Accused crypto crook Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to enter a plea next week to charges he stole $1.8 billion from investors of his failed FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
Bankman-Fried, 30, who will be arraigned Jan. 3 in Manhattan federal court, is currently holed up at his parent’s house in California after getting sprung from federal custody on a eye-popping $250 million bond.
He was expected to fly back across the country to appear in court in person before Judge Lewis Kaplan. Kaplan was appointed after the original judge stepped down from the case because her husband’s law firm had advised FTX, court records showed on Wednesday.
The failed financier’s bond was secured by two unnamed co-signers and his parents, Stanford Law professor Joseph Bankman, and Barbara Fried, a tax expert at the same university.
Bankman-Fried faces charges of charges of wire fraud, securities fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and campaign finance violations that could land him behind bars for 115 years.
He voluntarily waved his rights to an extradition hearing and cut a deal with the feds for his record bond after being busted in the Bahamas in connection with the “massive years-long fraud” that prosecutors said was “a house of cards” built “on a foundation of deception.”
Bankman-Fried has since been hiding out at his parent’s $4 million family home, which is being guarded by a $10,000-a-week armed security detail after the infamous accused fraudster received death threats.
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Officials believe Bankman-Fried siphoned customer deposits into his hedge fund Alameda Research and used them to buy real estate and donate to mostly Democratic lawmakers who are probing the sudden implosion of his exchange last month.
The exchange quickly crashed in November following a report that Alameda was using its trademark FTT token as collateral to prop up its finances.
As investors staged an FTT fire sale, the value of the exchange sank from $32 billion to about $1 billion in a matter of days, and Bankman-Fried resigned as the company filed for bankruptcy.
Bankman-Fried had publicly told investors that he “f–ked up” but denied any “improper use of customer funds,” in a Dec. 1 interview with ABC News.
As he was flown to the US last week, two of his alleged cohorts — Gary Wang, 29, an FTX co-founder, and Carolyn Ellison, 28, the former CEO of Alameda Research and Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend, copped to wire fraud, securities fraud and commodities fraud, according to prosecutors.
FTX’s new CEO John Ray testified before Congress earlier this month that the exchange was run by “grossly inexperienced, non-sophisticated individuals.”
With Post wires
