Bankman-Fried Tells Judge He’s ‘Sorry About What Happened’ (1)

FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried told the federal judge about to sentence him in his fraud case that he was “sorry.”

“I know a lot of people feel really let down,” he said at his sentencing hearing Thursday morning in lower Manhattan. “I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what happened at every stage.”

“All of the company followed me across the earth, across continents, burning the midnight oil working until 2 a.m., 4 a.m., dedicated to FTX,” he said in a plea for leniency. “I remember so many of them.”

WATCH: The former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is in court waiting to be sentenced on fraud charges.

Source: Bloomberg

He said the staff “all built something really beautiful. They threw themselves into it and then I threw that all away. It haunts me every day. I made a series of bad decisions. They weren’t selfish decisions, they were bad decisions.”

Read more here: SBF Prison Time Hangs on Persuading Judge He Is No Madoff

Addressing US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, the 32-year-old fallen crypto whiz said, “I’m not the one who matters the most at the end of the day. What matters most is the customers, employees, creditors, the people who lost money because of this.”

In a 20-minute statement, he told the judge his “useful time is probably over now. It’s been over for a while now.”

“I’d do anything to be out there trying to help,” he told Kaplan. “I know that’s not really going to happen. I can’t do that from prison.”

At the end of his statement he took his seat and dabbed at his nose with the hem of his shirt.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Chris Dolmetsch in Federal Court in Manhattan at cdolmetsch@bloomberg.net;
Bob Van Voris in federal court in Manhattan at rvanvoris@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net

Peter Jeffrey

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