FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried agreed to sign a $250 million bond at a Manhattan court that would get him bail and keep him under house arrest at his parent’s place in Palo Alto, California, while he awaits trial on charges that he swindled investors on his FTX trading platform.
Assistant US Attorney Nicolas Roos requested for the $250 million bond – which he believes is the largest federal pretrial bond ever – for the 30-year-old cryptocurrency entrepreneur, who, he claimed, “perpetrated a fraud of epic proportions”.
Federal prosecutors have charged Bankman-Fried of stealing billions of dollars in customer funds to plug losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research.
Magistrate Judge Gabriel W Gorenstein agreed to the bond and house arrest and asked for an electronic monitoring bracelet to be affixed to Bankman-Fried before he left the courthouse. The bond was to be secured by the equity in his parent’s home and the signature of them and two other financially responsible people with considerable assets.
Bankman-Fried was wearing a gray suit, unusual for a man who’d appear in shorts and T-shirts for most public appearances while running FTX.
Throughout the session, Bankman-Fried kept quiet, except for replying “Yes, I do” when Gorenstein asked if he understood the conditions of his release, and that he could be charged with an additional crime if he fails to show up to court.
Bankman-Fried appeared in federal court just hours after his extradition from the Bahamas, where he was arrested on December 12. His next court date was scheduled for January 3. US District Judge Ronny Abrams will handle the case.
The $250 million bond is way higher than the $10 million posted by Bernie Madoff. Bankman-Fried had previously claimed in a New York Times interview that he was down to a mere $100,000. Just last year, FTX was valued at $32 billion.
On Wednesday, Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that two former FTX executives, Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, had pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges and were cooperating with prosecutors.
Ellison, the former chief executive of Bankman-Fried’s trading firm, Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, who co-founded FTX, pleaded guilty to charges including wire fraud, securities fraud and commodities fraud.
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