It took a long time for the name Sam Bankman-Fried to register for me. Finally, the extremity of it all arrived with a thunk: If you don’t know the story, all you need to know is Bankman-Fried’s bail bond is a whopping $250 million — and that this bail was revoked because the judge believes he attempted witness tampering.
Bankman-Fried is the son of Stanford Law professors and was the founder of a hedge fund and a cryptocurrency exchange called FTX. For a brief moment, he was worth billions. Now he will be on trial in New York City on eight counts, including wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He has pleaded not guilty and is now in the rotten Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which you will remember from when it treated Ghislaine Maxwell poorly.
For the next installment of our subscriber-exclusive trial newsletter, Court Appearances: USA v. SBF, we’re bringing in reporter Kevin T. Dugan to cover the proceedings. He’s exceptional at explaining complicated money-related stuff and also complicated law-related stuff. We know you’re smart and well-educated people, but the cryptocurrency-scam bubble is intentionally confusing. That’s always part of the con! All great financial manipulators make their operations blurry precisely so they don’t end up on trial. In this case, Bankman-Fried certainly did a good job conning the media.
What to expect? We aren’t planning on bombarding you with daily newsletters. We’d like to deliver little oddities and bits of excitement from inside the courtroom a couple times a week, plus the most important news.
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