‘Mr Bankman-Fried, no doubt very well advised, says mistakes were made,’ Judge Kaplan said.
‘I think one of his pithier expressions was: “I f***ed up” – but never a word of remorse for the commission of terrible crimes.
‘Mr Bankman-Fried has the right to plead not guilty…but at the end of the day, he knew it was wrong. He knew it was criminal.
‘He regrets that he made a very bad bet about the likelihood of getting caught but he’s not going to admit a thing.
‘There is absolutely no doubt that Mr Bankman-Fried’s name is pretty much mud around the world.
‘But one of the things he is is persistent and a great marketing guy.
‘Mr Roos (the prosecutor) is right that the outlines of Sam Bankman-Fried’s revised version of his story are clear to everyone as we sit here today.
‘The same skills and drive that had him – even after his arrest – pitching his story to a huge number of media people demonstrates he knows how to do it and the will is there.
‘The mistakes were made, other people are to blame, bankruptcy people screwed up, this lawyer had a conflict of interest – it doesn’t take much imagination to see the outlines of a campaign.
‘There is a risk this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the
future and it’s not a trivial risk,’ the judge said.
Judge Kaplan added that the sentence served the purpose of ‘disabling him for a significant period of time’.
He reasoned that SBF’s crimes were ‘very serious’, while slamming the ‘enormous harm that he did, the brazenness of his actions, his exceptional flexibility with the truth, and his apparent lack of any remorse’.
