Who says crime doesn't pay? According to Hollywood site The Ankler, Apple paid author Michael Lewis $5 million for the rights to his book Going Infinite about super fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried—an unprecedented amount for an unpublished work and more than the $2 million studios paid for the first four books of Harry Potter.
Apple's record-breaking check shows Hollywood's ongoing interest in grifter tales—think of Hulu's The Dropout, about Elizabeth Holmes, and Netflix's Inventing Anna, about fake heiress Anna Delvey, among others. This reflects the public's fascination with celebrity criminals and also indicates there is a lot of money to be made for publishers and studios in telling their stories.
Bankman-Fried appears to be the motherlode. As The Ankler notes, he has spawned eight separate film projects (including one with Mark Wahlberg and Fortune) and at least three books. Lewis's work is set to drop on Oct. 3, right after Number Go Up, a broader crypto book that features Bankman-Fried on the cover. The book's author, Bloomberg journalist Zeke Faux, published an excerpt this week and sniped at Lewis on X (fomerly Twitter) for a fawning interview with his subject that seemed "inappropriate for a journalist."
While all of this reflects just another example of America's celebrity industrial complex, it also raises interesting questions about Bankman-Fried himself. Namely, how long until the grifter extraordinaire seeks to get a piece of all this action?
Bankman-Fried had decided to cool his heels in a Brooklyn prison rather than plead guilty—a decision that is looking increasingly foolish as everyone in his inner circle at FTX, including his former girlfriend, has decided to cut a deal that likely involves throwing him under the bus. Still, by the time his trial set for October concludes, Bankman-Fried will be even more famous than he is now, and in America fame means money and celebrity.
Even convicted "pharma bro" Martin Shrkeli, who got out of prison in 2022 after serving five years, has found a schtick as a minor celebrity on social media—becoming, as a colleague noted in our Slack channel, the most relevant irrelevant person ever. In the case of Bankman-Fried, it feels like his insatiable appetite for money and attention will lead him to figure out a way to cash in on his notoriety.
The problem, of course, is that ruthlessly stealing billions of dollars under the guise of altruism means Bankman-Fried is poised to serve decades, and potentially a lifetime, in the slammer—meaning that, if he does parlay his infamy into big money, he may never get a chance to enjoy it.
Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts
