Two years into a 25-year prison sentence for one of the biggest frauds in cryptocurrency history, Sam Bankman-Fried has formally applied to President Donald Trump for a pardon. The 34-year-old former billionaire, once the face of digital currency, filed a petition with the Department of Justice on Monday, according to online records, seeking forgiveness for convictions that wiped out billions in customer funds.
The application comes after Bankman-Fried’s empire imploded in 2022 when FTX, the crypto exchange he founded and led, collapsed amid allegations that he had used deposited money as his own – funding personal investments and paying debts. A jury later found him guilty on multiple federal fraud charges, and a judge sentenced him to 25 years. But Bankman-Fried has long maintained his innocence and is currently appealing the sentence. His pardon request is specifically for a "pardon after completion of sentence" – meaning his convictions would be forgiven only after he serves the full term, not a commutation that would shorten the time behind bars.
“Sam Bankman-Fried, serving 25 years for FTX fraud, has applied for a pardon from President Trump.”
The White House declined to comment on the application. A lawyer for Bankman-Fried did not respond to a request for comment. The request lands among more than 20,000 others for pardons or commutations pending before the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Trump has already granted clemency to hundreds of people involved in the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, former staff members charged with crimes, the founder of a dark web marketplace, and even the leader of rival crypto platform Binance. Yet when asked earlier this year whether he would pardon Bankman-Fried, Trump indicated he would not.
Now, with thousands of petitions still to be reviewed, whether the president will change his mind remains unclear. For Bankman-Fried, the appeal and the pardon bid are parallel paths out of a sentence that began just two years ago – a distant end to a fall from grace that once made him a multibillionaire.