It's a massive downgrade from his parents' lavish Palo Alto mansion.
Straight to Jail
Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is officially heading to a Brooklyn jail to await his fraud trial, Reuters reports, after a Manhattan US district judge ruled he tampered with witnesses while on $250 million bail at his parents' mansion in Palo Alto, California.
That means that in just nine months, the disgraced crypto baron has gone from living in a lavish luxury villa in the Bahamas to being locked inside a notorious NYC jail that's been called out for its "inhumane" conditions. Ouch.
Wake-Up Call
Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty after being charged with fraud following the spectacular collapse of his crypto exchange empire late last year.
The subsequent revelations surrounding the firm's less-than-stellar track record of keeping track of billions of dollars worth of investments have likely only strengthened his prosecutors' case.
The clink might be a wake-up call for Bankman-Fried. Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, for instance, filed more than 100 complaints over how she was treated at the same jail, Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center, from invasive shower surveillance to excessive body cavity searches.
In filings, Maxwell's lawyers compared conditions to the ones faced by Hannibal Lecter in the 1991 horror movie "The Silence of the Lambs," according to Reuters.
In short, Bankman-Fried just got a whole lot more than a slap on the wrist, despite posting bail for a staggering quarter of a billion dollars in February.
It looks like he'll be at the facility for the next 50 days or so, at which point his fraud trial will kick off. It could even be a preview of things to come; he's facing life behind bars if convicted.
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