NASSAU, Bahamas, Founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, reappeared in court here on Monday but was sent back to jail after not waiving his right to an extradition hearing as it had been widely reported he would have.
Several local and international media reports had indicated that the 30-year-old disgraced billionaire, remanded to prison until February 8, 2023, after first appearing in the magistrate’s court last Monday, intended to go to court to agree to his extradition.
However, a local lawyer for Bankman-Fried, Jerone Roberts, told Magistrate Judge Shaka Serville he had no such instructions.
“I did not request him to be here this morning,” he said.
Prosecutor Franklyn Williams KC informed the court, however, that a US lawyer for Bankman-Fried had contacted his office over the weekend, and it was understood that he intended to “waive his extradition.”
Roberts told the court he was unaware of that development, adding that his client wanted to see the indictment against him before agreeing to be deported.
Bankman-Fried was subsequently escorted from the court and taken back to prison.
He was arrested on December 12 at the request of the United States, a month after his crypto exchange’s November 11 bankruptcy filing, and now faces charges from the Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Bankman-Fried’s eight-count indictment includes two counts of wire fraud conspiracy, two counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering – each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years – and one count each of conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to defraud the United States and commit campaign finance violations, which each carry a maximum sentence of five years.
The charges in the indictment arise from an alleged wide-ranging scheme that US prosecutors say Bankman-Fried and his co-conspirators perpetrated, since 2019, to defraud customers of FTX by misappropriating billions of dollars of their funds.
It is alleged Bankman-Fried used customer funds for his personal use, to make investments and millions of dollars of political contributions to federal political candidates and committees, and to repay billions of dollars in loans owed by Alameda Research, the cryptocurrency hedge fund which he also founded.
He also allegedly defrauded lenders to Alameda Research and equity investors in FTX by concealing his misuse of customer deposits in their financial information.
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