Sam Bankman-Fried Jailed Ahead of Witness Tampering Trial

[Honoria]

Disgraced FTX Boss and Democrat Super Donor Sam Bankman-Fried Jailed Ahead of Trial over Witness Tampering Allegations


ALLUM BOKHARI
11 Aug 2023

Sam Bankman-Fried, disgraced founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and a Democrat super donor, has had his bail revoked by a judge ahead of his trial on fraud charges, over concerns that the crypto baron has engaged in witness tampering.



“There is probable cause to believe that the defendant has attempted to tamper with witnesses at least twice,” said U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan at a hearing in New York.



The judge said that Bankman-Fried would be allowed to spend time in his lawyers’ office to prepare for his trial in October, but the revocation of his bail means that the accused fraudster will likely spend the rest of his time leading up to the trial behind bars.



Sam Bankman-Fried

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (second on left) is led away in handcuffs by officers of the Royal Bahamas Police Force in Nassau, Bahamas, on December 13, 2022. (MARIO DUNCANSON/AFP via Getty Images)



Perhaps the most visible case of a cryptocurrency rise-and-fall, Bankman-Fried was one of the richest men in the space before the spectacular collapse of FTX, which filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2022 after its liquidity evaporated.



The founder, often known as “SBF,” used his wealth to become a Democrat super-donor, and was the second-largest contributor to Joe Biden’s campaign in 2020. Scarcely 30 years old, the crypto baron had ambitions to displace George Soros as the largest donor to Democrats and Democrat causes.



The collapse of FTX came at the nadir of the cryptocurrency down-cycle that followed the explosion in the price of most leading cryptocurrencies in 2021, which saw some traders become millionaires even from cryptocurrencies that started as a joke, like Dogecoin.


By the time of FTX’s collapse, the price of Bitcoin, the market-leading cryptocurrency, was close to $15,000 per BTC, down from a high of around $65,000 at the peak of the bull run. The leading cryptocurrency has since recovered substantially, currently trading at around $29,000 per BTC.

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[ExquisiteGerbil]

Sam Bankman-Fried’s Incarceration Order Came After Multiple Attempts To Tamper With Witnesses – Disgraced FTX Founder Is Set To Await Trial in Tough Brooklyn MDC Prison

By Paul Serran Aug. 13, 2023 9:40 pm




Crypto bro Sam Bankman-Fried, second largest donor to the Democrat party after George Soros, shot to finance stardom as founder and CEO of FTX crypto trading platform.



But he came crashing down as the scandal broke about him swindling billions of his clients’ money to cover holes in his hedge fund Alameda Research – among an astonishing array of irregularities and fraudulent practices.



SBF’s indictment alleges that ‘he was the mastermind and leader of a multi-year criminal scheme that involved defrauding investors, lenders, and retail customers of billions of dollars, and spending fraud proceeds to corruptly influence United States politics’.



He was arrested in the Bahamas, and after extradition to the US, he had been released to await trial under home confinement in his parents’ house.


But ever since the start or the pretrial hearings, arose the issue of SBF engaging in behavior characterized by prosecutors – and eventually the court – as witness tampering.


The consequences for his repeatedly testing the limits of his bail conditions finally arrived when Judge Kaplan ordered he be remanded to jail to await trial.


As details emerge of the decision by the court, the question became how the disgraced financier will fare in the harsh conditions of the Brooklyn MDC prison.



The Daily Beast reported:



“The former billionaire had repeatedly angered both prosecutors and the court while out on bail following his arrest in December. Most recently, he leaked documents to The New York Times about his former lover Caroline Ellison, who once ran Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund and is likely to be a witness in his trial.



Prosecutors framed the leaks as a possible attempt at witness tampering, both by intimidating Ellison and influencing public perception of her in the media. An assistant U.S. attorney argued in court last month that there was ‘no set of conditions short of detention to ensure the safety of the community’.



Judge Lewis Kaplan agreed with that assessment. ‘The defense says he’s gotten bad press and has a right to try to repair his reputation. Fair enough’, Kaplan said on Friday, according to media outlet Inner City Press. ‘But I find that there is a practical possibility it was intended to have [witnesses] back off’.”



SBF had already gotten in hot water with the court when he contacted FTX’s former general counsel – and potential witness in his case – and said he wanted to ‘reconnect’ and seek a mutually ‘constructive relationship’.



Bankman-Fried’s attorneys will appeal the decision.



Meanwhile, it’s reported he will await trial in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, a prison facility that houses over 1,600 inmates. where high profile individuals like R. Kelly, Ghislaine Maxwell and Martin Shkreli have been imprisoned.



Daily Mail reported:



“Former warden at the Jail Cameron Lindsay previously told the New York Times: ‘The M.D.C. was one of the most troubled, if not the most troubled facility in the Bureau of Prisons.’



Ghislaine Maxwell had been held at the facility in 2021 and while behind bars her lawyers complained she was underfed, losing her hair, given meals with plastic melted into the food, having to drink contaminated water and could smell overflowing toilets.”



There is no fresh, clean air, no sunlight, no outdoor time. Former owner of Vyera Pharmaceuticals, Martin Shkreli was also held at MDC while he awaited trial for lying to investors and embezzling money.



“His lawyer said at the time: ‘It’s not a rehabilitative facility. There’s no schooling there, there’s no classes there. The worst part is there’s no real outdoors space. It’s just a place to warehouse human beings’.”



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