FTX founder agrees to extradition to U.S., attorney says
Sam Bankman-Fried could also be prepared to come back to the U.S. to face legal fees associated to the collapse of cryptocurrency trade FTX following a chaotic court docket look within the Bahamas.
A lawyer for Bankman-Fried was quoted as saying Monday the disgraced FTX founder has agreed to be extradited to the United States. A court docket listening to was stopped earlier within the day when his attorneys mentioned it was untimely for him to face earlier than the court docket.
Jerone Roberts, an area protection lawyer for Bankman-Fried, instructed The New York Times that attorneys will put together the mandatory paperwork for extradition. “Mr. Bankman-Fried wishes to put the customers right, and that is what has driven his decision,” the Times quoted Roberts telling reporters.
It was not instantly clear when extradition may happen.
The court docket look got here only a week after Bankman-Fried’s attorneys had initially mentioned that they deliberate to struggle extradition. An extradition listening to had been scheduled for Feb. 8. The reversal may pace 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 Securities and Exchange Commission mentioned 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 behind the courthouse.
A handful of people that mentioned they had been both crypto lovers or FTX prospects got here to the courthouse to witness the proceedings.
“We want him to feel the weight of what he’s done,” mentioned Ben Armstrong, the founding father of the BitBoy Crypto web site. Armstrong mentioned he’d come to the courthouse with a dozen individuals, a few of whom had misplaced their cash with FTX.
If he is dropped at New York, Bankman-Fried will seemingly be held, at the least briefly, in a federal detention heart in Brooklyn. Other well-known prisoners on the Metropolitan Detention Center in recent times 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 youngsters.
During her time on the MDC, which homes round 1,600 prisoners, Maxwell’s attorneys repeatedly complained to a choose that it was unsanitary, tormented 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 lawyer will be capable of 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 threat.
Bankman-Fried’s downfall, from crypto evangelist to pariah, occurred with gorgeous pace. 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-about by many in Washington and on Wall Street as a wunderkind of digital currencies, somebody who may assist take them mainstream, partially by working with policymakers to convey extra oversight and belief to the trade.
Bankman-Fried had been value tens of billions of {dollars} — at the least on paper — and was capable of entice 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 tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in FTX.
The new CEO of FTX, John Ray III, instructed a congressional committee on Tuesday that there was nothing subtle 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 mentioned.
