The 25-year sentence Sam Bankman-Fried got Thursday for defrauding users of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX is evidence that the defendant’s past attempts to have his autism considered a mitigating factor during the judge’s sentencing decisions didn’t work. Multiple people had argued on Bankman-Fried’s behalf that his autism made him less culpable for his crimes or less deserving of a lengthy stay in prison.
Multiple people had argued on Bankman-Fried’s behalf that his autism would made him less culpable for his crimes or less deserving of a lengthy stay in prison.
While U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced Bankman-Fried to half as much as prosecutors asked for, the sentence he imposed is almost four times longer than the 6.5 years the defendant’s lawyers had said should be his maximum sentence.
“Today’s sentence will prevent the defendant from ever again committing fraud and is an important message to others who might be tempted to engage in financial crimes that justice will be swift, and the consequences will be severe,” Judge Kaplan said.
During his trial, prosecutors said Bankman-Fried robbed FTX customers of as much as $8 billion. He was convicted on seven criminal counts in November.
In a courtroom statement Thursday, Bankman-Fried, 32, acknowledged his “selfish” decisions and how, with his criminal actions, he “threw it all away.” He said knowing what he did to defraud so many people “haunts me every day.”
Last month, though, there were people on Bankman-Fried’s side arguing that, because he’s autistic, he may not have known what he was doing.
Maria Centrella, the parent of an autistic 34-year-old man, said she became interested in Bankman-Fried after watching a CBS “60 Minutes” report about him and wrote to the court asking for leniency. She said that she'd never met Bankman-Fried but, “I firmly believe that while he may be an MIT grad — he did not fully understand the scope of what was going on and did not have malicious intent.”
His mother, Barbara Fried, submitted a letter saying she feared what life might be like for Bankman-Fried in prison.
In a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, psychiatrist George Lerner wrote that his patient discussed the collapse of FTX “in logical, dispassionate terms,” which Lerner called “common and sensible to someone who has the constellation of symptoms we associate with related labels of Asperger’s, autism, ASD or neurodiversity.”
His mother, Barbara Fried, meanwhile, submitted a letter saying she feared what life might be like for Bankman-Fried in prison, saying, “It may be that some of the inmates will come to appreciate Sam once they get to know him. But miscommunication in that environment is dangerous, and Sam’s traits greatly increase the likelihood of it occurring.”
Reading these statements as an autistic person evoked in me conflicting thoughts: The plea for leniency because of Bankman-Fried’s neurotype follows a tired trope. We’ve seen such appeals before. An attorney for Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon Shaman, said of him and other January 6 defendants, “These are people with brain damage, they’re f------ retarded, they’re on the g--d---n spectrum.” Those narratives equate bad behavior with autistic traits and imply that autism makes people commit crimes.
At the same time, the criminal justice system is particularly harsh on autistic people. Statistics show that autistic people are overrepresented in prison and have a greater chance of having deadly reactions with the police. The unfair treatment autistic people get from law enforcement and the ways that prison conditions are even harsher on them than everybody else is a conversation worth having. But not in the context of Bankman-Fried’s crime and his sentencing. The request that his autism be seen as a mitigating factor in his crimes is simply asking that he be given preferential treatment.
Prison is a horrific experience for anybody. Barbara Fried is right that autistic people are uniquely vulnerable in prison. A report about autistic people incarcerated in Spain found that "they are more vulnerable to harassment, social isolation and sexual victimisation."
A 2012 study of 431 male prisoners in the U.S. showed a 4.4% autism prevalence rate, about double the percentage of adults in the U.S. the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates are autistic. A 2016 Bureau of Justice survey of disabilities reported by inmates found that the “most commonly reported type of disability among both state and federal prisoners was cognitive disability,” which includes developmental disabilities like autism.
Autistic or not, Bankman-Fried’s pedigree allowed him luxuries most people don’t have.
However, autistic or not, Bankman-Fried’s pedigree allowed him luxuries most people don’t have. One study found that autistic children from homes earning between $40,000 and $79,000 a year were twice as likely as people from wealthy families to have police contact. Bankman-Fried, as the son of two law professors at Stanford, would have had more support to avoid run-ins with the law.
He still managed to run into the law, though, when he defrauded the users of FTX.
The number of autistic people who have interactions with law enforcement is difficult to measure, given the lack of data on adult autism rates. A report from the Ruderman Family Foundation found that between one-third and half of people killed by law enforcement officers had a disability. By the same token, a seminal 2001 study reported “that people with developmental disabilities are approximately seven times more likely than others to come into contact with law enforcement.”
And the results can often be deadly. This month, San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies shot and killed Ryan Gainer, a 15-year-old Black autistic boy. Police body-camera footage showed that Gainer charged at one deputy with a gardening tool before another deputy shot Gainer. But Gainer’s family’s attorney said that he shouldn't have been killed and that the sheriff's office should have been plenty familiar with him as officers had already been to the house five time this year. According to the San Bernardino Sheriff's Office, on multiple occasions, law enforcement officers had taken the teenager to mental health facility.
After the shooting, Sheriff Shannon Dicus said, “Our social safety net for those experiencing mental illness needs to be strengthened,” and added, “Rapidly evolving, violent encounters are some of the most difficult, requiring split-second decisions.”
Having police respond to autistic people in crisis puts both autistic people in danger and puts law enforcement in a difficult position of having to navigate a situation they may not be trained to handle.
Bankman-Fried’s attempt to use his neurodivergence as a means to escape the consequences of his actions are wrong.
In 2016, Arnaldo Rios-Soto an autistic 26-year-old man, was sitting in the middle of a road with a toy truck when a North Miami, Florida, police officer shot at him and hit his caretaker Charles Kinsey instead.
A jury acquitted Jonathan Aledda of two counts of attempted manslaughter, only finding him guilty of culpable negligence, a misdemeanor. The fact that a jury deemed that shooting a misdemeanor indicates how little some people value autistic people’s lives.
But Bankman-Fried lived in a totally different world than the autistic people mentioned above.
Yes, prison conditions are especially hard on autistic people. Those advocating on behalf of Bankman-Fried aren’t wrong to think so. All the same, Bankman-Fried’s attempt to use his neurodivergence as a means to escape the consequences of his actions are wrong. The criminal justice system consistently fails neurodivergent people, but Bankman-Fried is not in that number.