Sam Bankman-Fried, one of the founders of the defunct cryptocurrency business FTX, has been imprisoned as he waits for his October 2 criminal trial to begin.
He was accused of attempting to tamper with a witness not once, but twice, and the judge agreed with the federal prosecutors who argued that his bail should be withdrawn.
Since his detention in December of last year, Bankman-Fried has been housed with his parents in Palo Alto, California, on the conditions of a $250 million bail.
The defendant has made more than 1,000 phone calls to journalists and sent more than 100 emails to them since then, the government informed the judge.
He leaked the private journal entries of his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who is helping the authorities, lead the decision to send him to prison. Previously managing Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research, Ellison entered a plea of guilty in December.
Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that the evidence presented by the prosecution—that this was Bankman-Fried’s attempt to undermine Ellison—was adequate to sentence the former FTX CEO.
Near the end of 2022, FTX, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange, faced insolvency, but it wasn’t the only business in this predicament. Those who had money on the platform were unable to access their assets as a result of its bankruptcy.
