Sam Bankman-Fried who was convicted last year of stealing from customers of his now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange has been pictured in prison for the first time.
The former billionaire, 31, is seen in the newly surfaced photo taken at New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center where he is locked up while awaiting sentencing, that could see him given 115 years in prison. He is due to be sentenced next month.
The photo, thought to have been taken on December 17, shows Bankman-Fried sporting a beard while standing alongside five other inmates.
Crypto crime reporter Tiffany Fong originally obtained the image, and spoke to an inmate pictured alongside Bankman-Fried.
The inmate, known as G Lock, described Bankman-Fried as being ‘strange as s***’ but did consider him to be a ‘good guy’.
The photo, thought to have been taken on December 17, shows Bankman-Fried sporting a beard alongside former inmate G Lock, an ex gang member
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves Manhattan federal court, June 15, 2023, in New York
G Lock, a former of the Blood gang, said: ‘Sam had a belly, he was eating good. [Now] he’s skinny like a toothpick.
‘He’s not getting a shower, he’s not doing anything. He didn’t snitch on nobody, Sam is a gangster.
‘Sam is more gangster than Tekashi69, Sam Bankman stood on all ten toes. Tekashi ratted.
‘He’s a good guy, he really is. Weird as s**t, can be strange. But he is a good guy.’ It’s not clear what G Lock had been in prison for.
Fong added: ‘He’s obviously lost some weight, and I’ve heard he’s not showering very much.
‘He’s not as clean-shaven as he used to be, but he’s obviously going through a lot right now.’
Bankman-Fried was found guilty in November of all seven counts of fraud, with a jury taking less than five hours to reach their verdict.
His conviction last year marked the finale of his $10 billion fraud trial linked to the spectacular collapse of his crypto empire in November 2022.
Prosecutors argued that Bankman-Fried built a ‘pyramid of deceit’ through FTX and his sister company Alameda Research to ‘steal’ billions of dollars in customer assets in pursuit of ‘money, influence and power’.
Sam Bankman-Fried rode a wave of hype about crypto and before its collapse in November last year, FTX was worth $32 billion
Bankman-Fried stands talking to his lawyers after the verdict. They later indicated they intend to appeal
His defense lawyers, who compared the dramatic trial to a movie, argued that the MIT mathematics graduate ‘never set out to harm anyone’ – but made ‘mistakes’ while running two multi-billion dollar companies.
Bankman-Fried rode a wave of hype about crypto and before its collapse in November last year, FTX was worth $32 billion.
He featured on the cover of Forbes magazine and appeared on stage with Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Bankman-Fried was lauded as the future of finance – crypto’s Steve Jobs, who planned to give his fortune away as part of the doctrine of ‘Effective Altruism’ as he called it.
But as prosecutors argued in court, he ‘lied to the world’ because in reality he was simply stealing FTX customers’ money.
The ‘house of cards’ came crashing down in 2022 amid tumbling crypto prices and media reports raising questions about how much of the $32 billion valuation was based on FTT, FTX’s own crypto token.
His parents Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried broke down when the guilty verdict against their son was read out
He was lauded as the future of finance, crypto’s Steve Jobs, who planned to give his fortune away as part of the doctrine of ‘Effective Altruism’ as he called it
As customers tried to withdraw their money it created the crypto equivalent of a run on a bank, and FTX shut down.
Bankman-Fried always maintained his innocence and kept talking to journalists long after it became obvious he was going to be arrested.
Federal prosecutors built their case against him around the testimony of his three top employees, who all quickly took plea deals with the hope of securing more lenient sentences.
They were Caroline Ellison, the chief executive of Alameda Research, FTX’s precursor who was also his ex-girlfriend, Gary Wang, the FTX co-founder, and Nishad Singh, the company’s top engineer.
During the trial, the court heard that Bankman-Fried grew up in Palo Alto to a mother and father who were both economics professors at Stanford University.
Former US President Bill Clinton, Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and Bankman-Fried pictured in a Panel Discussion in May 2022
He studied mathematics at MIT where he met Wang before working at Jane St Capital, a Wall St trading firm, and then starting Alameda in 2017, followed by FTX in 2019.
The company first operated out of a two-bedroom Airbnb in Berkeley, California, before moving to Hong Kong and eventually the Bahamas.
There they worked out an office and a $30 million penthouse apartment where Bankman-Fried lived with nine others in a bizarre mixture of opulence and frat-house like squalor.
In his testimony, Bankman-Fried tried to portray himself as an overworked and eccentric genius who sometimes slept on beanbags and drove a Toyota Corolla because he thought it was a better image.
He admitted that a ‘lot of people got hurt’ and that he made some ‘larger mistakes’ but flatly denied committing fraud when asked by his lawyer Mark Cohen.