FTX founder’s hearing adjourned at request of his lawyer

Sam Bankman-Fried was headed again to jail Monday after a Bahamian choose reduce quick a listening to the place the disgraced FTX founder was anticipated to drop his combat towards extradition to the U.S.

Local news shops reported that Bankman-Fried’s legal professional requested the adjournment as a result of he hadn’t been correctly consulted concerning the proceedings.

Bankman-Fried was anticipated to inform Judge Shaka Servillea that he won’t combat extradition to the U.S., the place he faces a number of prison and civil costs associated to FTX’s collapse.

Instead, Eye Witness News Bahamas reported that Bankman-Fried is headed again to jail, with prosecutors and Servillea calling the listening to a waste of time.

The court docket look got here only a week after Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals had initially stated that they deliberate to combat extradition. An extradition listening to had been scheduled for Feb. 8. The reversal may velocity up the timetable for him to be despatched to the U.S.

Bahamian authorities arrested Bankman-Fried final Monday on the request of the U.S. authorities. U.S. prosecutors allege he performed a central function within the speedy collapse of FTX and hid its issues from the general public and buyers. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stated Bankman-Fried illegally used buyers’ cash to purchase actual property on behalf of himself and his household. The 30-year-old may doubtlessly spend the remainder of his life in jail.

Bankman-Fried arrived on the courthouse in a black van marked Corrections, which was escorted by a SWAT car and a police car. Police rapidly whisked him into an entrance in the back of the courthouse.

Earlier, a handful of people that stated they had been both crypto fanatics or FTX clients that misplaced cash got here to court docket to witness the proceedings. One man known as out “Sam’s a fraud,” as he entered the courthouse.

If he is delivered to New York, Bankman-Fried will seemingly be held, not less than briefly, in a federal detention centre in Brooklyn. Other well-known prisoners on the Metropolitan Detention Center lately have included the sexually-abusive singer R. Kelly, the pharmaceutical firm govt Martin Shkrelli and the socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of serving to the millionaire Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse kids.

During her time on the MDC, which homes round 1,600 prisoners, Maxwell’s legal professionals repeatedly complained to a choose that it was unsanitary, stricken by cockroaches and rodents. In latest years, three guards there have been convicted of sexually abusing inmates. In 2019, an influence failure left inmates shivering for per week within the useless of winter.

Once he is again within the U.S., Bankman-Fried’s legal professional will have the ability to request that he be launched on bail. A separate choose within the Bahamas denied Bankman-Fried’s request for bail final week on the grounds he was a flight danger.

Bankman-Fried’s downfall, from crypto evangelist to pariah, occurred with beautiful velocity. FTX filed for chapter safety on Nov. 11 when it ran out of cash after the cryptocurrency equal of a financial institution run.

Before the chapter, Bankman-Fried was thought of by many in Washington and on Wall Street as a wunderkind of digital currencies, somebody who may assist take them mainstream, partly by working with policymakers to deliver extra oversight and belief to the trade.

Bankman-Fried had been value tens of billions of {dollars} — not less than on paper — and was in a position to appeal to celebrities like Tom Brady or former politicians like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton to his conferences at luxurious resorts within the Bahamas. One distinguished Silicon Valley agency, Sequoia Capital, invested lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} in FTX.

The new CEO of FTX, John Ray III, advised a congressional committee on Tuesday that there was nothing refined about what Bankman-Fried was as much as.

“This is just old fashion embezzlement, taking money from others and using it for your own purposes,” he stated.