Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried can post $250 million bond and live in his parents’ home in California while he awaits trial on charges that he swindled investors and looted customer deposits on his FTX trading platform, Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein says as Bankman-Fried appears in US District Court in Manhattan.
Assistant US Attorney Nicolas Roos tells the court that Bankman-Fried, 30, “perpetrated a fraud of epic proportions,” but proposes bail, citing the fact that Bankman-Fried agreed to waive extradition.
Bankman-Fried, arrested in the Bahamas last week, was flown to New York late Wednesday after deciding not to challenge his extradition.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, is escorted from the Magistrate Court in Nassau, Bahamas, December 21, 2022, after agreeing to be extradited to the US. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Prosecutors and regulators contend that Bankman-Fried was at the center of several illegal schemes to use customer and investor money for personal gain. He faces the possibility of decades in prison if convicted on all counts.
In a series of interviews before his arrest, Bankman-Fried says he never intended to defraud anyone.
Bankman-Fried is charged with using money, illicitly taken from FTX customers, to enable trades at Alameda, spend lavishly on real estate, and make millions of dollars in campaign contributions to US politicians.
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