Once-esteemed businessman Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty on all charges after weeks of criminal trial for fraud. The seven charges include two counts of Wire Fraud, two counts of Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud, Conspiracy to Commit Securities Fraud, Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering and Conspiracy to Commit Commodities Fraud.

Futures Exchange (FTX) was started by Bankman-Fried and Zixiao Wang in May of 2019. FTX continued to grow as it acquired Blockfolio, a crypto app in 2020. As cryptocurrencies’ value and popularity boomed through the COVID-19 era, FTX skyrocketed in value, making Bankman-Fried a multi-billionaire. He was considered a humble, charitable vegetarian man who did not spend money on things such as cars or homes, but the trial revealed this could not be further from the truth.

In 2022, nearly $8 billion of customer money “went missing,” ultimately leading to tons of people withdrawing from FTX, resulting in its collapse. But not everybody had the luxury to withdraw funds. Alameda Research, a company which Bankman-Fried co-founded, was an account that FTX claimed had no special privileges; we now know this was not the case, and Alameda was allowed to withdraw as much as it needed–often from consumer accounts.

Crime and money are often related. Money can blur our capacity for empathy, and in this case, result in a criminal sentence.