Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been sent to prison for witness tampering while he awaits his trial on fraud and conspiracy charges.
Bankman-Fried had been free on a historic $250 million U.S. bond and under house arrest at his parent’s home outside San Francisco.
However, a federal judge revoked Bankman-Fried’s bail after concluding that he had repeatedly tried to influence witnesses against him and was speaking to the media about his case.
He has now been sent to Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center in New York City with no access to the internet while he awaits a criminal trial that is scheduled to begin on October 2.
Bankman-Fried is charged with several counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud over the $8 billion collapse of the FTX crypto exchange that he founded and ran in the Bahamas until last November.
Despite repeated warnings from the court not to speak to the media in the lead-up to his trial, prosecutors in the case presented evidence showing that Bankman-Fried had send over 100 emails and made more than 1,000 phone calls to members of the press in the last few months.
After reviewing the evidence, Judge Lewis Kaplan said he thought it would be best it Bankman-Fried be held in custody with no internet access until his trial begins in October.
Judge Kaplan said Bankman-Fried showed a clear pattern of trying to influence public opinion and the outcome of his upcoming criminal trial.
FTX was one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world and Bankman-Fried’s net worth was estimated at $26 billion U.S. before the company filed for bankruptcy in November 2022.
