A US federal court has sentenced the leaders of a cryptocurrency company to approximately 83 years in prison, starting in early 2024.
Yesterday, that total increased even further with the 15-year prison sentence of Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon in connection with the TerraUSD and Luna collapse.
Kwon pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud and will be sentenced in December 2025. According to the Associated Press, the judge went beyond what prosecutors asked for.
Terra’s failure wiped out more than $40 billion in market value. Prosecutors cited this figure to explain the scope of the losses associated with mitigation in 2022.
This total provides a numerical snapshot of how U.S. cases against cryptocurrency leaders have moved from civil lawsuits and compliance settlements to custodial outcomes. These results can keep founders and management teams on the sidelines for years.
How U.S. courts apportion prison sentences across major crypto cases
The lion’s share came from a series of platform failure prosecutions related to Terra, FTX, and Celius, as well as a separate compliance case from Binance. Including Senior Inspector FTX, who has pleaded guilty, these matters amount to a prison sentence of approximately 61 years and 10 months.
This distribution also shows how courts separate the two enforcement tracks. In fraud matters centered around customer deception, misappropriation of funds, and product misrepresentation, the term has reached the 10-year range.
FTX founder Sam Bankman Freed was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison on March 28, 2024.
Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky was sentenced to 12 years in prison in May 2025. Prosecutors built the case around fraud and market manipulation related to Celsius and its tokens.
In contrast, Binance founder Qiao Changpeng, known as CZ, was sentenced to four months in federal prison on April 30, 2024.
The term originates from failures related to anti-money laundering regulations and bank secrecy laws.
The gap between multi-year fraud periods and shorter compliance periods has become a planning input for companies whose products rely on yield messages, stability claims, or “safe” positioning. Even if platforms are comparable in size, executive exposure can vary.
The 83-year figure is based on cases in which judges sentenced founders and senior executives to prison. This does not include probation-only outcomes and time-limited dispositions.
Why crypto leaders are receiving radically different prison sentences
The list below totals approximately 82 years and 10 months, rounded to approximately 83 years. This mirrors U.S. federal sentences imposed in some leadership cases starting in 2024.
The FTX case also shows how role and cooperation within the same fraud story can change sentencing outcomes. After pleading guilty, Salame was sentenced to 90 months in prison.
Ellison received a 24-month prison sentence after pleading guilty and cooperating with prosecutors.
Mr. Bankman Fried’s 25-year term, imposed after his conviction at trial, is at the top of this set. This became the standard for subsequent fraud convictions, including Kwon’s 15-year prison sentence and Mashinski’s 12-year prison sentence.
In other cases, weights are added to the sum except for the largest platform name. Rolando Marcus Andrade, founder and CEO of AML Bitcoin, was sentenced to seven years in prison on July 29, 2025.
The Department of Justice also announced that Travis Ford, co-founder of Wolf Capital Crypto Trading, was sentenced to five years in prison on November 14, 2025. Prosecutors described the case as a $9.4 million investor fraud.
In November 2025, the Department of Justice announced that the founders of Samurai Wallet were sentenced to five years in prison and four years in prison. Prosecutors linked the incident to unauthorized money transfer and money laundering.
It has become easier for the market to quantify executive exposure limits in cases related to consumer promises of stability and returns. Using the U.S.-only sample above, prison sentences were approximately 83 years over approximately two calendar years.
This is equivalent to approximately 41 years of imprisonment per year.
Execution rates can be updated as new cases are solved, providing a numeric base for scenario coverage that readers can adjust as new data arrives.
These ranges are not estimates from regulators, courts, or academic models, but are mechanical extensions of the sentencing histories described above. It also depends on which track will control future litigation.
A cycle of failures centered around products sold around pegs and “guaranteed” yields will add even more years to fraud prosecutions based on the sample results.
A cycle driven by no customer theft allegations, sanctions enforcement, AML management, and registration issues would drive down the average, based on Zhao’s terminology in the sample, unless other case facts raise the sentence.
The sentence imposed is not the same as the time it will ultimately be served. Appeals, credit for time served, and administrative pardons can change the outcome after the judge rules.
President Donald Trump pardoned Zhao in October 2025 after completing his sentence, adding a political element to the pricing of execution risk.
Outside the United States, the “total years” framework can break down because sentencing systems aggregate conditions differently. In 2023, a Turkish court sentenced Sodex founder Faruk Fatih Ozer to four-digit cumulative prison terms.
Even if the legal calculations are not comparable to U.S. federal practice, this figure, when added to the U.S. total, pushes global headlines to more than 11,000 years.
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