Sam Bankman-Fried, one of the founders of bankrupt crypto company FTX, is going to jail while he awaits his criminal trial which is set to start on October 2. A judge sided with federal prosecutors who argued his bail should be revoked after he allegedly tried to tamper with a witness not once, but twice.
Ever since Bankman-Fried was arrested last December, he has been living at his parents’ house in Palo Alto, California on a $250 million bail package. The government told that judge that since then, the defendant has sent out over 100 emails to the media and made more than 1,000 phone calls to members of the press.
The decision to send him back to jail was decided upon because he was leaking private diary entries of his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who is cooperating with the government. Ellison previously ran Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research and pleaded guilty to charges last December.
The prosecutors said this was an attempt by Bankman-Fried to discredit Ellison and Judge Lewis Kaplan decided this was sufficient to send the former FTX boss to jail. Describing what happened in court after the verdict was reached, CNBC said:
‘As the court marshals took Bankman-Fried into custody at the end of the hearing, the defendant took off his blazer, tie, emptied his pockets, and appeared to remove his shoes.’
FTX was the largest crypto exchange to face bankruptcy near the end of 2022 but it wasn’t the only company in this situation. Its bankruptcy meant that those with funds on the platform couldn’t access their assets.
Luckily, some of FTX’s assets were recovered so some of the total could be returned to customers. The government has said Sam Bankman-Fried committed fraud by letting customers think their assets were safe, when they, in fact, were not.
While many people will be glad to see Bankman-Fried off to jail for the next two months, the thing everyone is waiting for now is to see how or whether he is punished on the fraud charges.
Source: CNBC