Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, no longer has a live appeal. The Second Circuit rejected his bid to overturn his conviction on 12 Jun, upholding his 25-year sentence for a fraud that cost customers roughly $8bn.
SBF's Appeal Is Formally Dead, Leaving Only a Pardon Fight He's Already Losing
5 August 2026 - 12:15 UTC
By Stu Clelland
The court's mandate, the filing that makes a ruling legally final and returns the case to the district court, was issued on 4 Aug. It formally closes the door that had technically remained open since his conviction in June.
Why the mandate took until August
No public record or subsequent coverage indicates Bankman-Fried's team sought a rehearing before the full Second Circuit in the weeks between the ruling and the mandate, a step that would have kept the case formally open. Without that step, this week's mandate is procedural: the court doing what happens automatically once the window to contest a ruling closes, not the result of anything decided behind the scenes.
What's actually left
With the mandate issued, rehearing before the full Second Circuit is no longer available for this ruling at all. The one formal judicial path remaining is a petition for certiorari, a request asking the Supreme Court to agree to hear the case, which it can decline without explanation. The filing window is measured in weeks rather than months, and the Supreme Court's grant rate for criminal certiorari petitions sits under 1%. Bankman-Fried's lawyers haven't said whether they'll file.
The remaining fight is political, not legal
Bankman-Fried applied for a presidential pardon or commutation through the Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney earlier this year, a bid that dragged on through the summer. The precedent exists: Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in 2025. Since then, senators Cynthia Lummis and Ruben Gallego, from opposite parties, have introduced a resolution opposing clemency for Bankman-Fried specifically, and congressional attention has focused on the roughly $8bn in customer funds prosecutors said he diverted to political donations, real estate and personal spending. With Lummis and Gallego both on record against clemency, the pardon push no longer has the bipartisan silence it would need to move without a fight of its own.
The upshot
Bankman-Fried is 34. His release date is set for December 2044, when he'll be 52, unless something changes it. The legal track ends at a Supreme Court petition, which rarely succeeds for anyone. The political track now faces named, bipartisan opposition: an alignment Washington doesn't produce often.
