Sam Bankman-Fried’s Supreme Court lawyer says the $11 billion penalty attached to his sentence would leave the FTX founder broke for the rest of his life, whenever he walks out of prison.

Jeffrey Fisher, who filed the petition on September 10, argues the sum breaks the Eighth Amendment ban on excessive fines. He laid out the case on CNN host Michael Smerconish’s radio program.

Why the Fine Hurts Sam Bankman-Fried More Than the Verdict

The $11 billion order is not a clawback of money the former billionaire holds. It is a money judgment for a sum he does not have.

Fisher argues no realistic future earnings could ever clear it. At his peak, SBF had an estimated net worth of approximately $26 billion to $26.5 billion in early-to-mid 2022 before FTX collapsed.

The lawyer traces that protection to Magna Carta, the 13th century English charter. Its principle was that a fine should not strip a wrongdoer of any way to earn again.

“Before we take away people’s liberty and resign them to a lifetime of poverty, we better be sure that they’ve gotten a fair shake in front of a jury,” Fisher said in the interview.

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The timing helps him. In July the justices agreed to hear Jouppi v. Alaska, a fight over a $95,000 plane seized because a passenger carried a six-pack of beer into a village that bans alcohol.

The link is the clause, not the scale. A seized plane and an $11 billion judgment raise the same question about when a financial penalty goes too far.

Fisher says the two cases ask it differently, however. Jouppi tests whether a fine fits the crime. His own argument tests whether it leaves the defendant any way to earn again.

The Repayment Argument Cuts Both Ways

Fisher’s other argument, laid out in the petition filed last week, is that jurors heard customers lost billions but never heard they would be repaid. He says that gap made a fair trial impossible and demands a new one.

FTX’s fifth customer payout in July took most customer classes to 105% of their claims. Those claims were fixed at November 2022 prices, however, so creditors missed the crypto rally that followed.

Fisher says FTX’s early Anthropic bet is part of the reason customers were repaid. Yet the estate sold the stake early, taking roughly $1.3 billion in 2024 for a holding now worth more than $30 billion, as BeInCrypto reported.

A federal appeals court rejected those arguments in June. Smerconish recalled trial judge Lewis Kaplan reasoning that a thief who takes stolen money to Vegas and wins is no less guilty.

The justices have not said whether they will hear the case. Most petitions never get that far.

Source: BeInCrypto