Late Friday, Sam Bankman-Fried filed the long-expected appeal of his 25-year prison sentence and $11 billion fine. In many ways, of course, S.B.F.’s appeal had begun taking form even before a jury convicted him, last year, in a scheme to defraud customers out of $8 billion. The disgraced founder of FTX, the crypto-trading exchange, and Alameda, his now-defunct hedge fund, also previewed some of his appeal for me, in May, when I met with him inside Brooklyn’s charming Metropolitan Detention Center, where he resides in a section of the women’s facility—presumably for his own protection, given that he’s a high-profile, first-time, non-violent offender—along with other men who are presumably similarly at risk.