Customers recovered, so there was no fraud.
Chapter 11 recoveries and a criminal verdict answer different questions. The jury found a scheme to defraud in 2022; later asset sales do not acquit.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Notoriety90
Mystery20
Scale86
Evidence78
Legal impact72
Culture84
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Quick answers
When did FTX collapse?
Withdrawals failed in the first week of November 2022 after a CoinDesk report on Alameda's balance sheet and a public spat over the FTT token. Chapter 11 petitions were filed on 11 November 2022.
What was Sam Bankman-Fried convicted of?
On 2 November 2023 a Southern District of New York jury convicted him on seven counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers and lenders, and related conspiracy counts (securities, commodities, and money-laundering conspiracies as charged).
What sentence did he receive?
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan imposed 25 years on 28 March 2024, plus forfeiture set out in the judgment. He appealed. The trial-court sentence is the encyclopedia's recorded term unless an appellate court changes it.
Who cooperated?
Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh pleaded guilty and cooperated with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Their pleas and testimony were central to the government's case.
What was Alameda Research?
A trading firm founded by Bankman-Fried before FTX and still under his control. Prosecutors and cooperators described it as the entity that used FTX customer assets. Ellison was its CEO at the collapse.
Did customers get money back?
The Delaware bankruptcy estate reported substantial recoveries and a claims process that, in later public updates, pointed toward high nominal recovery on allowed customer claims. That civil result is separate from the criminal conviction.
The trial court finished in March 2024. Appeal and the estate are the aftermath.
The most common English-language error is treating a high customer recovery as a rewrite of the 2023 verdict.
Still open
- Appellate issues — The defense notice of appeal can attack instructions, evidence rulings, or sentence. Until an opinion issues, the 25-year judgment stands.
- Last distributions — Allowed-claim percentages can still move with reserves, taxes, and remaining suits. That is estate administration.
- Cooperator sentences — Ellison, Wang, and Singh awaited sentencing after cooperation. Those terms are a separate docket from the 25-year judgment.
- Bahamas vs. Delaware control — Early fights over which estate controlled which entity are partly historical; leftover jurisdictional notes remain in the papers.
- Political-donation historiography — How much the campaign-finance story should dominate the fraud story is a press argument, not a new element of the seven counts.
Myth vs record
The collapse was only a market crash.
Crypto prices fell in 2022, but the government's case -- which the jury accepted -- was about misuse of customer property and false statements, not about bitcoin's price alone.
No insider admitted the hole.
Ellison, Wang, and Singh pleaded guilty and described the shortfall and Alameda's access. The trial was not a no-witness mystery.
The case was tried in the Bahamas.
Arrest and some entities were Bahamian. The criminal trial was in the Southern District of New York. The main bankruptcy is in Delaware.
Local notes
CoinDesk to the general desk
English-language finance editors still treat 2 November 2022 as the day a crypto-trade site set the agenda for the Times, Journal, and FT.
EA as a magazine frame
U.S. and U.K. long-form pieces lingered on effective altruism. Legal coverage had to keep pulling readers back to customer property and the verdict form.
Recovery-headline confusion
2024-2025 estate stories in the same press sometimes read as if the criminal case had been overtaken. The encyclopedia keeps the 2 November 2023 verdict attached.
The aftermath is an appeal, a surprisingly solvent estate, and a verdict that recovery headlines do not cancel.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.