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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison for massive crypto fraud

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Thursday for the massive fraud and conspiracy that doomed his cryptocurrency exchange and a related hedge fund, Alameda Research.

The sentence in Manhattan federal court was significantly less than the 40 to 50 years in prison that federal prosecutors wanted for Bankman-Fried. But it was much more than the five to six-and-a-half years suggested by his attorneys.

“There is a risk that this man will be in position to do something very bad in the future,” Judge Lewis Kaplan said before sentencing the 32-year-old and ordering him to pay $11 billion in forfeiture to the U.S. government.

“And it’s not a trivial risk at all,” Kaplan added.

The judge said that in 30 years on the federal bench, he had “never seen a performance” like Bankman-Fried’s trial testimony.

If Bankman-Fried was not “outright lying” during cross-examination by prosecutors, he was “evasive,” Kaplan said.

Jurors at trial likewise did not buy Bankman-Fried’s version of events, convicting him in November of seven criminal counts and holding him responsible for losing about $10 billion in customer money due to the securities fraud conspiracy.

Kaplan on Thursday said the quarter-century prison term has “the purpose of disabling him to the extent that can appropriately be done for a significant period of time.”

Before being sentenced, Bankman-Fried spoke contritely even as he suggested that the billions of dollars customers lost was the result of a “liquidity crisis” or “mismanagement,” not fraud.

Indicted FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves the U.S. Courthouse in New York City, July 26, 2023.

Amr Alfiky | Reuters

“My useful life is probably over,” he said while wearing a beige jailhouse jumpsuit. “It’s been over for a while now since before my arrest.”

“They built something really beautiful and I threw all of that away,” he said of his co-workers at FTX, a company once valued at $32 billion. “It haunts me every day.”

“A lot of people feel really let down. And they were very let down,” he said. “And
I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about what happened at every stage.”

“It’s been excruciating to watch this all unfold,” he told Kaplan. “Customers don’t deserve this level of pain.”

“I was the CEO of FTX and I was responsible.”

But even as he took some responsibility, Bankman-Fried suggested that customers eventually would get back the money they placed with his exchange, and blamed a federal bankruptcy court for not making those customers whole yet.

Kaplan appeared to stop paying close attention at that point.

In response, Bankman-Fried crossed his arms and began rapidly tapping his right foot as he continued speaking.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas Roos, arguing for a prison sentence of up to five decades, scoffed at the picture painted by Bankman-Fried and his lawyers.

FTX’s collapse was not due to “a liquidity crisis or act of mismanagement,” Roos said. “It was the theft” of billions of dollars of customer money around the world, the prosecutor said.

“It was a loss that affected people significantly.”

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, in a statement after the sentencing, said, “Samuel Bankman-Fried orchestrated one of the largest financial frauds in history.”

“His deliberate and ongoing lies demonstrated a brazen disregard for his customers’ expectations and disrespect for the rule of law, all so that he could secretly use his customers’ money to expand his own power and influence,” Williams said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “Anyone who believes they can hide their financial crimes behind wealth and power, or behind a shiny new thing they claim no one else is smart enough to understand, should think twice. I

Bankman-Fried’s family, in a statement, said, “We are heartbroken and will continue to fight for our son.” Both Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, who are Stanford Law professors, were in court for the sentencing.

Barbara Fried and Allan Joseph Bankman, parents of FTX Co-Founder Sam Bankman-Fried, arrive at court in New York, US, on Thursday, March 28, 2024. Sam Bankman-Fried returns to court for sentencing after being convicted of a massive fraud that led to the collapse of his FTX exchange. 

Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Before he sentenced SBF, Kaplan said he rejected “the entirety of defendant’s argument there was no loss” at FTX, calling that claim “misleading, logically flawed and speculative.”

Several victims of Bankman-Fried then talked about the damage to their lives from his crimes.

Bankman-Fried looked at the victims as they talked to the judge.

Bankman-Fried plans to appeal his conviction and sentence.

Three other people, who all testified against Bankman-Fried at trial, are awaiting their own sentencings after pleading guilty to criminal charges related to FTX and Alameda Research.

They are Caroline Ellison, the Alameda CEO who at one time dated Bankman-Fried, FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, the co-founder and chief technology officer of FTX.

WATCH: The collapse of FTX: Insiders Tell All

This is developing news. Check back for updates.

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Amazon workers reject union in vote at North Carolina warehouse

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Amazon workers reject union in vote at North Carolina warehouse

File: The Amazon distribution center in Garner, N.C. opened in August 2020. Across four floors, the warehouse covers 2 million square feet.

Scott Sharpe | Tribune News Service | Getty Images

Amazon workers at a facility near Raleigh, North Carolina, overwhelmingly voted against unionizing on Saturday.

Of the 3,276 ballots cast, there were 2,447 votes opposing the union and 829 in favor, according to the National Labor Relations Board. There were 77 challenged ballots, a gap that’s too narrow to change the outcome of the election. The results still need to be certified by the NLRB.

The election at the facility, named RDU1 and located in the suburb of Garner, came after organizers with the upstart Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE) campaigned at the warehouse for the past three years. The facility employs roughly 4,700 workers.

CAUSE said in a statement that the election results were a “result of Amazon’s willingness to break the law.”

“Amazon’s relentless and illegal efforts to intimidate us prove that this company is afraid of workers coming together to claim our power,” the group said. “Amazon may think it is above the law, but we will not accept a system that allows billionaires and corporations to play by a different set of rules.”

Amazon spokeswoman Eileen Hards denied that the company broke the law or interfered with the election.

“We’re glad that our team in Garner was able to have their voices heard, and that they chose to keep a direct relationship with Amazon,” Hards said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to make this a great place to work together, and to supporting our teammates as they build their futures with us.”

