Sam Bankman-Fried Requests Presidential Pardon from President Trump Amid 25-Year Sentence
Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder of the now-defunct FTX cryptocurrency exchange, has formally submitted a request for a presidential pardon to President Donald Trump. This request is documented on the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Pardon Attorney website. Bankman-Fried is currently serving a 25-year federal prison sentence after being convicted of orchestrating a large-scale fraud scheme that involved the misuse of billions of dollars in customer funds at FTX and its affiliated trading firm, Alameda Research. The exact date of the pardon request filing is not specified, but it is noted to have been submitted in 2026 and is currently pending. Despite this request, President Trump has previously stated in a January interview with The New York Times that he has no intention of pardoning several high-profile individuals, including Bankman-Fried. 
