Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has reportedly agreed to get extradited to the United States to face charges levied against him for wire fraud stemming from his bankrupt cryptocurrency firm.
Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF, was poised to drop his initial resistance against extradition from his Bahamas prison during a frenzied hearing Monday. However, an exact timeline for his possible transfer to the U.S. remains unclear, the Washington Post reported.
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“Whatever trail that got him here this morning, it did not involve me,” Bankman-Fried’s lawyer Jerone Roberts told a judge during the hearing, per the Wall Street Journal.
Another lawyer for Bankman-Fried, who works for the Bahamas Department of Public Prosecutions, then reportedly explained that the billionaire mogul had contacted his office to waive extradition. After about 10 minutes, the hearing ended, and Bankman-Fried was directed back to jail, according to the report.
Bankman-Fried was arrested last week and is facing charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers and lenders, conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit commodities and security fraud, a separate wire fraud on customers and lenders, violating campaign finance laws, and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. He is also facing civil securities fraud charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
If convicted, he could face up to 115 years behind bars.
Bankman-Fried reportedly agreed to return to court at another time once his lawyers ironed out their confusion. He has been holed up at Fox Hill, a prison that is allegedly overcrowded and infested with rats. His family has reportedly requested he receive vegan meals to ease his stay.
Not long ago, FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange company Bankman-Fried founded in 2019, was valued at around $32 billion and seen as one of the largest such companies in the world. Over the summer, during a crypto downturn, FTX emerged as a white knight and bailed out faltering firms.
That came to a thumping halt in November when the firm began to unravel — something that was catalyzed after a deal with rival firm Binance collapsed.
Questions from the collapsed deal spooked markets about FTX’s financial situation, and the company was later revealed to have allegedly diverted billions of dollars worth of customer money to fund risky investments from his trading firm, Alameda Research, something to which Bankman-Fried claimed he was oblivious.
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Both FTX and Alameda Research have since gone bankrupt.
Bankman-Fried’s legal woes stem from those business dealings and for allegedly breaching campaign finance laws.
