Sam Bankman-Fried, the former FTX CEO, has finally agreed to be taken out of the Bahamas to the United States in the wake of visiting a court within his current country this past Monday to be given the official indictment slated against him by American officials.
The company of the disgraced entrepreneur officially filed for bankruptcy late last month in the wake of users learning that the company’s assets were heavily entangled with its sister company, Alameda Research, with both companies being controlled by Bankman-Fried, who was taken into custody late last week while in his luxury apartment out in the Bahamas and slammed with charges by American officials with a vast array of fraud charges.
In the wake of only a single day in Bahamian court, Bankman-Fried agreed to be removed from the Bahamas and taken to the United States, as explained in a report from The New York Times.
The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damien Williams, officially slammed Bankman-Fried with charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to defraud the Federal Election Commission and commit campaign finance violations, as explained in a press release put out by the Department of Justice. Bankman-Fried had already been giving an affidavit containing a full list of his charges, explained attorney Jerone Roberts to a Bahaman magistrate judge as part of the extensive two-hour hearing, read a report from Reuters.
Bankman-Fried showed up in just a dark-colored jacket and untucked white shirt, only speaking once to greet the judge and express a desire to speak with his legal team in the United States, as explained by a local outlet, which went on to add that he at one point chose to lean back with his eyes closed only to be woken back up by an official of the court.
Formerly a multibillionaire, Bankman-Fried was taken back to Fox Hill Prison, the only detention center run by the small island nation, directly in the wake of the hearing. As explained in a report coming from the State Department, the prison is very bad because of “overcrowding, poor nutrition, inadequate sanitation, and inadequate medical care,” with some cells even being entirely infested by “rats, maggots, and insects.”
The disgraced CEO, who has been denied access to bail because of his massive flight risk, could actually end up seeing a sentence of almost 115 years behind bars once he gets back to the United States if he receives a conviction on all counts.
