Update: The former billionaire, 31-year-old Sam Bankman-Friedis was seen for the first time since being imprisoned at at New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center while awaiting sentencing.
Last year, the founder and CEO of defunct Crypto trading platform FTX was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy by a jury.
The newly released photo was obtained Crypto crime reporter Tiffany Fong and appears to have been taken on December 17th.
The photo was allegedly obtained while Fong spoke with a former gang member who is pictured in the photo.
The inmate, known as G Lock, described Bankman-Fried as being “strange as s***” but said he did consider him to be a “good guy.”
“‘He’s not getting a shower, he’s not doing anything,” the former Blood gang member said. “He didn’t snitch on nobody, Sam is a gangster”
‘Sam is more gangster than Tekashi69, Sam Bankman stood on all ten toes. Tekashi ratted,” he added.
Earlier:
By Sam Blum
Nov. 10 2023 – Sam Bankman-Fried is going to prison. The founder and CEO of defunct crypto trading platform FTX was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy last week, after a New York City jury agreed he had squandered billions of dollars in customer funds while making political donations, settling debts, and placing speculative investments through his hedge fund, Alameda Research.
It’s a stunning fall from grace for Bankman-Fried, or “SBF,” as he is more commonly known. For years, he forged inroads with Washington power brokers and became an emblem of a new financial era, spurred by crypto–which he helped normalize. Now he’ll face sentencing in March.
If he gets the maximum sentence, SBF will go to prison for 100 years, far greater than the remainder of the 31-year-old’s natural life. SBF’s crimes have put his legacy on par with the disgraced hedge fund manager Bernie Madoff, who’s multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme left scores of retail investors destitute before he was sentenced to 150 years in 2009. Madoff died of kidney failure in 2021, following reports of a solitary existence making 24 cents an hour doing orderly work at a medium security prison in North Carolina.
So what can SBF expect when he begins serving time?
Typically, when someone is convicted of financial crimes, they’re incarcerated at minimum- or low-security prisons or prison camps, which are nowhere near as violent as high- or even medium-security facilities. (The Federal Bureau of Prisons grades prison facilities on a scale ranging from minimum, low, medium, and high.) At medium- and high-security facilities, “there are people [there] for violent crimes, who could be in there for murders, [and] sexual crimes. You’re dealing with a different type of prisoner, the higher the security level you go,” says Justin Paperny, co-founder of White Collar Advice, a crisis management firm that helps financial convicts prepare for incarceration and eventual rehabilitation.
Even if SBF serves time at a minimum- or low-security prison camp, his surroundings will be a far cry from the luxurious trappings of the Bahamas penthouse he called home with several former FTX colleagues prior to his arrest. Even at minimum-security lockups, “if you act like a fool, you’re going to get beat up,” Paperny says.
It’s unclear where SBF will be sent, but some experts expect him to wind up in a medium-security prison. Christopher Zoukis, a legal consultant, told Decrypt that SBF will probably be given a sentence of 25 years or more, which may necessitate a medium-security lockup. “When you get to the medium-security level, you have a huge swing,” Zoukis told the outlet. “You have extremely violent mediums, and then you have very soft mediums.”
Paperny, a former stock broker who served an 18-month prison stint for violating securities laws in 2009, would advise SBF to ease into his new surroundings, regardless of where he serves time. As a former multibillionaire once heralded as the next Warren Buffet, SBF will inevitably garner visibility and invite plenty of scrutiny, Paperny says.
His advice for anyone in SBF’s predicament? “Understand your environment, lay low, stay quiet, [and] recognize you’re moving into an environment where some men have lived for weeks, months, years, and decades who might be off-put by the money and the wealth and the status.”
Paperny’s advice to clients also covers the daily minutiae of life in prison. He provides an illustrative example, asking: “How do you learn to go to the bathroom in front of 30 guys?”
But the bigger challenge for Paperny is establishing a rehabilitative path for his clients. It involves acceptance, admission of wrongdoing, and above all else, empathy for those hurt by the crime, he says. “The first thing we encourage people to do is if you accept responsibility. What does that mean? If there are victims, how do you identify with them?”
That can play well with a judge. “It all starts with, if you did it, let’s accept responsibility and learn how to create the appropriate message, and then learn to tell the story effectively,” he says.
Owning the redemption narrative might be a challenge for SBF. Prior to his trial, the founder went on a media tour, attempting to set the record straight about the circumstances leading to his arrest. It included a live-streamed interview at The New York Times‘ Dealbook Conference and another interview on Good Morning America.
What SBF framed as an apology tour only managed to unravel whatever slim chance he had of escaping conviction, many observers have noted.
(c) 2023 Mansueto Ventures LLC; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.