The efforts by former Sam Bankman-Fried to overturn or reopen his fraud conviction have suffered another setback after a US federal court rejected his request for a new trial.

The ruling reinforces his earlier conviction tied to the collapse of FTX, which remains one of the largest financial fraud cases in the digital asset industry.

Bankman-Fried, once regarded as a central figure in the crypto sector, is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence following his conviction on multiple fraud-related charges.

His latest motion sought to challenge that outcome, but the court found no sufficient basis to revisit the case.

The decision was issued by US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who also presided over the original trial.

Bankman-Fried had argued that a retrial was necessary based on what he described as new evidence and witness material that could have influenced the jury’s decision.

However, the court rejected that argument.

Judge Kaplan ruled that the information presented by the defence did not qualify as newly discovered evidence.

According to the court’s findings, the witnesses and material referenced by Bankman-Fried were already known to him during the original proceedings.

The ruling emphasised that the defence had sufficient opportunity to obtain or present this information during the initial trial but failed to do so.

On that basis, the court concluded there was no legal justification to overturn the verdict or grant a retrial.

The court also denied an attempt by Bankman-Fried’s legal team to withdraw the motion before a final ruling was issued.

Despite that request, the judge proceeded with the decision and formally dismissed the retrial bid.

A central point in the court’s ruling was the classification of the so-called “new evidence.”

The judge determined that the material did not meet the legal threshold required for a retrial.

In US federal criminal cases, new evidence must typically be both previously unavailable and capable of producing a different verdict if presented to a jury.

In this case, the court found that neither condition was satisfied.

The judge noted that Bankman-Fried had prior awareness of the witnesses and information he later relied on in his motion, undermining the claim that the evidence was genuinely new or could not have been introduced earlier.

The ruling also reflected scepticism toward the broader intent of the motion.

The court indicated that the arguments presented did not demonstrate procedural unfairness or legal error significant enough to justify a new trial.

As a result, the original conviction remains intact.

Bankman-Fried’s conviction stems from the collapse of FTX in 2022, when the exchange faced a sudden liquidity crisis that exposed significant financial mismanagement and misuse of customer funds.

The fallout led to billions of dollars in losses for investors and customers.

Although the retrial attempt has been rejected, the legal process is not fully concluded.

Bankman-Fried still has an ongoing appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

That appeal represents his primary remaining legal route to challenge both the conviction and the sentence.

His legal team is expected to continue arguing that errors during the original trial affected the outcome. However, the district court’s rejection of the retrial motion narrows the scope of arguments that can be made.

For now, Bankman-Fried’s conviction stands, his 25-year sentence remains in effect, and the court has made clear that the threshold for reopening the case has not been met.

The post FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s retrial bid rejected by court appeared first on Invezz

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