Sam Bankman-Fried.
Credit: Reuters
A diet of bread, water and peanut butter. A laptop with no internet connection. And intermittent access to millions of pages of digital evidence.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the 31-year-old cryptocurrency mogul, has spent nearly a month at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, since a federal judge revoked his bail in August. As Bankman-Fried prepares for a fraud trial next month over the collapse of his crypto exchange FTX, his lawyers have offered a picture of the conditions he has faced at the jail — a far cry from the Bahamas penthouse he once shared with other billionaire executives.
In a series of court filings, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers have raised issues such as the disruption to his vegan diet in jail, as well as his dwindling supplies of prescribed medication such as Adderall, which treats ADHD. They have also said he has not been getting enough access to the internet to prepare for his trial and should be released.
On Tuesday, those lawyers and the prosecutors bringing the case continued to argue in letters to the judge over whether enough accommodations have been made so that Bankman-Fried has access to a laptop and consistent internet service to review materials for trial. They did not reach a resolution, leaving it for the judge to decide.
A representative for Bankman-Fried declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which oversees the Brooklyn facility, declined to comment on Bankman-Fried’s conditions but said that the MDC offered "access to health care, telephones, a law library for legal research, hot meals," and that the people held there lived in "certified environmental conditions."
FTX collapsed in November, a symbol of crypto hubris gone awry. Since then, Bankman-Fried had spent months in relative comfort. After his arrest on fraud charges in December, he pleaded not guilty and was granted bail, allowing him to live in his parents’ home in California. He was able to play video games and watch sports, while meeting with reporters and working with lawyers to construct a defense.
Last month, the judge overseeing his case, Lewis Kaplan, revoked Bankman-Fried’s bail after ruling that the FTX founder had twice tried to interfere with witnesses in the case. Bankman-Fried was taken from the courthouse to the MDC, a jail that has struggled with staffing shortages, freezing conditions and other problems.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyers have filed an appeal seeking to have his bail reinstated.