A ‘crypto king’ convicted of fraudulently gaining a whopping £8billion through cryptocurrency told his girlfriend ‘he has no soul’.
Sam Bankman-Fried was charged with a lengthy prison sentence after being found guilty in a gruelling one month trail. He reached quick fame and fortune after trading online before he went bankrupt a year ago. Courts have ruled that he committed $10billion (£8billion) worth of fraud.
Now, the US national is facing a sentence of 110 years in prison if all charges are given in March. However, reports from the court room said Bankman-Fried showed little emotion during his court case. His mother could be seen in the crowds hiding her face in emotion, but the criminal didn’t react.
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Bankman-Fried was on the cover of magazines as the ‘crypto king’, flew private jets, gave a talk in the Bahamas before Congress and even gave tens of millions of dollars in political donations to political parties. He attempted to make cryptocurrency respectable and created a new digital currency exchange called FTX.
However, a year later authorities found evidence of fraud and arrested him for conspiracy, money laundering and wire fraud. He was then later found out for attempting to influence one of the witnesses who was going to speak against him. A new book has revealed all about the life of the crypto-criminal.
His father, Joe Bankman, spoke to Martin Lewis about his son’s childhood: “He was never comfortable with kids, or with being a kid.”
Apparently, Bankman-Fried was unemotional, cold and struggled to connect with other people. He met his girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, at a financial firm. The pair worked together before he decided to start his own firm to earn even more money and then eventually convinced her to join.
In the book, the author revealed the pair wrote a pros and cons list about their relationship. Bankman-Fried wrote: “In lots of ways I don’t really have a soul,” he then went on to write to her that his feelings were “fake” and that he didn’t “feel happiness. What’s the point in dating someone who you physically can’t make happy.”
Appearing in court, he said: “”He thought that the only moral rule that mattered was doing whatever would maximise moral utility, trying to create the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of beings.” She finished her address: “Things like ‘don’t lie’ or ‘don’t steal’ didn’t fit into that framework.”
Reports say that Bankman-Fried showed no emotion while appearing in court and simply looked on with a blank-face/ The judge revealed that he would be sentenced in March and will stay behind bars in the meantime.
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