The news is pretty much across the grid at this point that Sam Bankman-Fried is going away for a long time. The question now is not whether he will get off on appeal but rather how many years he could be looking at. In total, the convicted crypto exchange boss is looking at 7 very serious federal charges, all of which came down very quickly with convictions thanks to the damaging testimony of his ex-girlfriend among other things. It's one thing that she was his close confidant, but also being the CEO of his fake hedge fund sunk SBF's boat as well. And, no surprise, she did it to save her own skin. More than likely, Caroline Ellison will serve a handful of years, 1-5 years max in exchange for her guilty plea and cooperation with putting a definitive nail in the SBF defense's coffin.
A good barometer of what SBF could be facing in sentencing can be see in two characters, both of which ended up getting the wrath of the federal court. First off, not pleading guilty and then getting convicted is going to raise the sentencing number. The federal court has a long history of punishing convicts with extra years for "wasting" the court's time by refusing a plea deal in an obvious case. So that's strike one for SBF.
Second, Ross Ulbricht from the Silk Road escapade is good idea of what happens when the court wants to make an example of someone. Because SBF's crimes are novel with the crypto side of things, he could be looking at closer to 20 years. Ulbricht got 40 because he not only used the novel approach of an Internet market, he was also selling outright illegal drugs doing so. While SBF wasn't a drug dealer, he is in the same boat being highly vulnerable to the court wanting to make an example out of SBF the way it did Ulbricht.
Third, like Martin Shkreli of pharmaceutical fame, SBF played with other people's money via fraud. In both cases, very rich people were damaged by the convicts, which creates pressure for the court to punish. In the case of Shkreli, the convicted was sentenced to 7 years for only 2 counts of fraud. SBF has a total of 7 convictions.
Keep in mind as well, SBF's losses won't just be time. He's looking at hundreds of million of dollars in financial penalties as well. Just about everything with a title in terms of property is pretty much going to be seized and gone, including what few pennies SBF makes in prison working laundry room or kitchen dishwasher.
If Bankman-Fried actually gets a low end of the sentencing range, his only hope is to recover similar to what the Junk Bond King did when Michael Milken parlayed his crime history into an education advocate and business position with notable fame of teaching people how to outsmart the market.
