Former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried, has been returned to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn by United States officials, following a short stay at a transfer facility in Oklahoma.
According to inmate records from the Federal Bureau of Prisons on June 4, Bankman-Fried is now being held at MDC Brooklyn after spending approximately a week at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City. There had been speculation that authorities planned to transfer him to a prison in the San Francisco Bay Area, near his parents’ home in California.
The reasons for Bankman-Fried’s return to New York are unclear. His lawyers had requested that he remain at MDC Brooklyn to assist with his appeal against his conviction and sentencing. Judge Lewis Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, who oversaw Bankman-Fried’s trial and sentencing, also recommended that he stay in the state.
Bankman-Fried was convicted in November 2023 by a jury on seven felony counts related to the misuse of customer funds at FTX and Alameda Research. In March, Judge Kaplan sentenced him to 25 years in prison. Bankman-Fried’s legal team filed a notice of appeal on April 11, but no details regarding the grounds for the appeal have been made public.
Bankman-Fried was one of the few individuals connected to the collapse of FTX and Alameda who pleaded not guilty and faced a jury trial. On May 28, Judge Kaplan sentenced Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets based in the Bahamas, to 90 months in prison. Other former executives involved in the collapse, including Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh, have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.
Shortly after his sentencing hearing, Salame made his first post on the social media platform X since November 2022. He hinted at the possibility of publishing a “complete memoir of his time at FTX and Alameda.” In contrast, Bankman-Fried has not posted on X since January 2023 and has rarely spoken to the media during his trial.
In a related story, former CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, who was sentenced to four months in prison for violating U.S. money laundering laws, reported to the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, California. Zhao has expressed his intention to “write something” during his incarceration, which is expected to end by October 2024.
Following Bankman-Fried and Zhao, Alex Mashinsky, the former CEO of Celsius, will be the next prominent figure in the crypto space to face criminal charges. His trial is set to begin in January 2025.
According to Inner City Press and X Hall of Flame magazine, Mashinsky is expected to receive a shorter prison sentence compared to Bankman-Fried and Zhao and is described as being “less flashy.”