Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Here’s what covering the trial as a reporter was really like

Fortune reporter Leo Schwartz has been interviewed by Term Sheet before—in November 2022, after coming back from the Bahamas, where he was reporting on FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried’s rapidly unraveling empire.

Flash-forward: Bankman-Fried yesterday was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and Schwartz has come full circle. He covered the trial from start to finish, showing up at 4 a.m. some days to get a seat, and rushing out of the courtroom to file a story on many others. So now, he’s agreed to let me interview him about reporting from the courtroom.

And though Schwartz and I started off with some lighthearted reporter banter, we both grew serious pretty quickly.

“People were seeing the cold reality of what a trial actually is, and what it is to see someone lose their freedom in front of your eyes," Schwartz said.

So, what does it look like, to watch that in real time? In a world characterized by ubiquitous phone cameras, no cameras were allowed at Bankman-Fried’s trial. (The courtroom sketches were their own spectacle.) It’s an odd question in 2024, perhaps, but: What did he, well, look like? There are procedural answers to this question that Schwartz gives me—for example, he was allowed to wear a suit during the trial and began wearing prison clothes once convicted.

And then, there’s the answer suggesting just how much attention you start paying to someone you watch in a trial day in and day out.

“We definitely saw him get skinnier and skinnier, especially after he had his bail revoked, which happened in August,” said Schwartz. “His hair grew out for a while. Then, for the trial, he got a haircut, apparently from someone in the prison. He was known for being very jittery before, but as the reality of the situation hit him, he looked very somber, which is understandable.”

Bankman-Fried’s cross-examination was a turning point for Schwartz. The courtroom itself had 25 seats—and more than two dozen reporters vying for those seats. So the day of the cross-examination was one where Schwartz arrived at the courthouse at 4 a.m.

“The judge did this unique thing where he basically wanted to see if the legal arguments the defense attorneys were using should be permissible, so the first cross-examination happened without the jury present,” Schwartz told me.

And it was visceral, as Bankman-Fried “actually tried to give answers, which he didn’t do when eventually he did the cross in front of the jury,” Schwartz said. “That was one of those days that I was actually there, watching all the oxygen fly out of the room.”

Bankman-Fried’s trial was rife with stories and angles. For a taste of the range at Fortune alone: Schwartz did pieces untangling Bankman-Fried’s treatment by the criminal justice system and profiled the independent court reporter giving Twitter the trial play-by-play. Former Fortune fellow Ben Weiss reconstructed FTX’s final week using text messages entered as evidence.

But, in the end, the most important thing to know is this: As much as some folks may want to separate the two, Bankman-Fried’s trial can’t be divorced from crypto.

“It was old-fashioned fraud, but it was also a trial about crypto—and all of the threats that were present in crypto that made FTX happen are still there,” Schwartz said. “It’s easy to forget now that prices are booming again, but I think it’s a real cautionary tale…People want to make those fast profits so much, so we’ll likely see another one of him sometime soon.”

Whether you believe Bankman-Fried deserves his hefty sentence—more than double that of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes—or whether you think it’s a draconian punishment, it does really seem impossible that this is the last time we'll see a founder on trial.

And though it’s unlikely that I’ll interview Schwartz again about Bankman-Fried, perhaps next time it will be about a different person—one who’s broken the same rules.

Weekend reading…My colleague Kylie Robison profiled AI video company Runway for the latest edition of the magazine. She talked to Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela about slings and stones, Davids and Goliaths—and where AI will meet Hollywood. Read the story here.

See you Monday,

Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.

Joe Abrams curated the deals section of today's newsletter.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com