SBF goes back online and seeks freedom

By: Joel Khalili

Translation: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

SBF is fighting back. The FTX founder, two years after being convicted of fraud, is pursuing a legal appeal and has reactivated his social media accounts.

On September 23, 2024, the disgraced FTX founder’s social media account posted for the first time in over six months with a simple “gm” (internet slang for “good morning”). Since then, the account has resumed regular updates.

The now-infamous SBF is currently serving a 25-year sentence in California. In November 2023, a jury in the Southern District of New York found him guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

Immediately after sentencing, SBF stated his intention to appeal. He gave a handful of interviews to journalists from prison earlier this year but had otherwise disappeared from public view. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency industry shifted focus elsewhere: the launch of U.S. Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, the meme coin gold rush, discussions about national Bitcoin reserves, and speculation about a more lenient regulatory environment under a Trump presidency.

But since September, SBF’s social media presence has reignited attention—though he cannot access the internet in prison and the posts are reportedly made by friends on his behalf. The posts criticize the FTX bankruptcy estate’s administrators and specifically challenge narratives about FTX’s financial state at the time of its collapse, asserting that customer funds were never lost but merely trapped in illiquid assets. SBF also maintained similar views in an interview with Mother Jones magazine, published in October.

His mother, law professor Barbara Fried, recently launched a Substack newsletter. Its sole post, published in late October, is a 65-page paper titled "The Trial of Sam Bankman-Fried," arguing that her son committed no fraud and did not receive a fair trial.

Bankman-Fried’s representatives confirmed that Barbara authored the piece but said they were unaware of the social media posts and did not respond to requests for further comment.

SBF’s reemergence appears to be part of a dual-track strategy aimed at release: formally appealing in court while simultaneously seeking public sympathy in the court of opinion.

Former prosecutors note that public perception of SBF won’t influence the appeal, but could affect efforts to secure a presidential pardon from Donald Trump. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has pardoned several convicted white-collar figures in the crypto space.

This is clearly a public relations campaign, says Joshua Naftalis, a former prosecutor and now partner at Pallas Partners, describing it as a strategy that leaves no stone unturned.

A White House spokesperson told WIRED that SBF has not yet submitted a formal pardon application and declined to comment on speculation around sensitive matters like pardons.

The core argument of the appeal is that the trial jury “only saw one side of the story,” because presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled against allowing the defense to present evidence that could undermine the prosecution’s case.

In a January appellate filing, SBF’s lawyers wrote that the judge favored the prosecution at every turn, resulting in a fundamentally unfair trial: the district court permitted the government to bring false allegations, withheld exculpatory evidence from the jury, and gave erroneous legal instructions, effectively steering the verdict toward guilt.

On November 4, SBF’s attorney Alexandra Shapiro—also representing Sean “Diddy” Combs and entrepreneur Charlie Javice—presented these arguments before a panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Reportedly, judges expressed skepticism toward claims of an unfair trial, with one noting that the criticism of Judge Kaplan seemed to occupy more space than the case itself.

Columbia Law School professor and former federal prosecutor Daniel Richman observes that lawyers must have made a professional judgment to target judicial discretion, one of the few viable paths for appeal.

Both Naftalis and Richman caution that predicting appeal outcomes based on judges’ comments during oral arguments is unreliable. Generally, criminal appeals succeed only 5–10% of the time, and challenges based on judicial discretion are especially difficult to win.

Christopher Lavigne, a partner at Withers LLP, bluntly states that overturning the conviction would be surprising.

A ruling could come at any time. Former prosecutors say judges may take anywhere from one month to several years to issue a decision after oral arguments.

During the trial, witnesses testified that SBF once said he’d flip a coin to decide whether to risk destroying the world if the alternative was doubling human well-being—no wonder he now seems to be hedging his bets across multiple fronts.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has pardoned several crypto leaders, including Binance billionaire founder Changpeng Zhao. Trump claimed he cleared Zhao’s record based on advice from “reliable people,” framing the founder as a victim of the Biden administration’s hostility toward crypto rather than a criminal (Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program).

According to The New York Times, SBF’s family intensified pardon lobbying efforts this spring. His team believes Trump—who repeatedly portrays himself as a victim of “lawfare”—might sympathize with the narrative that prosecutors deliberately scapegoated SBF.

Recent social media posts, media interviews, and his mother’s Substack article all support this narrative, maintaining SBF’s innocence and blaming FTX’s collapse and customer losses on greedy legal professionals who profited from a rushed bankruptcy process.

Maggie Kalanick, spokesperson for the FTX bankruptcy estate, responded that all professional fees were reviewed by independent monitors and approved by the court.