Sam Bankman-Fried Sentenced to 25 Years in Federal Prison. There are Murderers in California Who Get Less Time

Sam Bankman-Fried has just been sentenced to 25 years in prison for defrauding investors and customers. He ran FTX, a brokerage which also sponsored it's own proprietary crypto currency. The 27 year old was convicted of fraud for using depositor funds to back the currency. Alameda Research, ran by his girlfriend Caroline Ellison, developed the crypto currency.

SBF was convicted on seven counts. Prosecutors had asked 50 years. His defense attorneys suggested 5 or 6. SBF's lawyers announced that they would appeal the sentence and the verdict.

Caroline Ellison turned state's evidence against SBF, her former boyfriend.

FTX collapsed due to cash shortages, with Bankman-Fried accused of misusing up to $8 billion.

"I think five years is too much. He needs to be monitored. But it's foolish for society to waste such a brilliant mind. " said one defense attorney and legal expert.

A Manhattan judge ripped Sam Bankman-Fried as a "remorseless" scammer obsessed with political power as he sentenced the fallen crypto mogul to 25 years in prison Thursday - five months after he was found guilty of stealing more than $8 billion from customers of his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

Judge Lewis Kaplan said the 32-year-old convicted fraudster "presented himself as the good guy" all in favor of "appropriate regulation of the crypto industry" - but it was just an "act.” He did allow SBF to serve the sentence in a medium or low security facility as close to the San Francisco Bay Area as possible.

Courtroom drawing of Bankman Fried at his sentencing.

"He did it because he wanted to be a hugely, hugely political influential person in this country," Kaplan said, blasting him as "remorseless."

"He knew it was wrong, he knew it was criminal, he regrets that he made a very bad bet about the likelihood of being caught," he continued, as Bankman-Fried stood in front of him with his hands clasped tightly at his waist.

Moments before the judge handed down the lengthy sentence, Bankman-Fried apologized for making "bad decisions" that "failed everyone I care about" - but maintained his actions "weren't selfish."

"At the end of the day, I failed everyone that I care about and everything that I care about, too," he said at the hearing in Manhattan federal court.

"A lot of people feel really let down and, I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry about what happened at every stage," the fallen crypto mogul, wearing light tan jail garb, continued.

"I made a series of bad decisions, they weren't selfish decisions, they weren't selfless decisions. They were bad decisions."