The US Federal District Court in Manhattan on Thursday agreed to release on bail Sam Bankman-Fried, the Co-Founder and
former CEO of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, FTX. US Magistrate Judge Gabriel
Gorenstein granted the hefty release based on a hefty $250 million personal
recognizance bond.
Nicolas Roos, Assistant US Attorney, describes the bond as “the
largest ever pretrial bond,” Reuters reports. The bond was co-signed by
Bankman-Fried’s parents, Barbara and Alan Bankman-Fried, who are both Standford Law
professors, on their $4 million home in Palo Alto, California. A relative and
a non-relative are to fulfill the rest of the bond. This is even as Bankman-Fried has previously
claimed he had just $100,000 in his bank account.
Part of the conditions of the bail is
that Bankman-Fied will give up his passport and remain confined to his parent’s
California home under tight electronic monitoring. On top of these, the embattled entrepreneur is to undergo mental and substance abuse evaluations. The release was granted after Judge
Gorenstein agreed with Mark Cohen, Bankman-Fried’s lawyer, that he was less of a flight
risk.
Bankman-Fried’s Extradition to the US
Bankman-Fried’s release comes hours
after he was extradited to the United States on Wednesday night from the
Bahamas, the epic center of his crumbled crypto empire where he was arrested last
week by the Royal Bahamas Police. The United States Attorney for the
Southern District of New York later unsealed an indictment charging Bankman-Fried with wire, commodities, and securities fraud as well as money
laundering.
Meanwhile, two of the one-time
billionaire’s top associates, Caroline Ellison, Alameda Research’s former CEO,
and Gary Wang, Alameda and FTX’s Co-Founder, have pled guilty to the
criminal charges against them by the US prosecutors. Wang is also
the former Chief Technology Officer of FTX.
Bankman-Fried’s fall from grace
started after reports of the co-mingling of customer funds between FTX and corporate
sibling and quantitative trading firm, Alameda Research, became public knowledge,
driving a frenzy of withdrawals that precipitated FTX’s liquidity crisis and eventual bankruptcy.
The US Federal District Court in Manhattan on Thursday agreed to release on bail Sam Bankman-Fried, the…
