U.S. judge sends Sam Bankman-Fried to jail over witness tampering

Sam Bankman-Fried will head to jail on Friday after a decide sided with a request by federal prosecutors to revoke the FTX founder’s bail over alleged witness tampering. Bankman-Fried might be remanded to custody immediately from a court docket listening to in New York, the place he’ll stay forward of his prison trial – which is because of start on Oct. 2. 

Judge Lewis Kaplan denied Bankman-Fried’s request for delayed detention pending an enchantment.

Since his arrest in December, Bankman-Fried had been out on a $250 million bail bundle which requires him to stay at his mother and father’ Palo Alto, California home.

Bankman-Fried’s court docket look on Friday is the most recent in a sequence of pre-trial hearings associated to the ex-billionaire’s continued dealings with the press – exchanges which the Justice Department characterizes as a “pattern of witness tampering and evading his bail conditions.” 

Judge Kaplan beforehand issued a direct and stern warning to Bankman-Fried in July over his conversations with the media.

Members of the press, together with counsel for The New York Times and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, had filed letters objecting to Bankman-Fried’s detention, citing free speech considerations. Defense attorneys had equally argued that Bankman-Fried was asserting his first modification proper and didn’t violate any phrases of his bail situations by talking with journalists.

The protection had additionally been hoping that the invention course of would assist Bankman-Fried’s case.

Lawyers representing the previous FTX chief stipulated that with Bankman-Fried jailed, he wouldn’t be capable of correctly put together for his trial as a result of mountainous quantities of discovery paperwork solely accessible by way of a pc with web entry.

In the movement requesting Bankman-Fried’s detention, the federal government mentioned that, during the last a number of months, the defendant had despatched over 100 emails to the media and had remodeled 1,000 cellphone calls to members of the press. The remaining straw, in accordance with prosecutors, was Bankman-Fried leaking non-public diary entries of his ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, to the New York Times. Ellison pleaded responsible to federal costs in Dec. 2022.

Ellison, who can be the previous chief government of Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, has been cooperating with the federal government since December and is anticipated to be a star witness for the prosecution. 

“Faced with a series of conditions meant to limit the defendant’s use of the internet and the phone, the defendant pivoted to in-person machinations,” the prosecution mentioned of Bankman-Fried, whose revised bail situations embody restricted web entry and a ban from smartphone use. 

The authorities added that Bankman-Fried had over 100 cellphone calls with one of many authors of the Times story previous to publication – a lot of which lasted for about 20 minutes. 

The prosecution described the trouble by Bankman-Fried – who faces a number of wire and securities fraud costs associated to the alleged multibillion-dollar FTX fraud – as an try and discredit Ellison, characterizing it as a “means of indirect witness intimidation through the press.” 

It is an argument that proved enough to persuade Judge Kaplan to ship Bankman-Fried to jail forward of his trial.

The prosecution has needed to cull costs twice to adjust to an extradition settlement inked with The Bahamas – the place Bankman-Fried was beforehand held in custody. The authorities advised the Judge in a letter that subsequent week it plans to file a brand new superseding indictment.

This story is creating. Please examine again for updates.