Sam Bankman-Fried Petitions Supreme Court to Overturn FTX (FTT) $11 Billion Forfeiture

SBF Takes His Fraud Appeal to the Justices

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed FTX crypto exchange, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive his fraud appeal in what his legal team frames as the final option left to him. Once a high-profile champion of the industry during the 2021 run-up, the former chief executive fell in November 2022 when the platform imploded and customer funds surfaced at his trading arm, Alameda Research. A jury later convicted him on fraud charges tied to the movement of those balances, and the 25-year fraud sentence carried a forfeiture order of roughly $11 billion. In the petition now before the justices, his lawyers argue the trial court should never have admitted evidence showing that FTX customers suffered losses when their funds moved to Alameda, because the defense was simultaneously barred from presenting proof that account holders were ultimately made whole, with interest. That one-sided record, the filing contends, misled the jury and left the FTX founder in what his attorneys describe as a permanent financial hole under the forfeiture. Every lower rung has so far failed him: the district court and, in June, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which held the trial judge acted reasonably in shaping the evidence. Supreme Court review is the last stage of the process, and most such requests are denied — if the justices decline the case, the matter is likely closed and the former executive serves out the remainder of his term. For FTT holders, the token of the defunct venue, the filing keeps the estate’s legal arc — and residual attention on exchange-linked assets — firmly in the headlines.

Evidentiary Claims and the Eighth Amendment Fight

The petition, filed Thursday as a request for a writ of certiorari, was prepared by Stanford law professor Jeffrey Fisher and asks the justices to order a new trial. Its central claim is evidentiary: prosecutors were permitted to suggest that customers of the platform — many of whom held balances for spot trading or leveraged futures positions — lost large sums, while the defense could not show that FTX and Alameda always held more than enough assets to repay them, and that customers have since been repaid with substantial interest. Bankman-Fried separately argues the $11 billion forfeiture violates the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause, invoking protection his lawyers trace back to Magna Carta — the principle that fines should not strip a wrongdoer of his livelihood. The same arguments were rejected on June 12 by a three-judge Second Circuit panel, which found the government’s trial evidence robust and upheld Judge Lewis Kaplan’s decision to exclude repayment evidence, leaning on the Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling in Kousisis v. United States, which held that conduct can constitute wire fraud even without intent to cause net economic harm. The panel was blunt about the scheme, writing that no customer opted into having money transferred under false pretenses to Alameda. The odds remain long: the Supreme Court accepts only about 1% of the thousands of petitions it receives each term. Outside court, Bankman-Fried formally requested a pardon from President Donald Trump in June; Trump has said he would not consider one, and the Senate unanimously approved a July resolution, led by Senators Cynthia Lummis and Ruben Gallego, opposing clemency. Deeper background on the filing appears in our coverage, Sam Bankman-Fried Petitions Supreme Court to Overturn 25-Year Sentence in FTX (FTT) Case. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Binance.

The Docket That Now Decides the Legal Arc

Our reading of the posture is straightforward: this is a cert petition, not an appeal of right, and the Second Circuit’s June 12 mandate — resting on Kousisis v. United States — has already affirmed the trial court’s evidentiary rulings and treated the conduct as fraud regardless of net harm. For FTT, long traded as a speculative proxy for FTX estate outcomes since its bull market peak and now largely an altcoin curiosity, the petition is the last procedural catalyst on the calendar. Readers weighing counterparty risk in the post-FTX landscape can review our guide to the best crypto exchanges.