Is Sam Bankman-Fried’s Pardon on Cards after Ross Ulbricht?

Convicted for an astonishing $8 Billion fraud, 32-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX and crypto’s “poster boy”, might soon walk his way to freedom, after serving just one year of his 25-year jail term. Courtesy- the lenient attitude of the new Trump administration towards infamous crypto entrepreneurs given the recent pardoning of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of infamous dark web market ‘Silk Road’.

According to a report in Bloomberg , parents of  Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents have approached lawyers and other lobbyists considered close to Trump’s inner circle to request clemency for their son. Sam’s parents Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried are professors at Stanford Law School and according to Bloomberg report, the couple is hopeful that they will receive support from the crypto community for their son, in a similar manner to Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road website.

Ross was convicted with back to back life sentences for running a black market site Silk Road and facilitating commerce through use of Bitcoin as early as 2012. Pardoning of Ross was one of the key election campaigns of Donald Trump who went on to win the 2024 U.S. presidential elections. He was fully pardoned by Trump after serving prison sentence of 13 years.

According to a Bloomberg report, the parents of Sam have not been able to reach out directly to White House yet but are hopeful that Trump will be lenient towards their son, who is currently lodged in a U.S. prison. Neither Fried’s parents nor the White House have responded to media questions on whether a clemency request has been made of late.

Once hailed as a prodigy, Sam has been convicted on charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to securities and commodities fraud and money laundering. His arrested and subsequent collapse of FTX, once world’s largest crypto exchange, is considered a pivotal moment in crypto.