Judge Lewis Kaplan denied Sam Bankman-Fried's plea for sentencing adjournment, pointing out that the current date was set without objection.

In a court filing dated December 20th, it was reported that Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, has been denied a rescheduled sentencing hearing.

Bankman-Fried's lawyers made a request to postpone the sentencing hearing for an additional four to six weeks, pushing the sentencing date to May 2024. Currently, the sentencing date is scheduled for March 28, 2024.

The defense lawyers of Bankman-Fried explained that they require more time to gather necessary materials for the sentencing submission and to adequately prepare for an upcoming pre-sentencing interview set to take place on December 21.

The lawyers further contended that the sentencing procedure should be postponed until the resolution of other charges that were excluded from Bankman-Fried's previous trial. Some of the charges include accusations of foreign bribery and campaign finance violations, which will be addressed in a separate trial slated for March 11, 2024.

The request was denied by Judge Lewis Kaplan, who pointed out that Bankman-Fried had already been given an extension previously to file sentence submissions. This earlier request was granted on November 18, as per previous reports.

Judge Kaplan mentioned that the defendant did not object to the current sentencing date being set. He further noted that Bankman-Fried had sufficient time, over six weeks, to prepare for the upcoming pre-sentencing interview scheduled for Thursday.

Convicted in November

On November 2, Bankman-Fried was found guilty on all charges pertaining to fraud and other criminal activities at FTX and its affiliated company, Alameda Research.

Despite facing a maximum prison sentence of 110 years, legal experts anticipate that Bankman-Fried will likely receive a substantially shorter term. Some estimates propose that he could serve less than 25 years in prison.

In addition to Bankman-Fried, four other former executives at FTX and its affiliated companies have also entered guilty pleas with U.S. prosecutors. While the other executives entered into plea deals with the expectation of receiving lenient or no sentencing, each deal does allow for the possibility of sentencing. Currently, only Ryan Salame, the co-CEO of FTX DM, has a known sentencing date set for March 6, 2024.