The primary {photograph} of Sam Bankman-Fried, who dedicated “one of many greatest monetary frauds in American historical past,” in accordance with the U.S. Legal professional Damian Williams, alongside fellow inmates at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Middle has surfaced.
The picture, obtained by journalist Tiffany Fong, reveals the FTX founder rocking unkept hair and a slimmed-down physique.
SBF in jail goes type of onerous. pic.twitter.com/VMLNfFTzRQ
— Modsix (@ModsixGaming) February 20, 2024
“[He’s] subsisting on bread and water…typically peanut butter,” protection attorneys advised a federal decide final August of Bankman-Fried’s situation.
The group image was permitted as inmates are allowed to take images round Christmas, Fong reported. The inmate to Bankman-Fried’s proper has been recognized as a former member of the Bloods gang, G Lock. He advised Fong that the previous billionaire isn’t showering usually, has grown a full beard, and has turn out to be “skinny like like a toothpick.”
The previous gang member additionally applauded Bankman-Fried’s repute amongst friends—“Sam didn’t snitch on anybody…Sam is a gangster”—earlier than continuing to plead with President Joe Biden to grant SBF a pardon.
Bankman-Fried, who was discovered responsible of all seven legal costs, will stay at MDC till his sentencing on March 28. Lewis Kaplan, the federal decide overseeing his case, revoked his bail in August and despatched him to MDC after he leaked personal writings from Caroline Ellison—his onetime girlfriend and the CEO of FTX’s buying and selling agency, Alameda Analysis—to the New York Instances.
The MDC homes inmates charged with terrorism, organized crime, and drug smuggling, a report from the Division of Justice reveals. Inmates on the facility embrace a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who’s pleaded not responsible to drug-trafficking costs, and Guo Wengui, a Chinese language businessman who’s pleaded not responsible to fraud costs.
The MDC has been scrutinized by politicians and activists for poor situations. An investigation by watchdog group American Oversight uncovered extreme power, delays in medical care, and sanitation points. A federal company investigated a weeklong energy outage that left greater than 1,600 inmates in freezing temperatures and with out the power to talk with their legal professionals.
At 32 years outdated on the time of his sentencing, Bankman-Fried may withstand 110 years behind bars, in accordance with New York sentencing pointers.
He’s “prone to be sentenced to a long time in jail,” Jeff Leavitt, an lawyer with Kozyak Tropin & Throckmorton advised Fortune. Bankman-Fried misappropriated billions of {dollars} of buyer deposits in a “Madoff-esque vogue” and confirmed restricted regret when convicted at trial as a substitute of pleading responsible, Leavitt added.
