Lawyers for disgraced crypto exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried filed a letter on Tuesday asking that the names of two people guaranteeing Mr Bankman-Fried’s $250m bail package be kept confidential.
Mr Bankman-Fried was arrested in The Bahamas in November for allegedly misappropriating consumer funds from his FTX crypto exchange to use in other crypto exchanges, buy real estate, and make campaign donations. He is facing, if convicted, up to 115 years in prison.
Last month, after returning to the United States from The Bahamas, Mr Bankman-Fried was granted a $250m bail package secured by the equity in his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California. Mr Bankman-Fried has been under house arrest there since being released.
In granting Mr Bankman-Fried the bail package, the judge required that the bond be signed by two other people of “considerable means” besides Mr Bankman-Fried and his parents. Only one of those people could be related to Mr Bankman-Fried.
Mr Bankman-Fried was able to find two such people to serve as sureties, but doesn’t want their names released to the public.
“If the two remaining sureties are publicly identified, they will likely be subjected to probing media scrutiny, and potentially targeted for harassment, despite having no substantive connection to the case,” Mr Bankman-Fried’s lawyers wrote. “Consequently, the privacy and safety of the sureties are ‘countervailing factors’ that significantly outweigh the presumption of public access to the very limited information at issue.”
The request to keep the identities of the sureties confidential comes as Mr Bankman-Fried’s parents, professors at Stanford University, have reportedly faced a variety of threats and challenges in recent weeks.
In their filing, Mr Bankman-Fried’s lawyers noted that Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried “have in recent weeks become the target of intense media scrutiny, harassment, and threats. Among other things, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s parents have received a steady stream of threatening correspondence, including communications expressing a desire that they suffer physical harm.”
Mr Bankman-Fried’s lawyers used Mr Bankman and Ms Fried’s example as reasons why the names of the sureties should be kept confidential.
If the judge agrees to that request, it would not be without precedent. As Bloomberg noted, a number of Mr Bankman-Fried’s lawyers also represented convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell and asked in that case as well that the names of people willing to sign her bond be kept secret.
Ms Maxwell was ultimately denied bail, making the confidentiality issue moot.
