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.
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DEVELOPING: Crypto Scammer Sam Bankman-Fried Jailed Over 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.
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DEVELOPING: Crypto Scammer Sam Bankman-Fried Jailed Over Witness Tampering
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.
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“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’.”
Source material can be found at this site.
