FTX tech chief spared jail after aiding Bankman-Fried prosecution

Gary Wang, the former cryptocurrency executive who unwittingly wrote the computer code that helped the FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried steal about $8 billion from customers of the now-bankrupt exchange, has been spared a prison sentence.
District Judge Lewis Kaplan said on Wednesday that he would be imposing no prison time at a hearing in Manhattan. The judge praised Wang’s co-operation with prosecutors, and noted that he learnt of Bankman-Fried’s fraud later than others in his former boss’s circle.
“You’re entitled to a world of credit for facing up to your responsibility,” Kaplan said. “The period of your culpability was, in comparison to the periods of the culpability of the other defendants in this case, extremely small.”
Wang, 31, who had pleaded guilty to four felony counts of fraud and conspiracy, testified last year as a prosecution witness in the trial that led to Bankman-Fried’s conviction on fraud and other charges.
Wang and Bankman-Fried met at a summer mathematics camp while they were both in high school. They reconnected while studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and eventually went into the cryptocurrency business together.
Wang was one of several FTX executives who lived with Bankman-Fried in a $35 million penthouse in the Bahamas, where the exchange was based until its November 2022 bankruptcy.
Bankman-Fried, 32, is serving a 25-year prison sentence imposed by Kaplan after a jury last year found him guilty of stealing customer money to prop up his Alameda Research hedge fund, make speculative venture investments, and contribute to US political campaigns. He is appealing against his conviction and sentence.
Caroline Ellison, 30, Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend and chief executive of Alameda, was sentenced to two years in prison in September. Nishad Singh, 29, another FTX computer programmer who pleaded guilty, was spared prison last month.
Wang, FTX’s former chief technology officer, told the jury in October 2023 that his former boss instructed him to adjust FTX’s software code to give Alameda special privileges, enabling the fund to secretly withdraw billions of dollars from the exchange.
His lawyers have acknowledged that he continued to work to maintain FTX’s platform after learning of Bankman-Fried’s fraud. Wang apologised on Wednesday.
“I took the easy path, the cowardly path, instead of doing the right thing,” Wang told the court. “I plan to spend the rest of my life doing everything I can to make amends.”