A day after he was extradited from the Bahamas to the United States, the embattled crypto trader and FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was released on $250 million bail and would have to remain under strict supervision at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California.
US magistrate judge Gabriel Gorenstein ruled on Thursday in the federal court in Manhattan that the 30-year-old crypto mogul, who faces eight criminal charges – including wire fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance violations – can be allowed house arrest after his parents signed a $250 mill personal recognizance bond.
The bail conditions – as confirmed by a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan – say that Bankman-Fried will surrender his passport, agree to mental health and substance abuse treatment, and will be monitored via an ankle bracelet.
If he violates any of the conditions, the crypto trader who was once considered the future Warren Buffet will face an arrest warrant and his parents would be liable $250m for the bond, as the magistrate warned him.
Founded in 2019, FTX rose spectacularly to become a leading player in the crypto world but went bankrupt last month along with its sister trading house Alameda Research -dissolving the $32 billion -worth virtual trading business – after a media report exposed that Bankman-Fried’s companies are being dangerously interlinked claiming that Alameda’s balance sheet was heavily built on a token created by FTX with no independent value.
Last week, the federal prosecutors and civil regulators filed charges accusing Bankman-Fried and his accomplices Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang of perpetrating a multiyear fraud, cheating FTX and Alameda Research investors and customers out of billions of dollars.
Bankman-Fried, Ellison, and Wang – the two key members of his inner circle that had already pleaded guilty to criminal charges and were cooperating with prosecutors as part of an investigation into FTX’s collapse – are also facing charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission
According to the estimates by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, around $8 billion were misappropriated from FTX customer accounts.
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