"Scruffier than a motherf*cker."

Locked Down

The first known jailhouse photo of the disgraced FTX cofounder Sam Bankman-Fried has surfaced, and it does not appear that his sense of — ahem — personal style has improved behind bars.

In a post on X-formerly-Twitter, crypto reporter Tiffany Fong — an acquaintance of the onetime wunderkind — shared a picture that was, according to her, acquired from one of SBF's fellow inmates, a former member of the Bloods gang who she refers to as G Lock.

Convicted in November 2023 on all seven counts related to the fraud perpetrated at the exchange, Bankman-Fried is currently awaiting sentencing. In the meantime, however, he spent time hanging out with G Lock, who in a teaser from Fong's forthcoming video interview refers to him as "my son."

"First of all, my son Sam Bankman is clean-shaven," the one-time gangster, now apparently out of jail, is heard telling the independent reporter in her video.

"Was," Fong reminded.

"Yeah, was clean-shaven," G Lock responded. "Now? Scruffier than a motherfucker. He's got a full beard."

Schlub Status

This isn't the first time Bankman-Fried's photographed appearance has made headlines.

Even before FTX crashed — and took the crypto industry with it — in 2022, the 31-year-old Stanford scion was referred to as a "disheveled billionaire" by the New York Times for his insistence on wearing t-shirts and shorts all the time. Just a day after his arrest in December of that same year, the Times called SBF "schlubby" and insinuated that his unkempt-ness may have had something to do with his downfall.

According to G Lock, Bankman-Fried's new facial hair is an experiment to see how long it can grow.

"I'm like Sam, what are you doing, bro?" his fellow inmate told Fong. "And he was like 'eh, I'm just gonna try to grow it. I've never [done] it before.'"

G Lock also told the reporter that SBF isn't showering very often and seems to have "lost himself" — though as Fong pointed out, he also didn't do that "back in the day."

To be fair, "hygiene indifference," as it's referred to in the psychiatric community, is very much in line with depression and other mental health issues, and Bankman-Fried's mental health struggles have long been a source of fascination. In draft tweets acquired by the Times from Fong herself, Bankman-Fried did say that when undergoing psychiatric evaluation, he has "test[ed] positive" for dysthymia, a type of long-term, medium-level depressive disorder.

From a ritzy compound in the Bahamas to a Brooklyn cell block, the crypto casualty's life has changed significantly since FTX went belly-up in November 2022 — though as his first jailhouse photo and its surrounding circumstances indicate, some things haven't shifted much at all.

More on crypto: Attempt to Reboot FTX Fails Miserably


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