by Beau Cline
Founder of the infamous cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankma-Fried has just violated his bail conditions while on house arrest in his own mothers home. Back in December of 2022, Sam was found guilty of running a sweeping scheme, using customers’ deposits to invest into his own personal real estate endeavors, while also giving very charitable donations to politicians.
After being on house arrest for 8 months SBF (Sam Bankma-Fried) was at a hearing on August 11th in federal district court in Manhattan when judge Lewis A. Kaplan put an end to his luxury living revoking his $250M bail. This came about after new news came in that SBF tried to interfere with the case by giving documents to reporters not once, but twice. Judge Kaplan had this to say about SBF, “He has gone up to the line over and over again, and I am going to revoke bail,”. Right after this was read aloud, two US marshals had SBF remove his navy suit and tie as they handcuffed him. Both his parents were in attendance, as they started to walk up to him court officers made it clear he wasn’t allowed to be touched. Then they began taking him to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
The dispute over revoking SBF bail came from a New York Times article published last month, which detailed private writings from Caroline Ellisone, a former executive of FTX and former partner of Sam. Ms. Ellisone pleaded guilty to fraud charges against FTX and agreed to help with the investigation process.
Prosecutors shared that the documents SBF supplied to the New York Times were meant to intimidate Ms. Ellisone by casting her in a negative light right before their trial. After the word got out that SBF had been contacting many media outlets, Judge Kaplan imposed a temporary ban preventing any FTX employees from contacting the media.
SBF’s lawyers tried saying that giving the New York Times documents was within his rights to answer an inquiry from the media and therefore did not breach his bail terms. However, Judge Kaplan said, “Defendant speech is not protected if it is to bring about a crime.”
Even though it’s uncommon for bail to be revoked so close to a trial date, it does happen when the judge is convinced that the defendant’s actions pose a threat to the community or witnesses. In this case, SBF has proven himself on multiple accounts to be rebellious against his bail terms and therefore got his bail REVOKED.
beniciapaw.com 