After spending a short time at a transfer facility in Oklahoma, US officials have sent former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried back to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn. After spending almost a week at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, Bankman-Fried was being housed at MDC Brooklyn as of June 4, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate data.Numerous people conjectured that the authorities planned to move the former CEO of FTX to a prison in the San Francisco Bay Area close to the California home of his parents.
The reason behind SBF’s return to New York is unknown. The former CEO of FTX had been asked by his attorneys to stay at MDC Brooklyn in order to support him in his appeal of his conviction and sentence.SBF was advised to remain in the state by Judge Lewis Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, who presided over his criminal trial and sentencing.
A jury found Bankman-Fried guilty in November 2023 of seven felonies pertaining to the embezzlement of client monies at FTX and Alameda Research.Judge Kaplan condemned SBF to 25 years in jail back in March. On April 11, Bankman-Fried’s legal team submitted a notice of appeal. No documents indicating the grounds for SBF’s anticipated appeal were visible on the court docket as of the time of publishing.
Among those connected to the demise of FTX and Alameda, Bankman-Fried was one of the few who entered a not guilty plea and was put on trial. Judge Kaplan sentenced Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, a company domiciled in the Bahamas, to ninety months in jail on May 28. Three other former executives who were engaged in the collapse of the exchange, Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh, have entered guilty pleas and are awaiting sentencing. For the first time since November 2022, Salame made a post on social media site X shortly after his sentencing hearing. A “complete memoir of [his] time at FTX and Alameda,” as he has proposed, should be published. Bankman-Fried, on the other hand, hasn’t posted to X since January 2023 and hasn’t talked to the media much while he’s being tried.
Changepeng Zhao, the former CEO of Binance, reported to the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, California, after receiving a four-month prison sentence for breaking American money laundering rules. With his sentence likely to expire in October 2024, Zhao revealed that he intends to “write something” during his confinement. With SBF and Zhao already facing criminal charges, Alex Mashinsky will be the next well-known player in the crypto sector. In January 2025, the criminal prosecution of the former CEO of Celsius is scheduled to commence.