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 retracted his request for a new trial due to concerns that he would not receive a fair hearing. In a letter to the presiding judge, Bankman-Fried stated that he intends to potentially renew the motion after the resolution of his direct appeal and a related request for the case to be reassigned. The initial motion for a retrial was submitted by his mother, Barbara Fried, citing the emergence of new evidence that could warrant a retrial. Bankman-Fried, who is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy related to FTX's collapse in 2022, drafted the motion himself while in detention at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, with limited external assistance. Although he sought input from his lawyers and family members, Bankman-Fried maintained that he was the primary author of the letter to the judge. The appeal is presently 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 original trial was fundamentally flawed, including restrictions on the evidence Bankman-Fried could present to the jury.