Sam Bankman-Fried Applies for Pardon That Will Take Effect After His 25-Year Sentence

Sam Bankman-Fried

Sam Bankman-Fried is back on the headlines as the disgraced founder, former CEO, and convicted fraudster is applying for pardon from President Donald Trump for his crimes.

However, Bankman-Fried wants the presidential pardon to apply when he gets out of prison after serving his 25-year sentence.

Sam Bankman-Fried Applies for Pardon From Trump

The founder of the now-defunct crypto exchange FTX formally applied for a presidential pardon from President Donald Trump, according to a report by Bloomberg.

He submitted an application to the Justice Department's Pardon Attorney Office, requesting for pardon after the completion of his sentence, two years after his conviction over the multi-billion dollar collapse of FTX. Records on the DOJ website confirm the filing is currently listed as pending.

Bankman-Fried filed from a low-security federal prison in California, while his appeal of the conviction and sentence remains pending before the federal appeals court in New York.

It should be noted that the request does not seek early release. Instead, it is requesting for pardon to be granted once the sentence has been served, which would lift barriers to licensing, employment, housing, or education, said CNN.

Bankman-Fried confirmed his interest in clemency during a recent interview via phone with FOX Business. When asked about wanting a pardon from the White House, he replied, "Absolutely."

He declined to comment on whether members of his family were lobbying the administration on his behalf. His parents, both Stanford Law School professors, have been known to seek support from Trump-linked individuals since early 2025.

Bankman-Fried Wants Pardon After He Completes Sentence

It is known that Binance founder Changpeng Zhao received a presidential pardon last year from President Trump himself, and others in the space have also benefited from the administration's more lenient approach to crypto-related offenses.

With this, it seems that Bankman-Fried wants to join the list and be one of the disgraced cryptocurrency executives to benefit from the President's fondness for the blockchain industry.

However, Trump said in a January interview with The New York Times that he has no intention of pardoning Bankman-Fried, though he has issued more than 1,400 pardons and commutations so far in his second term.

Additionally, the reporter even had to remind Trump who the FTX fraudster was.

SBF's Attempts to Escape for FTX Defrauding

The pardon application is just the latest in a series of legal attempts by Bankman-Fried to escape accountability for what happened at FTX.

He previously filed a motion for a new trial, arguing that new evidence would show the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing had destroyed sources of hidden liquidity that could have paid customers back while still taking control of the company.

Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected that motion in April, finding the claims baseless and noting the filing appeared aimed more at improving Bankman-Fried's public image than presenting any valid legal ground for a retrial.

He simultaneously continues to pursue an appeal of his conviction to shorten his prison sentence to only five to six years, which is a fifth or so of his original 25-year incarceration.

Bankman-Fried was originally convicted of charges tied to the roughly nine-billion-dollar collapse of FTX in November 2022 and received his 25-year sentence in March 2024.

The FTX estate has since returned $2.2 billion to customers in a single distribution this past March, a notable turnaround from the scale of losses that first sent him to prison.