Sam Bankman-Fried Drops Request for New Trial, Citing Concerns Over Fairness

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has officially withdrawn his motion for a retrial, citing doubts about receiving a fair hearing. In a letter to the presiding judge, Bankman-Fried expressed his intention to potentially renew the motion after the resolution of his direct appeal and a related request for reassignment. Bankman-Fried, currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for fraud and conspiracy convictions related to FTX's collapse in 2022, had initially filed the motion through his mother, Barbara Fried, who claimed that new evidence warranted a retrial. Bankman-Fried revealed that he had drafted the motion himself while in detention at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, with limited assistance from his lawyers and family members. He clarified that although his lawyers and parents provided editorial suggestions, he was the primary author of the letter to the judge. The appeal is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where his attorney, Alexandra Shapiro, argued during oral arguments in November that the trial was fundamentally unfair due to restrictions on the evidence Bankman-Fried could present to the jury.