Amazon, the nation’s second-largest private employer, has long sought to keep unions out of its ranks. The strategy succeeded in the U.S. until 2022, when workers at a Staten Island warehouse voted to join the Amazon Labor Union. Last month, workers at a Whole Foods store in Philadelphia voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

Amazon responded to the Garner union drive with a barrage of anti-union messages in the warehouse, on a website, and sent through its AtoZ app to employees. A leader of the warehouse urged employees to “vote no,” saying a union “can get in the way of how we work together.” The company described CAUSE as an “outside party” that’s “claiming to be a union.”

Amazon has previously said its employees can choose whether or not to join a union, and that it speaks “openly, candidly and respectfully about these topics” so that they can “make an informed decision.”

CAUSE was founded in 2022 by RDU1 employees Mary Hill and Rev. Ryan Brown to voice concerns about the company’s response to the Covid pandemic, which they viewed as inadequate. The group sought to organize RDU1 to boost wages and secure longer breaks.

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Starting pay at RDU1 is $18.50 an hour. CAUSE has pushed to negotiate for wages of $30 an hour.

In its statement on Saturday, CAUSE said it intended to continue organizing at RDU1 “because over half of Amazon employees are still struggling with food and housing insecurity.”

Labor groups have looked beyond NLRB elections in an attempt to gain a union foothold at Amazon. They’ve assisted employees with filing unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB against Amazon, accusing the company of violating labor laws.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters helped coordinate a picket effort at nine Amazon facilities in December. Amazon said the walkout had no impact on its operations.

The Teamsters union has said it represents 9,000 Amazon workers around the country, although the company has refused to recognize the union and bargain with leadership.

Unions have enjoyed increasing support across the country, with 67% of Americans saying they approve of labor unions, according to Gallup. But that hasn’t translated into higher membership rates. Union membership in the private sector declined slightly to 5.9% in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

North Carolina had the lowest union membership rate in the country last year, with only 2.4% of workers in the state represented, according to the BLS.

WATCH: Amazon’s first U.S. union faces an uphill battle after historic win

How two friends formed Amazon's first U.S. union and what's next

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Trump Media reports $400 million in 2024 losses

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Trump Media reports 0 million in 2024 losses

U.S. President Donald Trump signs an executive order establishing the Energy Dominance Council led by Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in the Oval Office at the White House on February 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. President Trump signed a second executive order withholding federal funding from schools and universities that impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Trump Media & Technology Group shares were down about 1% in extended trading on Friday after the operator of Truth Social released its 2024 results.

Here’s how the company performed:

  • Earnings: Loss of $2.36 per share
  • Revenue: $3.6 million

The company’s revenue declined 12% year over year, according to its annual report. The company saw its net loss widen to $400.9 million from $58.2 million in 2023.

Trump Media debuted on Nasdaq under the ticker “DJT” last March, completing its merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. The stock nearly doubled in value in 2024, with its namesake, Donald Trump, winning the U.S. presidential election in November. As of Friday’s close, the stock was down about 11% year to date giving it a market capitalization of $6.59 billion.

In 2024, Trump Media incurred merger-related legal fees because of obstruction from former President Biden’s Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a statement. A change to a revenue-sharing agreement with an advertising partner resulted in lower sales. “Additionally, revenue has varied as we selectively test a nascent advertising initiative on our Truth Social platform,” the company said in the annual report.

Unlike Meta and other social media companies, Trump Media management said in the filing they do not believe in using traditional metrics such as the number of active users or average revenue per user. Doing so “could potentially divert its focus from strategic evaluation with respect to the progress and growth of its business,” according to the filing.

In the fourth quarter, Trump Media announced the availability of its Truth+ video streaming service on Android, iOS and the web.

The company has not held an earnings call since the merger.

As of Friday, a trust where President Trump is the sole beneficiary owns 52% of the voting power of the company’s stock, the filing states.

Trump publishes posts on Truth Social, where he has 8.9 million followers. On X, owned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has been helping with the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, Trump has 100.9 million followers.

Trump Media now has $776.8 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, with $9.6 million in debt.

“We will continue to explore opportunities to partner, merge with, and acquire other entities that are able to function effectively if TMTG evolves into a holding company with subsidiaries spanning several industries,” Chairman and CEO Devin Nunes, a former Republican Congressman was quoted as saying in the statement.

WATCH: Trump Media expands into financial services, including allocation to crypto: CNBC Crypto World

Trump Media expands into financial services, including allocation to crypto: CNBC Crypto World

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Dell shares pop on report of $5 billion deal for AI servers for Elon Musk’s xAI

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Dell shares pop on report of  billion deal for AI servers for Elon Musk's xAI

Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of Twitter, Elon Musk attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre on June 16, 2023 in Paris, France.

Chesnot | Getty Images

Dell shares rose 4% on Friday following a report from Bloomberg that Elon Musk’s startup xAI was preparing an agreement to buy $5 billion in artificial intelligence servers from the hardware maker.

The equipment containing Nvidia‘s GB200 graphics processing units (GPUs) would be delivered this year, according to Bloomberg, which cited unnamed sources.

Many data center gear manufacturers have been seeing growth from selling boxes for training and running AI models. Dell said in November that it had $3.6 billion in quarterly AI server order demand. Dell’s total revenue for the latest quarter totaled $24.37 billion, up 10% year over year.

In December, xAI announced a $6 billion funding round. CNBC reported that the Musk startup, which competes with OpenAI, was raising the money to purchase GPUs. The Grok assistant from xAI is available for people to use on X, which is also owned by Musk.

Musk has been building out xAI’s facility in Memphis, Tennessee.

Dell declined to comment. xAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read the full Bloomberg report here.

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