Sam Bankman-Fried
Sam Bankman-Fried | |
|---|---|
.png) Bankman-Fried in 2021 | |
| Born | Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried March 5, 1992[1] Stanford, California, U.S. |
| Other name | SBF |
| Education | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS) |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur |
| Known for |
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| Parents |
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| Relatives | Gabriel Bankman-Fried (brother) Linda P. Fried (aunt) |
| Convictions |
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| Penalty | 25 years in prison |
| Details | |
Date apprehended | December 12, 2022 (3 years ago) |
| Imprisoned at | Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc I |
Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried[2] (born March 5, 1992), commonly known as SBF,[3] is an American entrepreneur convicted of fraud. Bankman-Fried founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and was celebrated as a "poster boy" for crypto,[4] with FTX having a global reach with more than 130 international affiliates.[5] At the peak of his net worth, he was ranked the 41st-richest American in the Forbes 400.[6]
In November 2022, as evidence of potential fraud began to surface, depositors quickly withdrew their assets from FTX, forcing the company into bankruptcy. On December 12, 2022, Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas and extradited to the United States, where he was indicted on seven criminal charges, including wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance law violations.[7][8][9]
In the case of United States v. Bankman-Fried, he was convicted of all seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.[10] On March 28, 2024, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $11 billion.[11][12][13] The trial was one of the most notorious cases of white-collar crime in the United States; the financier Anthony Scaramucci termed Bankman-Fried "the Bernie Madoff of crypto."[14]
Early life
[edit]Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried was born on March 5, 1992, to upper-class Jewish parents in Stanford, California.[1][15][16] His parents are Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, both professors at Stanford Law School.[1] His maternal grandmother, Adrienne Fried Block, was a noted musicologist.[17] His maternal grandfather, George Fried,[18] was an administrator with the New York State Supreme Court probation department.[19]
His aunt Linda P. Fried was the dean of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.[20]
Sam's younger brother, Gabriel (b. 1995), had been a legislative assistant and a Wall Street trader. He became director of the nonprofit Guarding Against Pandemics and its associated political action committee. The PAC had come under scrutiny by federal investigators after the discovery that much of the US$35 million on its books had been stolen by Sam from Alameda Research customer accounts.[21][22][23]
Both of his parents were sued by the new owners of FTX, to return assets Sam had given the couple in the form of cash and a home valued at over $32 million. His parents admitted Sam gave them the assets as gifts but denied wrongdoing and the case was eventually dropped.[24][25]
Education
[edit]Bankman-Fried attended Canada/USA Mathcamp, a summer program for mathematically talented high-school students.[26] He attended high school at the elite private Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, California.[27]
He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2014 with a bachelor's degree in physics and a minor in mathematics. As an MIT student, he lived in a coeducational group house called Epsilon Theta.[26][28][29][30]
Career
[edit]In the summer of 2013, Bankman-Fried worked as an intern at Jane Street Capital, a proprietary trading firm,[26] trading international ETFs.[31] He returned there to work full-time after graduating from MIT.[26] In September 2017, Bankman-Fried left Jane Street and moved to Berkeley, California, where he worked briefly at the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) as director of development from October to November 2017.[26][32]
In November 2017, following fund injections from billionaire computer programmer Jaan Tallinn and investor Luke Ding,[33] Bankman-Fried and CEA's Tara Hedley (née Mac Aulay[34]) cofounded the quantitative trading firm Alameda Research.[26][35] By 2021, Bankman-Fried owned approximately 90 percent of Alameda Research.[26] In January 2018, Bankman-Fried organized an arbitrage trade, moving up to $25 million per day to take advantage of the higher price of bitcoin in Japan compared to the United States.[26][32] After attending a cryptocurrency conference in Macau in late 2018, he moved to Hong Kong.[26][36]
FTX
[edit]Bankman-Fried founded the FTX cryptocurrency derivatives exchange in April 2019; it opened for business the following month.[26] In September 2021, Bankman-Fried and the entire senior staff of FTX moved from Hong Kong to The Bahamas.[37]