Written by: Joel Khalili

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

SBF is launching a counterattack. The FTX founder, two years after being convicted of fraud, is seeking legal appeal and has reactivated his social media accounts.

On September 23, 2024, the disgraced FTX founder's social media account spoke for the first time after more than six months of silence, simply posting "gm" (internet slang for "good morning"). Since then, the account has continued to update its content.

The widely known SBF is currently serving a 25-year sentence in California. In November 2023, a jury in the Southern District of New York found him guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

Immediately after the verdict was announced, SBF indicated his intention to appeal. This spring, he gave a few interviews to select journalists while in prison. Aside from that, he has largely disappeared from the public eye. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency industry has shifted its focus to other matters: the emergence of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S., a meme coin gold rush, discussions about national Bitcoin reserves, and a potentially relaxed regulatory environment under President Trump.

However, since September, SBF's social media account has drawn attention again (despite his inability to use the internet from prison, it is reported that friends are posting on his behalf). These posts criticize the FTX bankruptcy estate's administrators and focus on rebutting certain claims about FTX's financial status at the time of its collapse, insisting that customer funds were never lost, only trapped in illiquid assets. SBF also gave an interview to Mother Jones magazine while in prison, maintaining the same viewpoint in the October publication.

His mother, law professor Barbara Fried, recently launched a Substack column. The only post published at the end of October is a 65-page paper titled "The Trial of Sam Bankman-Fried," arguing that her son neither committed fraud nor received a fair trial.

Bankman-Fried's representatives confirmed that Barbara wrote the piece but stated they were unaware of the social media posts and did not respond to further requests for comment.

SBF's re-emergence seems to adopt a two-pronged strategy: formally appealing in court while seeking public sympathy in the court of public opinion.

Former prosecutors point out that the public's general perception of SBF will not affect the appeal case but may influence his efforts to seek a pardon from President Trump. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has pardoned several cryptocurrency leaders convicted of white-collar crimes.

This is clearly a public relations campaign, said former prosecutor and current Pallas Partners law firm partner Joshua Naftalis, describing it as a strategy that leaves no stone unturned.

A White House spokesperson told WIRED that SBF has not yet submitted a formal pardon application and stated that they would not publicly discuss speculation about sensitive topics like pardons.

The core argument of the appeal case is that the trial jury "only saw one side of the story," as presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan's rulings prevented the defense from presenting evidence that could undermine the prosecution's case.

SBF's lawyers wrote in the January appeal that the judge favored the prosecution at every turn, leading to a severely unfair trial: the district court allowed the government to submit false charges, concealed contradictory evidence from the jury, and misdirected the application of the law, effectively guiding the guilty verdict.

On November 4, SBF's lawyer, Alexandra Shapiro (who also represents Sean "Diddy" Combs and entrepreneur Charlie Jarvis in their appeal cases), presented these arguments to a panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Reportedly, the judges expressed skepticism about the claim of an unfair trial, with one noting that the lawyers' criticisms of Judge Kaplan seemed to exceed the case itself.

Columbia Law School professor and former federal prosecutor Daniel Richman analyzed that the lawyers must have made a professional judgment to choose to criticize the judge's discretion as one of the few viable avenues for appeal.

Both Naftalis and Richman cautioned that predicting the outcome of the appeal based on the judges' comments during oral arguments is unreliable. Generally, the success rate for criminal appeals is low (about 5%-10%), and appeals based on judicial discretion are particularly difficult to establish.

Christopher Lavin, a partner at Withers law firm, bluntly stated that it would be surprising if the verdict were overturned.

The court could issue a ruling at any time. Former prosecutors noted that after oral arguments, judges may take anywhere from a month to several years to reach a decision.

During the trial, witnesses testified that SBF had expressed a willingness to flip a coin to decide whether to risk destroying the world if the alternative was to double human welfare, which explains why he now seems to be betting on multiple fronts.

Since Trump's return to the White House, he has pardoned several cryptocurrency leaders, including Binance billionaire founder Changpeng Zhao. Trump stated that he eliminated Zhao's criminal record based on "reliable sources" and indicated that the founder was a victim of the Biden administration's hostility toward cryptocurrency, asserting that he had not committed a crime (Zhao admitted in 2023 to failing to maintain effective anti-money laundering safeguards).

According to The New York Times, SBF's family has intensified lobbying for a pardon this spring. His team believes that Trump, who repeatedly claims to be a victim of a "legal war," may resonate with the narrative that SBF has been deliberately portrayed as the scapegoat by prosecutors.

Recent social media posts, media interviews, and his mother's column all support this claim, insisting on SBF's innocence and attributing the collapse of FTX and customer losses to greedy legal professionals, who they allege profited from a rushed bankruptcy process.

FTX bankruptcy estate spokesperson Maggie Kalanjaro responded that all professional fees have been reviewed by independent examiners and approved by the court.

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