SBF's Appeal: Can Sam Bankman-Fried Actually Win His Case?

More than a year has passed since Sam Bankman-Fried faced conviction on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy tied to FTX’s collapse. Roughly ten months after that, he received his sentence: 25 years in federal prison. But SBF’s legal battle is far from over. His new legal team, headed by attorney Alexandra Shapiro, has filed an appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the convicted crypto executive deserves another chance at trial. The question now is whether any appellate court would actually grant it.

Where Things Stand: One Year Later

The FTX case seemed to dominate headlines in 2024, but much has changed since then. The crypto industry has rebounded. Venture capital is flowing again. Politicians who once distanced themselves from the sector have returned with renewed interest. SBF’s trial lawyers, Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell, stepped aside after the conviction, making way for Shapiro’s team to chart a new legal course. In September 2024—just days after Caroline Ellison, SBF’s former colleague at Alameda Research, faced her own sentencing hearing—Shapiro filed a 102-page appeal challenging the original verdict.

The timing wasn’t accidental. While prosecutors declined to seek jail time for Ellison, citing her cooperation in the case, SBF received the much harsher 25-year sentence. Shapiro’s filing appeared strategically designed to draw a stark contrast between the two defendants’ outcomes.

The Core of SBF’s Legal Challenge

Shapiro’s appeal rests on a bold claim: SBF did not receive a fair trial. The legal team argues that the defendant was “presumed guilty by federal prosecutors eager for quick headlines” and “presumed guilty by the judge who presided over his trial.” More fundamentally, they contend that the court suppressed evidence favorable to SBF—what lawyers call “Brady” evidence.

What exactly was withheld? According to the appeal, the jury never learned that SBF made successful investments alongside his bad decisions. He invested in Anthropic, the AI startup, for example, suggesting he wasn’t purely reckless with capital. More critically, Shapiro argues, the jury didn’t hear the full picture of FTX’s financial status.

The appeal challenges the “prevailing narrative” that dominated the original trial: that SBF stole billions in customer funds, driving FTX into insolvency and causing catastrophic losses. Nearly two years later, a very different reality has emerged. FTX was never actually insolvent, according to the appeal. The company possessed billions in assets capable of repaying its customers. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, the appeal claims, deprived the jury of this exculpatory information.

Can He Actually Convince an Appeals Court?

The short answer from legal experts: probably not. But it’s not impossible.

Appellate courts rarely overturn convictions based on judge bias. Tama Beth Kudman, a partner at the law firm Kudman Trachten Aloe Posner, explained the daunting bar SBF must clear. “It’s just not very common for an appellate court to double-guess a case like this,” she said. To succeed, SBF’s lawyers would need to prove two things: first, that Judge Kaplan displayed bias against the defendant, and second, that this bias directly prejudiced SBF’s case in a material way. Courts grant appellate review for bias claims only in the rarest circumstances—typically when a judge has a personal conflict of interest.

“Kaplan is known as a well-tempered, good natured judge,” Kudman noted. “I would have thought he would have stepped aside if there was any reason that he shouldn’t be hearing the case.” No evidence of such a conflict has emerged.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals would effectively be saying the trial judge acted inappropriately—something appellate courts rarely do. It reserves such reversals for exceptional circumstances.

The Timing Strategy: What the Experts Think

Joshua Ashley Klayman, head of fintech and blockchain at the law firm Linklaters, offered a different angle. He suggested the appeal’s timing—filed just three days after Ellison’s sentencing memo—might signal SBF’s legal strategy. “Without expressing a view on the likelihood of success of Sam Bankman-Fried’s appeal, the timing of his filing may be strategic,” Klayman said. The juxtaposition of a 25-year sentence against a potentially non-custodial punishment for Ellison creates a compelling narrative for appellate judges: unequal justice for defendants who played different roles in the same disaster.

Klayman also noted that the news cycle around FTX customer repayment could work in SBF’s favor. “Perhaps SBF and his counsel may hope that, with the passage of time, SBF’s arguments that FTX customers didn’t lose money may be viewed in a different light,” he suggested.

Will FTX’s Repayment Plans Matter?

One development could genuinely influence how judges view SBF’s case: FTX creditors are actually getting paid. Under the bankruptcy settlement, nearly all customers are expected to recover approximately 118% of their original losses. This seems to support SBF’s core argument—that FTX was solvent and customers wouldn’t suffer permanent harm.

Yet not all legal experts view this favorably for SBF. Joe Valenti, a partner in White Collar & Government Enforcement at Saul Ewing, drew an analogy. “It doesn’t matter if the money was paid back,” he said. “If you’re a cashier at the supermarket and you take $20 to go to the casino, it doesn’t matter if you give back the money the next day. You still took money from the grocery store.” The fact that customers recovered their funds doesn’t erase the underlying crime.

Valenti also explained why judges give trial courts broad discretion. “Anything that’s tied to the reading of the facts, or the conduct of the courtroom, they give significant leeway to the court,” he said. Judges are permitted to control courtroom proceedings in the interest of efficiency and limiting evidence is well within judicial discretion.

What Happens Next for SBF

The appeal has been filed, but the real work is just beginning. The Second Circuit will review Shapiro’s arguments and the trial record. They must decide whether to take the case seriously enough to order a retrial or let the conviction stand.

For SBF, the odds appear steep. Appellate courts rarely overturn convictions on grounds of judicial bias without compelling evidence of a personal conflict of interest. The fact that Judge Kaplan appears universally respected for fairness doesn’t help SBF’s cause.

Yet the case remains symbolically important. As the crypto industry moves forward and the FTX saga recedes from daily headlines, SBF’s legal fight continues. His appeal forces courts to reconsider whether the original trial truly met the constitutional standard of fairness—a question that extends well beyond one crypto executive’s fate.