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FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to appear before a U.S. court on Thursday after being extradited from The Bahamas, where he had remained since the collapse of his now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange.
Bankman-Fried, 30, was arrested last week in the Bahamas, where he lived and where FTX is based, after federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged him with stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer assets to plug losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research, cementing the one-time billionaire’s fall from grace.
He departed the Caribbean nation in FBI custody shortly after 8 p.m. EST (0100 GMT) on Tuesday night. Just hours later, U.S. prosecutors said two of his closest former associates had pleaded guilty and were cooperating with their probe – a move that significantly ramped up pressure on Bankman-Fried.
“If you participated in misconduct at FTX or Alameda, now is the time to get ahead of it,” Williams said. “We are moving quickly and our patience is not eternal.”
At his U.S. court appearance, known as an arraignment, Bankman-Fried is expected to be asked to enter a plea. The judge would determine whether to grant him bail, and if so, on what conditions.
A spokesman for his U.S. legal team declined to comment.
Bankman-Fried has acknowledged risk-management failures at FTX, but has said he does not believe he has criminal liability. At a court hearing in The Bahamas on Wednesday, his lawyer there, Jerone Roberts, read an affidavit in which Bankman-Fried said he had agreed to extradition in part out of a “desire to make the relevant customers whole.”
He attended the hearing in a salmon-colored courthouse in capital Nassau wearing a suit jacket and button-down shirt, a far cry from the casual attire he became known for while running FTX. He spoke briefly to tell the judge that he was waiving his…
