Shaggy-haired former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was slapped with federal charges Tuesday in the $8 billion-plus collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange — with authorities saying he deceived customers to line his pockets and used some of the “dirty money” to curry favor for the unregulated industry on Capitol Hill.
Bankman-Fried, 30, vowed to fight extradition from the Bahamas as he was ordered locked up after a hearing in the capital city of Nassau, where his lawyer reportedly cited his vegan diet and apparent diagnosis with attention-deficit/hyperactivity-disorder in a bid to keep him out of jail on $250,000 cash bail.
Before ruling that Bankman-Fried posed a “great” risk of flight, Magistrate Judge Joyann Ferguson-Pratt allowed him to briefly leave the courtroom to take medication that apparently included an Emsam patch used to treat depression.
When Bankman-Fried, who was wearing a blue suit and white shirt, said he needed to “take my shirt off” to administer the drug, the judge responded, “Well, you certainly can’t take your shirt off in court,” CoinDesk reported.
Later, the accused crypto crook — who was arrested Monday evening at a gated, oceanside resort community called the Albany — hugged his parents, both Stanford University law professors, after the judge lowered the boom.
Bankman-Fried was jailed pending another court appearance Feb. 8.
He faces a maximum 115 years in prison if convicted of all eight felony charges.
During an afternoon news conference, Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams detailed the allegations against Bankman-Fried, saying his indictment “outlines four different areas of misconduct”:
- Since 2019, Bankman-Fried and unidentified co-conspirators allegedly stole billions of dollars from FTX customers, with the defendant using it “for his personal benefit, including to make personal investments and to cover expenses and debts of his hedge fund, Alameda Research.”
- Bankman-Fried allegedly “lied to Alameda’s investors about the source of the money that he was using to pay those debts.”
- When crypto prices collapsed in May, Bankman-Fried allegedly lied to FTX customers “about the fact that he had sent billions of dollars in FTX customer money to Alameda.”
- Bankman-Fried also allegedly used tens of millions of dollars in Alameda funds to illegally make political donations “to candidates and committees associated with both Democrats and Republicans.”
