Sam Bankman-Fried has launched a new legal gambit: the disgraced FTX co-founder filed a request Monday seeking a presidential pardon from former President Donald Trump, Bloomberg reports.
The filing went to the Office of the Pardon Attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and was described in the paperwork as a “pardon after completion of sentence.” In an on-camera interview later that day with FOX Business correspondent Susan Li, Bankman-Fried said he “absolutely” wants a presidential pardon and would expect to seek one from the White House — while acknowledging the final decision lies with the president. He declined to say whether family members or others are lobbying the administration on his behalf.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced in March 2024 to 25 years behind bars after a jury convicted him on two counts of wire fraud and five counts of conspiracy related to the collapse of FTX. The court found massive losses tied to the collapse: roughly $8 billion lost by FTX customers, $1.7 billion lost by equity investors tied to FTX, and $1.3 billion lost by lenders to Alameda Research, the hedge fund he ran.
Despite the conviction and lengthy sentence, Bankman-Fried continues to dispute the prosecution’s case. In the FOX Business interview he again insisted he did not steal user funds and argued that bankruptcy recoveries and a rebound in crypto markets have left customers largely repaid — saying customer recoveries are “now 170% or so on their deposits.” He also characterized the platform as, in his view, over-collateralized even as prosecutors pursued criminal charges.
News of the pardon filing prompted an immediate market reaction: FTX’s native token, FTT, surged about 45% on Monday, trading near $0.33 by the time of publication. That spike, however, comes from a dramatically diminished base — FTT remains roughly 99.5% below its all-time high of about $84 reached when FTX was operating at peak scale.
A final outcome is far from guaranteed. Presidential pardons and post-sentence petitions can be politically fraught and are discretionary; applications are typically processed through the DOJ’s Office of the Pardon Attorney before any action by the president. Whether this filing will shift Bankman-Fried’s fate — or further move crypto markets — remains an open question.
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