Judge dismisses SBF ‘facts,’ new trial request in scathing order

In February, Sam Bankman-Fried said he had found new evidence that could prove he never set out to defraud customers of his bankrupt crypto exchange, FTX.

On Tuesday, a federal judge said the claim was “baseless,” and denied the former billionaire’s request for a new trial.

It was a severe, if unsurprising blow to Bankman-Fried’s long-shot attempts to reverse a 2023 conviction on several counts of fraud and to escape a 25-year prison sentence.

In addition to his request for a new trial, Bankman-Fried has appealed his conviction and waged a desperate campaign to secure a presidential pardon. According to news reports, President Donald Trump is not expected to pardon the disgraced crypto entrepreneur. A decision in his appeal, meanwhile, is expected in the coming weeks.

Missed deadlines 

Earlier this month, Bankman-Fried missed two deadlines set by the court. One required a response to prosecutors’ nearly 50-page letter opposing his request for a new trial. Another required his avowal that he was, as he claimed, representing himself, a request the judge had made after prosecutors noted there were signs Bankman-Fried had received outside help.

In a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan filed on April 22 — a week after both deadlines had passed — Bankman-Fried said he was the “ultimate author” of his letter requesting a new trial.

But he also asked for permission to withdraw the request “without prejudice,” a move that would allow him to request a new trial at a later date.

“I do not believe I will get a fair hearing on this topic in front of you,” he wrote the judge.

Kaplan presided over Bankman-Fried’s 2023 trial, and the former billionaire has complained that the judge was biased toward the prosecution.

That complaint was first raised in September 2024, when Bankman-Fried appealed his conviction and requested that any new trial go before a different judge. That appeal went before a three-judge panel last November.

“The trial of Sam Bankman-Fried was fundamentally unfair, because the jury only got to hear one side of the story — the prosecutors’ side,” his attorney, Alexandra Shapiro, told the panel.

“The prosecutors proclaimed that billions had been lost forever. This was false.”

The outcome of that appeal is still pending. In his April 22 letter, Bankman-Fried said he would consider filing another request for a new trial after the appellate judges make their decision.

A scathing order

That won’t be happening, Kaplan said in his scathing order on Tuesday.

In addition to rejecting Bankman-Fried’s request for a new trial, the judge rejected his request “with prejudice,” barring him from filing a similar request in the future.

If Bankman-Fried wanted to withdraw the request because the judge was biased, then he shouldn’t have made the request in the first place, Kaplan wrote.

Moreover, the judge wasn’t convinced by Bankman-Fried’s claim he had found new, exonerating evidence.

“Bankman-Fried’s motion is based on three supposedly ‘newly discovered’ witnesses whose predicted testimony, he contends, warrants a new trial,” Kaplan wrote.

Hogwash, the judge said.

“None of the witnesses, for example, is ‘newly discovered.’ Bankman-Fried well before trial knew all three of them.”

Those witnesses are Daniel Chapsky, the former head of data science at FTX; Ryan Salame, an FTX executive serving a seven-year prison sentence; and Nishad Singh, a former FTX executive who testified for the government at Bankman-Fried’s trial.

All three could testify that FTX was not insolvent when it filed for bankruptcy in 2022, but illiquid, according to Bankman-Fried.

Bankman-Fried has insisted he could have honoured a stampede of customer withdrawals if he’d been given enough time to sell illiquid assets, such as company stock.

Chapsky signed an affidavit on January 1 stating he had been willing to say as much at trial. But he was dissuaded by his attorneys, who cited potential “media attacks” and retaliation from prosecutors.

Salame said he would have testified for Bankman-Fried’s defence in 2023 if not for prosecutors’ aggressive tactics. And Singh initially claimed he was unaware of a “hole” in FTX’s balance sheet, according to court records.

The argument that FTX was merely illiquid has been met with overwhelming derision by attorneys, reporters, and crypto entrepreneurs who closely followed the exchange’s downfall.

Kaplan isn’t buying that argument either.

“A fatal flaw of that spin (and the present motion) is that Bankman-Fried’s so-called ‘facts’ have been seen before,” the judge wrote. “Many times.”

Before the trial, Bankman-Fried had conceded they were “irrelevant” and “speculative,” the judge noted.

“They in substance thus are the same ‘facts’ that this Court excluded at trial and that Bankman-Fried now argues on appeal to the Circuit should have been admitted,” Kaplan continued.

“In no way are these ‘facts’ never-before-seen, let alone newly discovered.”

The judge’s order leaves just one avenue for Bankman-Fried to reverse his conviction: his pending appeal.

The three-judge panel has an informal six-month deadline to issue their ruling, which means a decision could be imminent.

But Bankman-Fried’s odds of success are low — between 2011 and 2015, about 6% of federal criminal appeals succeeded, according to data from the US court system.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out to him with tips at aleks@dlnews.com.