claims.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Thane Rehn spent the bulk of his time during the hearing answering questions by the judge over how an $11 billion forfeiture against SBF is structured, and what will happen to that forfeiture order if all victims are made whole before the entire amount is spent.