U.S. judge will decide Friday whether to send Sam Bankman-Fried to jail over alleged witness tampering

A New York choose will resolve on Friday, throughout a listening to that begins at 2 p.m. ET, whether or not to ship Sam Bankman-Fried to jail.

Federal prosecutors have requested U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to revoke the FTX founder’s bail over alleged witness tampering. If Kaplan sides with the federal government, Bankman-Fried will likely be remanded to custody instantly from a courtroom listening to in Manhattan, the place he would stay forward of his prison trial, resulting from start on Oct. 2. 

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 courtroom look on Friday is the newest in a sequence of pretrial 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.” 

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, have filed letters objecting to Bankman-Fried’s detention, citing free speech issues. Defense attorneys have equally argued that Bankman-Fried was asserting his First Amendment proper and didn’t violate any phrases of his bail situations by talking with journalists.

The discovery course of can be serving to Bankman-Fried’s case.

Lawyers representing the previous FTX chief have argued that if Bankman-Fried is jailed, he wouldn’t have the ability to correctly put together for his trial because of the mountainous quantities of discovery paperwork solely accessible through a pc with web entry.

In the movement requesting Bankman-Fried’s detention, the federal government stated that, over the past a number of months, the defendant had despatched greater than 100 emails to the media and had remodeled 1,000 telephone calls to members of the press. The last straw, in accordance with prosecutors, was Bankman-Fried’s choice to leak non-public diary entries of his ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, to The New York Times. 

Ellison, who can be the previous chief govt 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. Ellison pleaded responsible to federal costs in December 2022.

“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 stated of Bankman-Fried, whose revised bail situations embody restricted web entry and a ban from smartphone use. 

The authorities added that Bankman-Fried had greater than 100 telephone calls with one of many authors of the Times story earlier than publication, lots of which lasted for roughly 20 minutes. 

The prosecution described the hassle 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.” 

Prosecutors have needed to cull costs twice to adjust to an extradition settlement signed with the Bahamas – the place Bankman-Fried was beforehand held in custody. The authorities instructed the choose in a letter that subsequent week it plans to file a brand new superseding indictment.