Dec 17 (Reuters) – Former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to appear in court in the Bahamas on Monday to reverse his decision to contest extradition to the United States, where he faces fraud charges, a person familiar with the matter said. on Saturday.
The 30-year-old cryptocurrency mogul was indicted in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday and charged with participating in a scheme to defraud FTX customers.
His decision to consent to extradition would pave the way for him to appear in U.S. courts to face charges of using billions of dollars in stolen client deposits to pay expenses and debts and make investments on behalf of his hedge fund. crypto coverage, Alameda Research LLC. .
Upon arrival in the United States, Bankman-Fried would likely be held at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, although some federal defendants are being held in prisons outside New York City due to overcrowding at the facilities. ·lations, defense attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma said. .
At her initial court hearing in Manhattan, Bankman-Fried will be asked to enter a plea and a judge would make a bond determination, Margulis-Ohnuma said. The lawyer added that such a hearing must take place within 48 hours of Bankman-Fried’s arrival in the United States, although it would likely be sooner.
Prosecutors will likely argue that Bankman-Fried is a flight risk and should remain in custody because of the large sums of money involved in the case and the unclear location of those funds.
“The missing money gives prosecutors strong arguments that he is a flight risk,” said former federal prosecutor and white-collar defense attorney Michael Weinstein. “I would expect that if a judge were to grant bail, it would impose very restrictive and onerous conditions.”
Any trial is likely more than a year away, legal experts told Reuters.
Neither a spokesman nor a U.S.-based attorney for Bankman-Fried immediately responded to requests for comment. A spokesman for the US attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment.
It was not immediately clear what made Bankman-Fried change her mind and decide not to contest extradition.
The US State Department in a 2021 report said conditions at Fox Hill were “harsh”, citing overcrowding, rodent infestation and prisoners relying on buckets as toilets. Authorities say conditions have improved since then.
Bankman-Fried was arrested last Monday in the Bahamas, where he lives and where FTX is based. He was booked into the Caribbean country’s Fox Hill prison on Tuesday after Chief Magistrate JoyAnn Ferguson-Pratt rejected his request to remain at home while he awaited a hearing on his extradition to the United States.
Bankman-Fried had filed a new bail application with the Supreme Court of the Bahamas on Thursday, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters at the time.
Bankman-Fried amassed a fortune valued at more than $20 billion while riding a cryptocurrency boom to make FTX one of the world’s largest exchanges before it collapsed precipitously this year.
Damian Williams, Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, described the collapse of FTX as one of the “biggest financial frauds in American history.” Bankman-Fried has acknowledged failures in risk management at FTX, but said she did not believe he was criminally liable.
Bankman-Fried faces up to 115 years in prison if ultimately convicted of the eight charges he faces in the United States, though any sentence will ultimately be determined by a judge based on a number of factors .
Reporting by Jasper Ward; Additional reporting by Luc Cohen and Jack Queen; Written by Luc Cohen; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis
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