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- Sam Bankman-Fried's lawyers slammed the 40 to 50-year prison sentence prosecutors recommended.
- Bankman-Fried's lawyers accused prosecutors of casting him as a "depraved super-villain."
- The sentence, his lawyers said, was akin to "a death-in-prison sentencing recommendation."
Lawyers for Sam Bankman-Fried are pushing back against the 40 to 50-year prison sentence prosecutors have recommended for their client.
The FTX founder's lawyers submitted a letter to US District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Tuesday, where they accused prosecutors of casting Bankman-Fried as a "depraved super-villain" with "dark and megalomaniacal motives."
"It adopts a medieval view of punishment to reach what amounts to a death-in-prison sentencing recommendation," Bankman-Fried's lawyers wrote. "That is not justice."
A representative for Bankman-Fried told BI on Wednesday that they have no further comments on the letter.
On Friday, prosecutors filed a sentencing memorandum that said Bankman-Fried should receive "a sentence of 40 to 50 years' imprisonment."
"Bankman-Fried's crimes were serious and long-running, causing billions of dollars in losses and significant harm to tens of thousands of victims financially and emotionally," prosecutors wrote.
"The sheer enormity of the loss in this case, and the fact that the loss came in the form of stealing of victims' money, puts Bankman-Fried in a category of defendants where sentences of forty years or more is appropriate," the memorandum said.
This isn't the first time Bankman-Fried's lawyers have pleaded for leniency. When probation officers recommended a 100-year prison term for Bankman-Fried, his attorney Marc Mukasey called the proposal "grotesque" and "barbaric."
Bankman-Fried, Mukasey wrote in a sentencing memorandum on February 27, should be given a five to six-and-a-halprison sentence instead.
Mukasey argued in his memorandum that a century-long prison sentence "substantially overstates the seriousness of Sam's offense."
Victims of Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange FTX "are poised to recover — were always poised to recover — a hundred cents on the dollar," Mukasey wrote.
Some victims of the FTX collapse say they've lost their life savings and that the crypto platform's implosion ruined their finances.
Lawyers for FTX's debtors told a Delaware bankruptcy court in February that creditors and customers can expect to be made whole, per Axios.
Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried's parents have also asked for a lighter sentence. His mother, Barbara Fried, said in a letter to Kaplan last month that Bankman-Fried's social awkwardness could put him in "extreme danger" while he was in jail.
"Sam's outward presentation, his inability to read or respond appropriately to many social cues, and his touching but naive belief in the power of facts and reason to resolve disputes, put him in extreme danger," Barbara Fried wrote.
In November, Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. He could face up to 110 years in prison for the charges. Bankman-Fried's sentencing is set to take place on March 28.