Read a letter from Sam Bankman-Fried’s father.

Case 1:22-cr-00673-LAK Document 407-3 Filed 02/27/24Hon. Lewis A. KaplanDaniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse500 Pearl StreetNew York, NY 1007-1312Dear Judge Kaplan:Page 1 of 4Thank you for the opportunity to allow me to say a few words about my son, Sam Bankman-Fried, that I believe bear on a just sentence in this case.As a child, Sam had impressive powers of logic and perseverance, and was by nature an outside-the-box thinker. But he also had some challenges many of which are associated with some ofthose same strengths. I will return to them at the end. But first, I would like to talk about thewhole person- the Sam I have watched grow up, slowly find himself, and decide how he wantedto live his life.From an early age, he loved math and complicated games and wanted to talk about the world. Hewas uncomfortable around other children and childhood play, and as a result was a loner in manypeer social settings until he got to college. By the time he was ten or so, he had no interest inmaterial goods. We would ask him what he wanted for his birthday or Chanukah, and he wouldsay "nothing." We ended up agreeing that we wouldn't keep asking him about it, but that heshould tell us if he had changed his mind and wanted anything. He never did.He was, however, always interested in the material conditions of other peoples' lives, inparticular those around the world most desperately in need. He took a job on Wall Street to earnto give, and ultimately left Wall Street to work full-time for one of the charities he had helpedfund. He worried, though, that without his annual donations, the charity would have troublemaking ends meet. He started trading cryptocurrency on the side to help support the charity. As ithappened, he was so successful trading that he again decided that his highest and best use wasnot working directly for the charity but instead as a funder, and decided to go into business forhimself. This was a path I never imagined he would take.As I discuss more below, while running FTX, Sam's primary focus was business; he worked dayand night. But he continued to work on charity, both as a funder and as an active participant indecision-making. Sam organized, participated in, and ultimately funded a group that is carryingout groundbreaking vaccine trials that may change the face of pandemic prevention and theprevention and treatment of other infectious diseases around the worldIn 2022, 1 took a year's leave of absence from my Stanford job to work on other philanthropicprojects worthy of funding by FTX. My own work focused on education and health care, arcasin which I have both experience and a strong professional interest. I loved this work, and couldgo on and on about the promising philanthropic projects underway at the time of FTX'simplosion, but I am mindful of the court's time in reading this document.1Ex. A-2

Case 1:22-cr-00673-LAK Document 407-3 Filed 02/27/24Page 2 of 4Sam also supported efforts to realize the potential of a digital infrastructure for money transfersto people in the poorest parts of the world. One project involved remittances - cross-bordertransfers of money, generally from children in a wealthy country to parents in a poorer country.The recipients do not have bank accounts to transfer funds into. Right now, the sender typicallygoes to a company such as Western Union, pays for the remittance there, and parents pick up themoney from a Western Union office in their own country. The process is expensive and timeconsuming. Using its cryptocurrency infrastructure, FIX estimated it could offer free,instantaneous transfers, receivable in local currency, at a minimal cost to itself. A beta version ofthis program - offering free remittances between the US and 28 countries in Africa -was aboutto begin at the time of the bankruptcy. I was lucky enough to be able to work on this project andwould have regarded its implementation as the most socially valuable thing I had done with mylife.Although Sam started FTX as a way to earn to give, he never saw the business solely as a meansto an end to fund good works. For the entirety of FTX's existence, his time was pretty muchconsumed with building the company, which included creating a social environment that fosteredcreativity and met the needs of employees. Subject to the increasing demands on his time as aCEO of a rapidly growing business, he tried always to be there for his employees. The companywas housed in an office park-like complex, with a number of connected or adjoining buildings.Sam worked in the busiest building, on a desk next to dozens of other desks. He had no officeand no other personal perks. It was a bare-bones place, much less attractive than the typicalworkplaces in law firms, government offices or universities, and most businesses, but it was inkeeping with Sam's commitment to egalitarianism and facilitated goals that were a high priorityto Sam.The office layout was also designed to give any employee access to Sam. Sam was a greatlistener and treated employees like family. He wasn't good at small talk and was likely to lookdown or away when he spoke to them, but employees knew he wasn't dissing them. That's justthe way he was. He paid employees what he thought was their rightful contribution to profits,which was almost always far above what they could have earned elsewhere and in many caseswould have asked for themselves, and when they came to him with personal problems, his firstand usually last impulse was to give them what they needed without asking any questions.He treated other stakeholders in the business with similar respect. He did customer servicehimself, and gave employees instructions to resolve any plausible complaints in the customer'sfavor even if it cost the company a nontrivial amount of money. He also believed in fair dealingin negotiations with others. He would generally decide what a fair price was, explain why hethought it was fair, and stick to it. He'd instruct his lawyers not to press minor issues in reachingagreements with counterparties.The company owned the top floor of an apartment complex near the office. It housed eight or soof the top employees and their partners, and served both as an informal headquarters of sorts, aplace to entertain prospective business partners, and a gathering place for employees to relax, catdinner together (usually cooked by Sam) and play complicated board games, the diversion ofchoice. It was festooned with computer screens and desks, and for one week the entire2Ex. A-2

