Disgraced cryptocurrency tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried, who is currently incarcerated following a fraud conviction that upended the global crypto industry, has formally submitted a pardon request to U.S. President Donald Trump, according to newly released federal records.
Now 34, the former billionaire was handed a 25-year prison term two years ago after a jury found him guilty on a sweeping set of federal charges tied to the collapse of FTX, the major crypto exchange he founded and led, and his affiliated trading firm Alameda Research. Court documents show Bankman-Fried has applied for a post-sentence pardon through the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, a mechanism that would legally erase his fraud conviction if granted after he completes his full prison term.
Notably, the application does not ask for sentence commutation — a separate executive action that would cut short the prison time he is currently serving. Bankman-Fried has continued to assert his innocence throughout the legal process and is actively pursuing an appeal of his conviction and sentence.
Bankman-Fried rose to global prominence as one of the most recognizable faces of the cryptocurrency sector in the early 2020s, when FTX grew to count millions of users worldwide and became one of the largest digital asset exchanges in the industry. That momentum collapsed abruptly in 2022, when investigators uncovered that Bankman-Fried had improperly siphoned billions of dollars in customer deposits held by FTX to fund personal investments, cover trading losses at Alameda Research, and settle private debts.
Records from the Pardon Attorney’s office show Bankman-Fried’s request is one of more than 20,000 pending applications for either pardons or commutations currently under review. President Trump has exercised his pardon power extensively during his second term, issuing clemency to a wide range of individuals including hundreds of rioters who participated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, multiple former White House and campaign staff facing criminal charges, the founder of an illegal dark web drug marketplace, and even the former head of Binance, another leading global crypto platform.
Despite this broad pattern of granting clemency, Trump publicly indicated earlier this year that he would not pardon Bankman-Fried when asked directly about the possibility. Representatives from the White House declined to offer any comment on the new pardon application, and legal counsel for Bankman-Fried did not respond to repeated requests for statement on the filing.