Trump DOJ wants Terra founder Do Kwon to stay behind bars for 12 years, citing the SBF sentence

The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to sentence Do Kwon to 12 years in prison — the maximum sentence prosecutors reserved after the Terra founder pleaded guilty this summer.

Although Kwon is technically eligible for a sentence of 25 years in federal prison, the DOJ promised in August that it would seek just 12 years as part of an agreement reached to encourage Kwon to forego a jury trial and admit to two crimes: conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud.

Now federal prosecutors are calling for the disgraced crypto founder to receive the maximum penalty under that deal. In a legal submit DOJ attorneys argued Thursday that Kwon needs a harsh sentence to avoid “unwarranted sentencing disparities” from other similar cases — namely that of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

A 2023 jury trial found Bankman-Fried guilty guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy for his role in the implosion of his $32 billion cryptocurrency exchange. A judge afterwards convicted him to 25 years in prison.

“Judge Kaplan imposed a 25-year sentence on Bankman-Fried who, like Kwon, committed a fraud of staggering proportions in his 20s and then attributed his brazen criminal behavior in part to youth and inexperience,” prosecutors wrote.

Kwon, a 34-year-old Korean, found himself at the center of a global financial crisis in 2022 when he created two cryptocurrencies: UST and LUNAquickly became worthless, destroying over $40 billion in value and causing a cascading crisis in the crypto market. The resulting “contamination” had an impact on FTX and several other notable companies.

In Thursday’s filing, prosecutors noted that Kwon’s lawyers had not mentioned Bankman-Fried’s case in their request to give the entrepreneur a five-year prison sentence.

“It is true that Bankman-Fried has exercised his right to a trial,” the DOJ said. “But that hardly justifies one 20 years delta between the Bankman-Fried verdict and the verdict Kwon requested.”

The DOJ also targeted Kwon’s lawyers for arguing that the Terra founder should receive a “much shorter sentence” than Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky, who was handed down. 12 years previously in 2025 for embezzling his clients’ crypto and manipulating the price of his company’s token.

“Although Mashinsky was not detained pending trial and disputed key aspects of his conduct, he was also denied a false passport and attempted to live on the run abroad,” prosecutors said. “Either way, the scale of Mashinsky’s crime pales in comparison to Kwon’s: $5 billion versus $40 billion in investor losses.”

Kwon was arrested in Montenegro in 2023 and convicted of traveling on forged passports, months after arrest warrants were issued for him in both the United States and South Korea.

After one extremely long lasting jurisdiction conflictto whom the crypto entrepreneur was extradited New York earlier this year.

Kwon will be sentenced on December 11 in Manhattan by U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer.