Sam Bankman-Fried Asks Supreme Court to Review Conviction and $11 Billion Forfeiture

Sam Bankman-Fried has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review both his criminal conviction in the FTX fraud case and the roughly $11.02 billion forfeiture order imposed against him, taking his fight to the nation’s highest court after losing in a federal appeals court.

According to The New York Times, which reported Thursday that it reviewed a copy of the petition, lawyers for Bankman-Fried argue that the trial judge wrongly prevented jurors from hearing evidence that FTX customers were ultimately repaid. The petition also argues that the forfeiture order violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines. The Times said the filing described Supreme Court review as “urgently necessary.”

Bankman-Fried, the founder and former chief executive of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was convicted by a federal jury in November 2023 on seven counts, including fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, stemming from the company’s collapse in November 2022.

On March 28, 2024, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan sentenced him to 25 years in prison and ordered criminal forfeiture of $11,020,000,000. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit later summarized that punishment by saying, “At sentencing, the district court ordered Bankman-Fried to forfeit $11,020,000,000…”

Bankman-Fried challenged the conviction, sentence and forfeiture on direct appeal, but the 2nd Circuit rejected those arguments on June 12, 2026. “We AFFIRM the judgment of the district court,” the appeals court wrote. The court later issued its mandate on Aug. 4, 2026, formally ending the appeal and leaving Supreme Court review as the next judicial step.

The petition now before the Supreme Court raises two concrete legal questions. One is whether evidence that customers were later repaid should matter in a fraud prosecution, or whether the crime is judged at the time the money was taken or used. The other is whether an $11.02 billion forfeiture order — money the government can seize as part of a criminal case — is so large that it runs afoul of the Constitution’s Excessive Fines Clause.

Those issues are not new to the case. The 2nd Circuit already upheld the trial court’s evidentiary rulings and also rejected Bankman-Fried’s argument that the forfeiture was unconstitutionally excessive. His Supreme Court petition asks the justices to revisit both points after that loss.

FTX was once one of the best-known crypto exchanges, and Bankman-Fried was one of the industry’s most prominent figures before the company collapsed. But the Supreme Court filing is focused narrowly on legal questions about what juries may hear in fraud trials and how far courts may go when imposing massive forfeiture judgments.

The Supreme Court is not required to hear the case. Its review is discretionary, and the justices grant only a small share of petitions they receive each term.