Sam Bankman-Fried’s appeal for a retrial has been denied by a federal judge, delivering another setback to the imprisoned founder of FTX in his attempts to overturn his fraud conviction.
In a sharp rejection on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan dismissed the claims made by Bankman-Fried that new witness testimonies justified a retrial. “None of the witnesses, for example, is ‘newly discovered,'” stated Kaplan in his ruling, pointing out that Bankman-Fried had neither obtained nor sought to compel their testimony.
The judge criticized the motion as part of a broader strategy to rehabilitate Bankman-Fried’s reputation, remarking that “This motion appears to be one part of a plan to rescue his reputation that Bankman-Fried hatched and even committed to writing after FTX declared bankruptcy but before he was indicted,” according to court documents.
While the federal appeals court in New York is reviewing Bankman-Fried’s conviction and sentence, an additional request for a retrial had been filed by his mother on his behalf earlier this year. Though withdrawn last week due to concerns about receiving a fair hearing from Judge Kaplan, the court nonetheless issued a formal denial.
Bankman-Fried alleged that Nishad Singh, FTX’s chief engineering officer, altered his testimony following “threats from the government,” and suggested that executives Daniel Chapsky and Ryan Salame would have contested prosecutorial claims but refrained out of fear of reprisal. In his ruling, Judge Kaplan countered this by stating that Bankman-Fried’s theory about witness absences due to “government threats and retaliation” was “wildly conspiratorial and entirely contradicted by the record.”
Government prosecutors had already strongly opposed the retrial motion before its withdrawal, asserting in their filings that the defense’s failure to include these witnesses on their list or compel their testimony precludes any argument that their post-trial perspectives were newly discovered.
The prosecution also refuted Bankman-Fried’s implication that FTX’s current restructuring efforts exonerate him. They highlighted a discrepancy where the exchange held just 105 BTC against customer claims nearing 100,000 BTC, declaring, “The motion’s most aggressive claim—that FTX was solvent, that customers have since been made whole, and that the prosecution therefore rested on a lie—is factually wrong, legally irrelevant, and deeply misleading.”
This denial is the latest development in a legal saga sparked by FTX’s collapse in November 2022. Sam Bankman-Fried faced multiple charges of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering, with prosecutors accusing him of misusing billions in customer funds from his exchange for covering losses at Alameda Research as well as funding political donations and luxury expenditures.
His conviction on all counts in November 2023 marked a significant moment in recent white-collar crime prosecutions, resulting in a 25-year sentence reflective of the fraud’s magnitude. Since then, Bankman-Fried has pursued various strategies, including seeking a retrial after dismissing his lawyer earlier this year and submitting a court letter via his mother—which was rejected by Judge Kaplan subsequently. President Trump has also dismissed any possibility of granting him a pardon, further limiting options for early release.