Hong Kong Singularity Finance reported on September 15. The defense team of SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried), the former CEO of the former cryptocurrency giant FTX, has officially submitted a detailed 102-page appeal document to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, challenging his seven felony charges and the 25-year prison sentence he faces.

As early as April 2024, a few weeks after the federal court announced his 25-year prison sentence, Bankman-Fried's legal counsel had declared his determination to appeal. In the legal brief filed on September 13, SBF's legal team emphasized that his client "has not been fairly presumed innocent from the beginning" and accused the trial of biased review that may affect the attitudes of prosecutors, trial judges and the media.

The core argument of the appeal pointed out that the jury "only learned part of the truth about the status of FTX users' funds" during the trial, and the prosecutor was accused of "making misleading statements." In addition, the legal team also severely criticized the cooperation model between FTX creditor lawyers and the US government, believing that it has gone beyond the scope of "cooperation" and almost played the role of "prosecution assistance", providing evidence and information that is unfavorable to Bankman-Fried.

The appeal document further pointed out: "Since the beginning of the case, there has been a mainstream narrative that Bankman-Fried stole billions of dollars of customer funds, causing FTX to collapse and causing huge losses. This statement was originally concocted by the legal team that took over FTX, and was subsequently adopted and spread by officials of the US Department of Justice. However, to this day, nearly two years of investigation and revelation have revealed a completely different truth-FTX is not really bankrupt, and actually has billions of dollars in assets sufficient to repay customer debts. Unfortunately, this fact was not seen by the jury during the trial of the SBF case."

The legal team has formally submitted an application to the Court of Appeal, pleading with the court to give SBF a chance to re-examine, and proposed that the retrial should be presided over by different judges to ensure the fairness and independence of the judicial process. At present, the Second Circuit Court's position on whether to uphold the guilty verdict of SBF made by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is still unclear, and there is also the possibility of overturning the original verdict.

Before 2022, SBF, as a star in the field of cryptocurrency, was on par with then-Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng and Celsius head Alex Mashinsky. The three of them jointly led the industry trend. Unfortunately, the latter two were both hit by a storm of criminal charges. However, in November 2022, the thunder suddenly came, and the FTX exchange collapsed due to the depletion of liquidity. The root cause was the lack of sufficient funds to support user withdrawals.

Subsequent in-depth investigations found that SBF was suspected of illegal operations and instructed FTX's affiliate Alameda Research to use exchange funds for investment, which violated the red line of federal law. Subsequently, he was extradited from the Bahamas (where FTX headquarters and SBF's personal residence are located) to the United States to face legal trials.

However, on the eve of SBF's criminal trial, a series of misconduct made his already precarious situation worse. He leaked private information of Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda and his ex-girlfriend, to a New York Times reporter. In addition to other violations of bail terms, Judge Lewis Kaplan revoked his bail. After a fierce trial, the jury finally found SBF guilty of multiple felonies, including wire fraud and conspiracy, securities fraud, commodity fraud conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy. In March 2024, Judge Kaplan sentenced him to 25 years in prison in accordance with the law, bringing a heavy end to this financial crisis that shocked the industry.

SBF is undoubtedly the core figure in this criminal prosecution, but the case is so widespread that four other key figures may also face jail time.

Among them, Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, has attracted much attention for proactively revealing the internal operations of FTX to the Bahamian authorities. He pleaded guilty to the charges in 2023 and was sentenced to 90 months in prison. However, the judicial process of this case has not yet been settled, and Judge Kaplan is carefully considering whether to accept his application to withdraw his guilty plea, which may trigger a retrial of the case.

In addition, former Alameda CEO Ellison, former FTX Engineering Director Nishad Singh, and FTX co-founder Gary Wang have all pleaded guilty and appeared in court as witnesses to assist in the investigation during SBF's trial. Currently, Ellison's sentencing date is scheduled for September 24, while Singh and Wang's hearings are scheduled for October and November respectively. The public and the industry are closely watching the progress of these key nodes.