Convicted FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried seeking Trump pardon

WASHINGTON – Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX who is serving a 25-year prison sentence for fraud and conspiracy, has applied for a pardon from US President Donald Trump.

The website of the Office of the Pardon Attorney of the Department of Justice lists a request by Bankman-Fried for a pardon and says its status is “pending.”

Trump, in an interview with The New York Times in January, said he did not plan to issue a pardon to the 34-year-old Bankman-Fried.

Since taking office in 2025, the Republican president has pardoned scores of white-collar criminals, most recently a former Republican congressman from Indiana who was convicted of insider trading.

Bankman-Fried, known as SBF, became a billionaire before age 30 and turned FTX, a small start-up he co-founded in 2019, into the world’s second-largest crypto exchange platform.

But in November 2022, Bankman-Fried’s breakneck rise came crashing down, with a deluge of customer withdrawals and revelations that billions of dollars had been illegally moved from FTX to Bankman-Fried’s personal hedge fund, Alameda Research.

He was convicted by a federal jury in New York in November 2023 on seven counts of fraud, embezzlement and criminal conspiracy.

He has appealed his conviction. AFP