Sam Bankman-Fried, a former crypto tycoon who was considered a potential rising star in American politics two years ago, will learn Thursday whether he will spend the rest of his life in prison after being convicted of one of the world’s worst crimes. The biggest financial fraud in US history, Reuters reports.

Benkman-Fried, the son of two Stanford Law School professors, quit his Wall Street job to start a cryptocurrency investment fund in 2017. That decision set off a chain of events that transformed him from crypto idol and billionaire with ties to the Democratic Party to a convicted felon facing decades in prison.

Federal prosecutors handling the case related to the collapse of FTX, the world’s second-largest crypto trading platform at the time of its collapse in November 2022, asked the court to sentence him to 40 to 50 years in prison.

The lawyers of 32-year-old Benkman-Fried instead argued that he should be sentenced to 5 years and 3 months in prison.

Two years after founding investment fund Alameda Research in 2019, Bankman-Fried also founded FTX, a platform that allows users to buy and sell digital assets such as Bitcoin.

Sam Bankman-Fried became one of the richest people in America

Against the backdrop of an impressive rise in cryptocurrency prices during the COVID-19 pandemic, in October 2021 Forbes magazine estimated the fortune of the entrepreneur at $26 billion. By the age of 30, he was the 25th richest man in America.

Bankman-Fried has used his fortune to buy political influence, becoming one of the top donors to the Democratic Party ahead of the 2022 US midterm elections.

Known for his unkempt hair and habit of wearing crumpled shorts, including when hosting high-profile guests such as Bill Clinton at FTX’s Bahamas headquarters, Bankman-Fried recruited stars such as NFL player Tom Brady and comedian Larry David to advertise your company.

And in a cryptocurrency space plagued by allegations of fraud and money laundering, Bankman-Fried has been one of the few voices publicly advocating the need for regulation.

But federal prosecutors say the image of responsibility he cultivated hid years of ripping off FTX customers. The sandcastle he built collapsed in 2022 when cryptocurrency prices fell, and he used FTX customers’ money to cover Alameda’s losses.

Bankman-Frieda’s ex-girlfriend testified against him

In November 2023, a year after the collapse of FTX, a US jury found him guilty on all 7 counts brought against him by prosecutors. The jury had only 4 hours of deliberation to reach a verdict that Sam Bankman-Fried stole $8 billion from the money of users of his crypto platform.

Three of his former colleagues at FTX and Alameda Research, including his girlfriend, have pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution in an effort to obtain reduced sentences. Their testimony illustrated a man who had problems with his temperament and who played the role of an eccentric entrepreneur to the public.

“He understood the rules but decided they didn’t apply to him. “He knew what society considered illegal and unethical, but he ignored those things based on a harmful delusion of grandeur that drove the defendant’s own values ​​and sense of superiority,” U.S. prosecutors wrote in their indictment.

Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty and said she would appeal both the conviction and sentence. Speaking in the dock, he said he made mistakes that hurt FTX, but he had no intention of deceiving anyone and stealing customers’ money.

“We thought we could create the best product on the market. It turned out to be just the opposite,” he said in his defense on October 27.