NEW YORK — Disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay $11 billion in forfeiture on Thursday for victimizing hundreds of thousands of people around the world in what the feds called one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history.

“There is a risk that this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future, and it’s not a trivial risk, not a trivial risk at all,” Manhattan Federal Court Judge Lewis Kaplan said before announcing his decision.

“In part, my sentence will be for the purpose of disabling him — to the extent that can be done — for a significant amount of time.”

The fallen FTX CEO and founder, whose catastrophic downfall came soon after he was positioned as the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, faced a maximum of 110 years in prison.

Bankman-Fried hung his head and looked somber as he learned his fate, showing little emotion as U.S. marshals escorted him shackled out of the courtroom minutes later. He’s been incarcerated at Brooklyn’s federal jail since Kaplan revoked his $100 bond last August for alleged witness tampering.

Kaplan announced the sentence after hearing from Bankman-Fried, his lawyers, the government, and one of more than 200 victims who contacted him before the proceeding.

“A lot of crying, sleepless nights. I have a new baby son and another toddler,” Sunil Kavuri, who traveled from London for the hearing, said, noting he was among countless FTX customers worldwide whose dreams were “destroyed” after losing everything.

“The money which I wanted to spend on a family home [was] taken away, as well as my children’s education,” he said, lamenting the complexities of FTX’s bankruptcy case. “I suffered every day, every week for the past few years.”

A jury in November found the 32-year-old Bankman-Fried, from Palo Alto, Calif., guilty of wire fraud, money laundering conspiracy, and related counts for siphoning billions from customers of his global cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, to plug losses of its sister hedge fund, Alameda Research, splurge on Caribbean real estate, influence crypto legislation in Washington, and bribe Chinese officials to unfreeze his accounts.

The forfeiture number Kaplan came up with represented $8 billion Bankman-Fried stole from FTX customers, the $1.7 billion he lost from his investors, and the $1.3 billion taken from now-bankrupt lenders.

Assistant U.S Attorney Nicolas Roos on Thursday said the one-time wunderkind’s illegal campaign contributions to Democrats and Republicans, totaling tens of millions of dollars, represented “the largest election crime in the United States’ history.”

Three of Bankman-Fried’s top executives pleaded guilty to participating in his scheme, including his ex, Caroline Ellison, after he was indicted in December 2022 and extradited to the U.S. from the Bahamas, where FTX was based.

Jurors heard from two at the trial and saw extensive evidence that as he rose to fame running the world’s second most popular digital currency exchange, the California native financially ruined hundreds of thousands, many of whom were not of means. Among the A-list celebrities to endorse FTX as the “safest and easiest way to buy and sell crypto” were supermodel Gisele Bündchen, comedian Larry David, and sports stars Tom Brady, Shaquille O’Neal, Steph Curry, and Naomi Osaka.

In a 20-minute, sometimes rambling statement to the court, Bankman-Fried, who looked to be letting his shaggy hairstyle grow back, said he agreed with “most” of what Kavuri said and recognized his victims had gone through the hell of losing all their money and the gains they’d believed they made through his trading platform.

“It’s been excruciating to watch all of this unfold in slow motion. Customers don’t deserve any of that pain, and I, I was — I was the CEO of FTX … That means that, that I was responsible for what happened to it, at the end of the day,” he said. “I was responsible for FTX, and it collapsed on me.”

He also spoke about his former colleagues at FTX, “who poured themselves into the company for years and then watched me throw away everything they had built.”

“At the end of the day, I failed everyone I care about and everything,” he said. “My useful life is probably over. It’s been over for a while now, from before my arrest.”

The feds had asked Kaplan to sentence Bankman-Fried to 40 to 50 years, while probation officials had recommended 100.

Roos, the assistant U.S. attorney, told the court Bankman-Fried, a self-described “effective altruist,” wasn’t a monster but greedy and “someone who committed gravely serious crimes that affected hundreds of thousands or more” around the world “in indescribable ways.”

“There’s a real possibility that given the opportunity, [he’d] consider doing it again,” Roos said.

In a statement, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Bankman-Fried’s “deliberate and ongoing lies demonstrated a brazen disregard for customers’ expectations and disrespect for the rule of law,” to boost his power and influence.

“The scale of his crimes is measured not just by the amount of money that was stolen, but by the extraordinary harm caused to victims, who in some cases had their life savings wiped out overnight,” Williams said.

Kaplan said that the sentences suggested by the feds and probation were greater than necessary and that his decision did not mean to undermine the brazenness of Bankman-Fried’s crimes and lack of remorse.

The judge took issue with part of his remarks on Thursday, saying his “good guy” image was an act, and determined he had perjured himself three times when he took the stand at the monthlong trial.

Kaplan said, “In the head of this mathematical wizard,” Bankman-Fried weighed the cost of getting caught in his fraud against the gain of getting away without getting caught.

“He knew it was wrong, he knew it was criminal,” the judge said. “There is absolutely no doubt that Mr. Bankman-Fried’s name right now is pretty much mud around the world.”

Bankman-Fried’s legal team said they planned to appeal his sentence. In requesting a lenient term, the fallen founder’s lawyer Marc Mukasey said prosecutors had compared him to some “truly vile defendants,” “stone cold financial assassins” who targeted innocent people.

“Sam was not a ruthless financial serial killer who set out every morning to hurt people,” the lawyer said. “Really he’s an awkward math nerd. He thinks in probabilities about everything,” loves veganism and children, and has “a completely, off the charts, mind-blowing intellect.”

“Sam has lost everything. Losing the people in your life and being publicly shamed by the entire globe — to me — seems like enough deterrence,” Mukasey later added.

The judge recommended that Bankman-Fried serve his term as close as possible to the San Francisco Bay area, where he would be close to family and at a facility where his autism needs would be accommodated and he would not be in danger as a high-profile defendant.

“We are heartbroken and will continue to fight for our son,” Bankman-Fried’s parents, Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, both Stanford law professors, said in a statement after the hearing.

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