While Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents might have appeared to have been the unfair victims of the media’s voyeurism following the collapse of their son’s company, following their son’s arrest, several details have emerged that have drawn them even closer to the story and raised the question of the scale of their involvement.
As The New York Times reports, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried allegedly had close ties to the financial goings-on at FTX, with Joseph Bankman having received payments from the company for work. Meanwhile, Barbara Fried was allegedly a beneficiary of the company through donations to political campaigns with which she was involved. “I can’t imagine a world where Bankman-Fried’s parents were not his financial and legal advisors,” Los Angeles-based criminal defense attorney Matthew Barhoma told Mercury News. Most shocking of all, it has been revealed that the couple were the signatories on a property in the Bahamas worth $16.4 million, according to Reuters. It is believed the company was bought with company funds, and Bankman-Fried has claimed that it was “the company’s property,” despite his parents’ signatures (via Insider).
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The couple has already faced professional consequences of the alleged fraud-fueled collapse of FTX. As reported in The Stanford Daily, Joseph Bankman has recently canceled the class he was due to teach at Stanford, while Barbara Fried is missing from the teaching roster. Per the same source, Barbara Fried has claimed that her absence has “nothing to do with anything else going on,” and that she was nevertheless winding down for her retirement.