Case 1:22-cr-00673-LAK Document 407-3 Filed 02/27/24Page 3 of 4programming staff used it for a Hackathon. Sam lived in it and - paid rent for that privilege - forsix months-about half of the time he was in the Bahamas. Even when he was officially living inthe apartment, he was more likely to be found elsewhere - often sleeping on a bean bag chair inthe office. Like everything about Sam, that wasn't an affectation. He just doesn't care about thecreature comforts that most of us value. He is similarly uninterested in hobnobbing with the richand famous and generally uncomfortable with attention. He did what he thought he had to do forthe good of the company, often at some significant personal cost to himself. What FTX spent onadvertising, travel, and housing is in line with what comparable multibillion dollar companiesspend, and a small fraction of what many do spend. For anyone who knows Sam, the popularportrayal of him as a high-rolling, celebrity-secking, CEO driven by greed is simply bizarre.I am the son of a small businessman and told Sam what I believe my father would have told him:take some money out for yourself and put it somewhere safe. Or buy something special, so youcan enjoy life more. Others, including senior counsel, told Sam the same thing. According toone business journal, by 2022, Sam had a net worth of more than $20 billion. He could easilyhave sold a billion dollars' worth of stock. He wouldn't do that, though. He wanted to leaveevery penny in the business to finance its growth. He had a salary of $200,000, which was morethan enough for his personal consumption needs. He had nothing "salted away" when the crashcame.Barbara and I stayed with Sam in the Bahamas for the month following the collapse, andwitnessed firsthand his single-minded focus on getting money back to depositors, long after therewas any possibility he would be able to save any of his equity or wealth. About a week after theimplosion, Sam and I were speaking to a prospective defense counsel. The lawyer was aghastwhen Sam told him that he was spending all of his time working with the Bahamian governmentto get depositors their money back. The lawyer strongly advised Sam to focus on his defense."Are you aware," asked the lawyer, "that even as we speak, there is probably a room of bright,hard-working and ambitious people somewhere whose goal is to put you in jail?""Yup," answered Sam, "and that's pretty much irrelevant to me compared to helping depositors."I recognize that the Sam I have described is strongly at odds with how the public sees him, andmay seem unbelievable to the readers of this letter, including this court. I could add hundreds ofother examples of his kindness and genuine and deep concern for others, but I'm not sure howmuch difference they would make, and doing so would surely try the patience of readers. I willadd only that were the social costs of saying anything positive about Sam at this moment in timenot prohibitive, I am confident many others who have known him throughout his life woulddescribe much the same person.I want now to return to the challenges I referred to at the start, and their implications forsentencing. Sam has struggled throughout his life to learn and control things most of us take forgranted, such as eye contact, small talk, and responding to social cues.There is a positive side to this struggle. Sam's life experience has made him tolerant ofdiversity in the way most of us cannot be. Sam hired employees with communicationdifficulties so great that they could not otherwise get or keep another job. I remember him3Ex. A-2

Case 1:22-cr-00673-LAK Document 407-3 Filed 02/27/24Page 4 of 4telling me about one trader who fit that description. "He's brilliant, but he'll drive everybodyclsc nuts," Sam said, "so he'll work only with me." As Barbara has written, Sam was open aboutsome of his own mental health struggles, and hired a psychiatrist to help coach employees withemotional issues. Alameda and FTX had a diverse group of employees - in gender, race,nationality and character traits. The companies employed some of the most extroverted people Ihave ever known. But they were also a haven for those with who, for reasons having nothing todo with their abilities, would be deemed too odd or "weird" to work with.As the company grew, Sam was thrust more and more into the public eye, and asked to givehundreds of interviews a month. When he agreed to do them, characteristically, he spoke veryquickly, and gave long complicated answers when he thought that was what logic required, andanswers that were jarringly short (a quick sharp 'yup') otherwise. He couldn't always managehis gestures, eye contact or tone of voice. The press didn't care, though, as long as he talkedabout business. He was extremely wealthy, and that made everything he said presumptivelycorrect. Often, interviewers edited out his cominents about charity as uninteresting orunimportant.Once the company crashed and his wealth was gone, people became less forgiving, and haveinterpreted these same characteristics (lack of eye contact, odd gestures, answers that scem toolong or too short, etc) as a sign of disrespect, evasion, or lying.A draconian sentence would likely lead to a placement in a high (or at best medium) securityprison. Such a setting would put Sam in an environment where his responses to social cues willsometimes be seen as odd, inappropriate and disrespectful; when that happens, he will be insignificant physical danger. Nothing he has done can justify putting him at that risk.Sam has never run afoul of the law in his life until now, and I do not believe there is anypossibility he would even get close to the line in the future. Once free, he has the potential tobenefit others. That is all he has ever wanted to do.Thank you for your consideration, onsideAllan Joseph Bankman4Ex. A-2