CZ's defense lawyer said that CZ was not aware of the suspicious transactions and should be sentenced to probation instead of imprisonment.

According to Reuters, CZ is expected to be sentenced in Seattle on April 30. In addition, US authorities said Binance failed to report more than 100,000 suspicious transactions with designated terrorist organizations. Prosecutors also said that Binance was the recipient of most of the ransomware proceeds. According to CoinDesk, CZ's defense documents stated that CZ was not aware of, and had never been explicitly informed of, specific transactions involving criminal funds conducted on Binance; CZ was not at risk of reoffending, so he should be sentenced to probation rather than imprisonment. The document mentioned that as a non-US company, Binance is not prohibited from having users from US-sanctioned countries on its platform; in contrast, the sanctions charge defended by the company is a novel and narrow charge that the algorithmic matching engine randomly matches users from sanctioned countries with US users, which violates US sanctions law; in addition, these transactions only account for a very small part of Binance's trading volume, and it is difficult to imagine that CZ deliberately and consciously facilitated these transactions.

CZ’s supporters are also named in the memo, including mother of three Yi He, his ex-wife Yang Weiqing, his two adult children with Yang Weiqing, former U.S. Senator and current Binance lobbyist Max Baucus, and dozens of others.