FTX founder and former boss, Sam Bankman-Fried is heading to jail after a judge revoked his $150 million bail package over alleged witness tampering.
Judge Lewis Kaplan has granted a request by federal prosecutors to revoke Bankman-Fried’s bail and he will be remanded to custody ahead of his trial, which is slated to begin on 2 October.
The judge concluded that there was probable cause to believe that Bankman-Fried has tried to “tamper with witnesses at least twice” since his arrest in December in connection with the collapse of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange he founded.
Prosecutors asked the judge to revoke bail after Bankman-Fried shared private diary entries of his ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, to the New York Times.
Ellison, the former chief executive of Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund Alameda Research, pleaded guilty to federal charges in December and is cooperating with the prosecution and is expected to testify against her former boyfriend.
Sharing her private writing, says the prosecution, was a “means of indirect witness intimidation through the press”.
