FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried agreed on Dec. 21 to be extradited to the United States on fraud charges, according to an affidavit read aloud by his lawyer during a court hearing in the Bahamas, where he has been held since being charged by federal prosecutors.
During the court hearing, Bankman-Fried stepped up to the witness stand in court and agreed to be sent back to the United States.
Last week, U.S. prosecutors in New York alleged that Bankman-Fried committed wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and fraud against the United States. Bankman-Fried’s alleged crimes date back to 2019, when he allegedly misappropriated FTX customer funds to pay the expenses and debts of Alameda Research, FTX’s crypto hedge fund, according to the indictment.
It wasn’t immediately clear when Bankman-Fried would depart the Caribbean nation for New York.
Officials alleged that the 30-year-old cryptocurrency exchange founder stole billions of dollars in FTX customer assets to deal with losses at Alameda. Last week, he was arrested on a U.S. extradition request in the Bahamas, where he lives and where his company is based.
Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said that Bankman-Fried’s actions amounted to “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.”
In interviews with media outlets and on social media, Bankman-Fried has acknowledged risk-management failures at his companies, although he said he doesn’t believe it rises to the level of criminal behavior. FTX crashed amid a bevy of customer withdrawals amid concerns about its relationship with Alameda; both companies later filed for bankruptcy.
“I don’t know of a violation of the terms of use. I don’t know every line of the terms of use. I can’t confidently say there wasn’t, but I don’t know of one,” he said.
“I ask myself a lot how I made a series of mistakes that seem—they don’t just seem dumb. They seem like the type of mistakes I could see myself having ridiculed someone else for having made.”
But because of those interviews, some experts say that it could allow prosecutors to point to inconsistencies to undermine his credibility with a jury.
“The defense is going to be completely boxed in by the prior statements SBF has made and the very incisive questions he has answered in the press and on social media,” said Renato Mariotti, a criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor.
“To the extent such payments are not returned voluntarily, the FTX debtors intend to commence actions before the bankruptcy court to require the return of such payments, with interest accruing from the date any action is commenced,” FTX has said in a statement.
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Bankman-Fried was detained at The Bahamas Department of Corrections in Nassau, known as Fox Hill prison. The U.S. State Department in a 2021 report described conditions at the jail as “harsh,” citing overcrowding, rodent infestation, and prisoners relying on buckets as toilets, although Bahamian officials claim that conditions at the facility have improved since then.Prosecutors alleged that Bankman-Fried’s illegal spending before the company’s collapse included millions of dollars in political contributions to mostly Democrat-aligned political action committees and candidates. He also made some donations to Republicans, officials have asserted.
