Sam Bankman Fried, the founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, appears in a New York court on August 11, 2023, as his lawyers try to persuade the judge overseeing his fraud case not to send him to jail ahead of trial.
Eduardo Muñoz | Reuters
On Tuesday, judges on a federal appeals court in New York were skeptical of a lawyer’s argument that Sam Bankman Fried’s conviction for multibillion-dollar fraud related to cryptocurrency exchange FTX and affiliated hedge funds should be thrown out.
When Bankman Fried attorney Alexandra Shapiro tried to argue that SBF deserved a new trial because the first trial was “fundamentally unfair,” she was almost immediately and repeatedly blocked by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Judge Balingon Parker told Shapiro: “As I read the transcript, there was very substantial evidence of guilt.”
“Are you seriously telling us that if your client had been able to testify about his attorney’s role in producing these various documents, there would have been a not guilty verdict?” Parker asked, as Bankman-Fried’s parents watched from the courtroom bleachers.
Bankman Freed, 33, was convicted in November 2023 on seven criminal counts of defrauding FTX customers and lenders to hedge fund Alameda Research. He is serving a 25-year prison sentence.
Defense attorney Alexandra Shapiro gives oral argument before Circuit Judges Barrington D. Parker Jr., Eunice C. Lee and Maria Araujo Khan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit during the appeal of former cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman Fried’s fraud conviction in New York City, U.S., Nov. 4, 2025. (Court sketch, Nov. 4, 2025).
Jane Rosenberg Reuter
Mr. Shapiro argued that Manhattan Federal District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan’s ruling, which included limitations on what SBF could testify, unfairly favored prosecutors.
As a result, “the prosecution was able to present this morally compelling story, but the defense was unable to show that the story was not true,” she said.
“The judge’s decision severed the knee of the defense,” Shapiro said during the panel discussion.
He said prosecutors were allowed to falsely claim in court that customers and lenders lost billions of dollars and would never get that money back.
In reality, she said, it is her understanding that 98% of all FTX creditors received 120% of their investment amount plus interest, and that FTX Real Estate has already paid creditors $8 billion plus an additional $1 billion in legal fees. She added that another $8 billion remains to cover the remaining $2 billion bill.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Thane Lane spent much of the hearing answering the judge’s questions about how the $11 billion forfeiture against SBF is structured and what would happen to the forfeiture order if all the victims were cleared before the entire amount was spent.
