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

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has officially withdrawn his motion for a retrial, citing concerns that he would not receive a fair hearing. Currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy related to FTX's collapse in 2022, Bankman-Fried indicated that he might refile the motion after the resolution of his direct appeal and a related request for the case to be reassigned. The initial motion for a new trial was submitted by his mother, Barbara Fried, who claimed that newly discovered evidence warranted a retrial. Bankman-Fried, who drafted the motion himself while in detention at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, stated that he may renew the motion once the appeal and reassignment request have been decided. The appeal is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where his lawyer, Alexandra Shapiro, argued during oral arguments in November that the trial was fundamentally unfair due to limitations on the evidence Bankman-Fried could present to the jury.