When Sam Bankman-Fried is out on his record-breaking $250 million bond and under house arrest, he will be taking refuge at his parents’ $4 million home on the edge of Stanford University’s campus in Palo Alto, California.
US District Judge Gabriel Gorenstein signed off on the deal Thursday, allowing the disgraced FTX founder and ex-CEO — who is staring down a slew of charges which carry a sentence of up to 115 years — to leave New York for his home state.
Bankman-Fried, 30, is accused of wire fraud, securities fraud, conspiracy, money laundering, and campaign finance violations. Federal charging documents accuse him of defrauding investors out of $1.8 billion.
While awaiting a federal trial, the fallen crypto king will be fitted with an ankle monitor and have to stay at his family residence — just a block from the Stanford campus, where his parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, are both law professors.
The record-breaking bond would be partially secured by Bankman-Fried’s parents’ interest in their five-bedroom, three-bathroom home — which Zillow estimates to be worth north of $4 million — and that equity would have to be paid within three weeks, Gorenstein said.
The alleged crypto grifter will be able to leave his parents’ house for exercise, mental health and substance abuse treatment. He will also be allowed to shop online, but is banned from making any non-sanctioned payments above $1,000 that aren’t legal fees, prosecutors said.
Although close to the college campus, the 3,092-square-foot house, on a tree-covered lot, should offer Bankman-Fried some privacy.
His family’s Craftsman-style house was built in 1917, according to PastHeritage.org. Records show the family has lived there since the early ’90s, but his parents split their time between the US and the Bahamas, where Bankman-Fried had been operating FTX.
It is sure to be a big step up from the rat-infested Bahamian prison where he was being held before his Wednesday extradition.
Assistant US Attorney Nick Roos argued in favor of the house arrest, saying the fact that Bankman-Fried “voluntarily consented to extradition” from the Bahamas “should be given weight.”
His $250 million bond is 25 times larger than the collateral that officials demanded from disgraced Ponzi scheme financier Bernie Madoff in 2009.
Bankman-Fried’s charges include illegally using investors’ money to buy real estate, fund his trading firm Alameda Research and make political donations.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
