West News Wire: Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of FTX, had his bail revoked and was immediately placed into the custody of the U.S. Marshals.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced to jail on Friday during a hearing in U.S. District Court in New York City under the direction of Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. Soon after, Bankman-Fried’s legal representatives submitted a notice of appeal over the judge’s choice to revoke his bail.
According to a source who spoke to news channels, Bankman-Fried will reside at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn while he awaits trial.
In a recent court filing, federal prosecutors urged that Bankman-Fried should have his bail revoked and be imprisoned before facing fraud and conspiracy charges related to the demise of FTX.
As Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend and the head of his Alameda Research hedge fund, has pleaded guilty and promised to cooperate, the prosecution objected to Bankman-Fried releasing extracts from her personal documents with The New York Times.
According to the prosecution, Bankman-Fried claimed that Ellison’s private writings were “detrimental to her” and accused him of disclosing them to the media “in order to affect the public’s perception of her.”
Bankman-Fried was charged with witness tampering by the prosecution.
Prosecutors claimed that the defendant committed clandestine actions meant to unlawfully denigrate a trial witness and taint the jury pool, going beyond simply exercising his constitutional right to speak to the media. The Government is requesting the only remedy commensurate with the defendant’s increasing attempts to evade his bail conditions: that bail be revoked and the defendant be detained pending trial.”
The 31-year-old was initially released in December 2022 on a $250 million personal recognizance bond signed by his parents and secured by their Palo Alto, California, home. A prosecutor called it the largest pretrial bond ever.
Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to 13 charges, including fraud, conspiracy and bribery, after federal prosecutors said he misappropriated billions of dollars from FTX before it went bankrupt. Prosecutors allege he used the money to cover losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research, to buy lavish real estate and to make political donations.
After authorities in the Bahamas, where Bankman-Fried was detained, declared that they had declined to extradite him based on that charge, the charges against him for campaign fundraising were dismissed.
However, prosecutors stated in a letter to the judge last week that they plan to submit a superseding indictment the following week in an effort to add seven additional charges to include Bankman-Fried’s alleged campaign funding scam.
October is the date set for the trial.
According to court records, Ellison entered a plea of guilty in December to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and two counts of conspiracy to engage money laundering.
