United States officials have returned former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn after a brief stay at a transfer facility in Oklahoma.
As of June 4, Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate records indicated that Bankman-Fried was being held at MDC Brooklyn, following approximately a week at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City.
Many had speculated that authorities intended to transfer the former FTX CEO to a San Francisco Bay Area prison near his parents’ home in California.
The reasons behind SBF’s return to New York remain unclear.
His lawyers had requested that he remain at MDC Brooklyn to assist in his appeal of his conviction and sentencing.
Judge Lewis Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York — who oversaw SBF’s criminal trial and sentencing — also recommended that he stay in the state.
In November 2023, a jury convicted Bankman-Fried of seven felony counts related to the misuse of customer funds at FTX and Alameda Research.
In March, Judge Kaplan sentenced SBF to 25 years in prison. Bankman-Fried’s legal team filed a notice to appeal on April 11.
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At the time of publication, no filings had appeared on the court docket indicating the grounds for SBF’s appeal.
Bankman-Fried was among the few individuals connected to the collapse of FTX and Alameda who pleaded not guilty and faced a jury.
On May 28, Judge Kaplan sentenced Ryan Salame, former co-CEO of Bahamas-based FTX Digital Markets, to 90 months in prison.
Other former executives involved in the exchange’s collapse — Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh — have pleaded guilty and await sentencing.
Almost immediately following his sentencing hearing, Salame posted on social media platform X for the first time since November 2022.
He has suggested he will publish a “complete memoir of [his] time at FTX and Alameda.” In contrast, Bankman-Fried has not posted to X since January 2023 and rarely spoke to the media during his trial.
After being sentenced to four months in prison for violating U.S. money laundering laws, former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao reported to the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, California.
Zhao suggested he plans to “write something” during his incarceration, expected to end by October 2024.
Alex Mashinsky will be the next once-prominent figure in the crypto space to face criminal charges after SBF and Zhao.
The former Celsius CEO’s criminal trial is set to begin in January 2025.
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