Sam Bankman-Fried co-founded FTX in 2019 and is its CEO. Photo FTX
Sam Bankman-Fried gets to stay in jail while he stands trial after a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled against his appeal for release. The judges ruled in favor of the prosecutors in the case who had Bankman-Fried’s bail revoked on the grounds that he tried to tamper with potential witnesses.
Sam Bankman-Fried is now sitting in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, a jail notorious for its harsh conditions.
And that’s not the only bad news for the former wunderkind who once had a net worth in the billions. The judge in his case, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, ruled not to allow seven expert witnesses Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers wanted to testify on his behalf to do so. In his ruling, the judge said that the witnesses were not really qualified as experts in their fields, among other things.
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And to add insult to injury. Judge Kaplan also denied a motion made by Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers to exclude one of the government’s witnesses.
The Sam Bankman-Fried trial, literally a federal case, is set to begin on October 3.
Meanwhile, both of Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents, Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried, are being sued by lawyers representing whatever is left of FTX in an attempt to recover any funds to reimburse creditors and others. The couple, who are both tenured Stanford University law professors, have been accused of illicitly receiving fund from FTX. Specifically, the plaintiffs charge that FTX transferred a $10 million cash gift and a $16.4 million luxury property in the Bahamas to the couple.
Sam Bankman-Fried stands accused of eight counts of fraud and conspiracy. If convicted on all counts, he could be sentenced to as much as 115 years in jail. The charges came after his FTX crypto currency exchange company went bust a few weeks ago. The big question over the fall of FTX is “what happened to all of the money that people left with the company?” FTX was a crypto bank, so to speak, a place where people could park their virtual assets. But unlike with banks, there is no regulation over the handling of cryptos and FTX is said to have moved people’s cryptos around, basically that the company spent their money.
Based in the Bahamas, FTX was a cryptocurrency exchange that said it was built by traders, for traders. FTX offers industry-first derivatives, options, volatility products and leveraged tokens. FTX had more than one million traders using its services when it failed.
