Sam Bankman-Fried has filed a petition with the US Supreme Court seeking review of his 2023 fraud conviction and 25-year sentence, marking the last legal avenue available to the FTX co-founder. According to reports from CNN, the petition was filed on September 10, 2026, challenging the seven-count fraud conviction and approximately $11 billion forfeiture order after losing his appeal in June 2026. His lawyer, Stanford law professor Jeffrey Fisher, confirmed the filing, with the justices retaining discretion to refuse the petition without providing any explanation. The Supreme Court receives thousands of such requests each year and agrees to hear arguments in about 60 cases, making Bankman-Fried's petition a significant legal challenge.
Fisher argues that the $11 billion forfeiture order would leave Bankman-Fried broke for life, as the penalty represents a money judgment for funds he does not possess rather than a clawback of existing assets. At his peak, SBF had an estimated net worth of approximately $26 billion to $26.5 billion in early-to-mid 2022 before FTX collapsed. Fisher traces this protection to Magna Carta's principle that a fine should not strip a wrongdoer of any way to earn again. As reported by CNN, Fisher stated that "Before we take away people's liberty and resign them to a lifetime of poverty, we better be sure that they've gotten a fair shake in front of a jury." The timing helps his case, as in July the justices agreed to hear Jouppi v. Alaska, a fight over a $95,000 plane seizure that raises similar questions about excessive financial penalties.
The petition's core challenge centers on evidence about whether FTX customers actually suffered economic loss, with Bankman-Fried's lawyers arguing this evidence was misleading and prejudicial because the government's legal theory did not require prosecutors to prove customer losses. As reported by AMBCrypto, Fisher explained to CNN that "Where the government pursues a theory of fraud under which it doesn't matter whether any victims lost money, introducing evidence suggesting that people actually lost money is distracting and prejudicial." The defense contends that if actual loss was legally unnecessary, the government should not have been allowed to use loss evidence against him, while prosecutors maintained that unauthorized use of customer deposits completed the fraud regardless of later investment value. Bankman-Fried claims that FTX customers' lost funds could have been taken together because Alameda's investments allegedly had sufficient value to cover liabilities.
In June 2026, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Bankman-Fried's arguments, with the court noting "We are unpersuaded." The ruling further stated that "No one opted into having their money transferred under false pretenses to Alameda." As reported by AMBCrypto, this ruling cleared the air by noting that Bankman-Fried had committed fraud when he secretly redirected customer assets without their authorization. The three-judge panel affirmed the judgment in June, describing the case as involving the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and Alameda Research, the cryptocurrency trading firm that Bankman-Fried operated and controlled. Fisher's other argument, laid out in the petition, is that jurors heard customers lost billions but never heard they would be repaid, arguing this gap made a fair trial impossible and demanding a new one.
FTX's fifth customer payout in July took most customer classes to 105% of their claims, but Fisher argues this gap between losses and repayment made a fair trial impossible. The claims were fixed at November 2022 prices, so creditors missed the crypto rally that followed. Fisher points to FTX's early Anthropic bet as part of the reason customers were repaid, yet the estate sold the stake early, taking roughly $1.3 billion in 2024 for a holding now worth more than $30 billion. Trial judge Lewis Kaplan reasoned that a thief who takes stolen money to Vegas and wins is no less guilty, with the justices having not indicated whether they will hear the case. Most petitions never get that far, as the Supreme Court receives several thousand requests each term and grants only a low single-digit percentage of requests.
