Crypto influencer Tiffany Fong who lost $250,000 to fraud scheme similar to FTX says Sam Bankman-Fried DOESN'T deserve life in prison

Tiffany Fong, a crypto investor and influencer, has said that she doesn't think that disgraced ex-FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried deserves life in prison. 

Not only has she spoken to Bankman-Fried for dozens of hours while he was on house arrest, Fong is one of the most high profile victims of another crypto collapse.

Around June 2022, Fong had roughly a quarter of a million dollars in Celsius, a crypto company that often marketed itself as safer than banks. In an instant, her money was gone. It filed for bankruptcy a month later.

But despite her losses, she believes that Bankman-Fried - the head of another failed cryptocurrency - does not deserve to be imprisoned for life. He is currently awaiting his sentencing, scheduled for Thursday in Manhattan court. 

'It was a huge chunk of my life savings,' Fong told DailyMail.com. 'I was just very emotionally distraught after that and wanted an outlet to vent, so that's the only reason I started covering these bankruptcies.'

Tiffany Fong opens up about her philosophy on how best to punish financial crimes, being the victim of one herself

Sam Bankman-Fried (left) leaves Manhattan federal court in New York. Alex Mashinsky (right) founder and former CEO of Celsius Network Ltd., during a panel session at the Blockchain Week Summit in Paris, France

Celsius, like FTX, left a long trail of victims in its wake.

Its fall from grace, which involved an abrupt halt to withdrawals, occurred months before the FTX would shutter. When founder Alex Mashinsky was arrested in July 2023, the SEC filed a lawsuit calling Celsius' business model 'unsustainable.'

Fong said she took to social media almost immediately after losing her money. Now, she has roughly 110,000 followers on X and just over 45,000 subscribers on YouTube. 

She uses her social platforms to keep people informed on crypto-related cases.

Over a year later, her work has led her to become close with Bankman-Fried. Fong said she's still in contact with him and has published lengthy, recorded interviews with the crypto founder in the past.

She was also the first to originally publish an image of Bankman-Fried in prison, posing on a wall with other inmates who colloquially call him 'G Lock.'  

Fong visited Bankman-Fried at his parents' house in Palo Alto, California in December 2022. They talked about his uncomfortable time in notoriously brutal Bahamian prison, Fox Hill, where he struggled with a lack of mental stimulation, according to Fong.

At the time, Fong said Bankman-Fried's strategy to cope with a possible lifetime in prison was to not think about it too much.

Fong said: 'He’s aware of the possibility of prison time, but it does not seem he wants to ruminate extensively on the worst case scenario: a lifetime in prison.'

Tiffany Fong doesn't want to see Bankman-Fried get zero prison time, but thinks 'anything that even approximates life is too far'

She was also the first to originally publish an image of Bankman-Fried in prison, posing on a wall with other inmates who colloquially call him 'G Lock'

Speaking about what sentences Bankman-Fried and Celsius' Mashinsky ought to get, she told DailyMail.com: 'I understand that most people have the impulse to want to see them in prison for life.

'I understand that seems to be the general sentiment amongst the public, but I guess I'm just personally not a very vindictive or vengeful person.

'So I personally was more focused on how much money I could actually recover.'

Fong doesn't want Bankman-Fried or Mashinsky to get off scot free. She said she's never argued for zero prison time for Bankman-Fried.

At the same time she doesn't think nonviolent offenders, like white collar criminals, deserve life sentences. 

'To me, the main point of a lengthy prison sentence should be to keep the public safe...so the people that I want to see, get life sentences are violent criminals like rapists, pedophiles, murderers, et cetera, just to keep everyone safe,' Fong told the DailyMail.com.

However, she does think Bankman-Fried and offenders like him should probably be banned from participating in financial services again.

Tiffany Fong posing with President Joe Biden in December 2022

Fong visited Bankman-Fried at his parents' house in Palo Alto, California in December 2022

Fong said that part of her sympathetic sentencing viewpoint comes from her own mental health struggles.

'I understand that some people argue that these are violent crimes, obviously because maybe some people could have taken their lives and I'm very empathetic to that viewpoint.'

Similar sentiments to Fong's were present in the slate of victim impact statements received by the court last week.

A substantial number of people didn't even mention Bankman-Fried by name. Rather, many of them listed the assets they held on FTX, how much money they estimated to have lost in the collapse and urged the court to determine a fair restitution amount.

One person wrote: 'All my hard-earned life savings were invested in bitcoin on the FTX platform, hoping to secure a better future for my family and myself.

'However, the actions of SBF and FTX have shattered those hopes. The scam has caused immense emotional distress.'