Sam Bankman-Fried still has over 20 years left on his prison sentence, but Netflix is already bringing his story to the small screen.
On Thursday, the streaming giant dropped the first trailer for its upcoming miniseries The Altruists. The show dramatizes the real-life story of Bankman-Fried and his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who were at the center of a multibillion-dollar fraud scandal that brought down FTX, once one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
Netflix’s telling of the story appears to be taking a more sympathetic approach, portraying Bankman-Fried, played by Anthony Boyle, and Ellison, played by Julia Garner, as modern-day Silicon Valley versions of Bonnie and Clyde who initially set out to do good.
“I genuinely believe that both Sam and Caroline were deeply committed altruists from day one, who set out to do as much good for as many people as they could in their lives,” said series creator Graham Moore in a Netflix blog post. “Over the course of the years that our show depicts, Sam and Caroline, with the very best of intentions, talked each other and themselves into committing a number of terrible crimes.”
For anyone who needs a refresher, Bankman-Fried and Ellison, along with other executives, were involved in a scheme to misuse billions of dollars in customer funds deposited on FTX.
Those funds were secretly funneled to Alameda Research, a crypto trading firm co-founded by Bankman-Fried and later led by Ellison, to cover losses and repay lenders. The money was also used to finance investments, issue personal loans, and even bankroll political contributions.
Ellison also misled lenders, investors, and customers by overstating Alameda’s financial health, even preparing misleading spreadsheets to throw people off the scent.
Everything came crashing down in the fall of 2022, when concerned customers tried to withdraw their money from FTX, exposing that the exchange did not have enough money on hand to cover deposits. The company filed for bankruptcy shortly after.
Ellison later became the star witness in the case against Bankman-Fried. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in March 2024.
Ellison, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to multiple fraud and conspiracy charges and was sentenced to only two years in prison in September 2024 after cooperating with prosecutors. She was released from federal custody this past January.
With the series, Netflix is joining Hollywood’s current obsession with Silicon Valley scandals. Just this year, Aaron Sorkin is releasing The Social Reckoning, a follow-up to The Social Network, while Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim have a new documentary about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes coming out later this month. Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, a film about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, is also set to hit theaters in December. And if you need your tech scandal fix right away, Alex Gibney’s massive 4-hour documentary on Elon Musk hits theaters tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the eight-episode The Altruists premieres Nov. 19.
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