By Abubakar Yunusa
A United States district court has sentenced Sam Bankman-Fried, former chief executive officer (CEO) of FTX, to jail for “tampering with witnesses” on two different occasions.
This was announced by Lewis Kaplan, a judge, at a hearing in federal court in Manhattan.
The judgement comes 10 months after he was arrested by Bahamian authorities due to criminal charges filed by the US government.
Since then, Bankman-Fried has been on a $250 million bail package which requires him to remain at his parents’ Palo Alto, California house.
Speaking at the hearing on Friday, Kaplan said the former CEO is expected to remain in custody until October 2, 2023, for his criminal trial.
According to Kaplan, the witness tampering involved Bankman-Fried sharing documents used in a New York Times article reporting on Google Docs diary entries written by Caroline Ellison, the former co-CEO of Alameda Research, who has already pleaded guilty and is cooperating as a witness against him.
The judge added that the other incident covered Bankman-Fried’s attempts in January to contact Ryne Miller, FTX general counsel, over email and the encrypted messaging platform Signal.
“My conclusion is there is probable cause to believe the defendant tried to tamper with witnesses at least twice,” Kaplan said.
In December 2022, Bankman-Fried had he said would do anything — including starting a new business — “to help victims” of the company’s collapse.
The young billionaire also denied fraud allegations.
FTX was an exchange platform that investors around the world used to trade cryptocurrency assets, including other digital currencies or cash.
Investors could also store their cryptocurrencies in digital wallets, similar to using a bank.
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