Sam-Bankman Fried to be released on $250 million bail and will be required to stay with parents ahead of FTX trial

Sam Bankman-Fried will be released from custody on $250 million bail, a federal judge ruled Thursday in SBF's first court hearing on American soil. He will be required to surrender his passport and stay with his parents ahead of a federal trial on a list of charges tied to the failure of FTX.Judge Gabriel Gorenstein said Bankman-Fried will be fitted with an ankle monitor Thursday, when he's expected to be released after the hearing in Lower Manhattan.The FTX founder was arrested on December 13 in the Bahamas, where his company is headquartered, as federal prosecutors in Manhattan unsealed an eight-count criminal complaint against him.He was flown to New York on Wednesday night after a Bahamian magistrate judge, who denied him bail, signed off on the extradition. As Bankman-Fried arrived in the US, Damien Williams, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that two of Bankman-Fried's associates, Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, pleaded guilty to fraud charges stemming from the FTX scandal and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.Prosecutors allege Bankman-Fried "orchestrated a years-long fraud" to hide from investors that he diverted funds from the FTX cryptocurrency exchange to Alameda Research, a hedge fund he also controlled.Criminal allegations against Ellison and Wang, first filed on December 19, were unsealed in court on Thursday morning ahead of Bankman-Fried's court appearance.Newly filed court documents in parallel civil proceedings from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission allege that Ellison manipulated the price of FTT, an in-house token used by FTX, thus inflating the valuation of Alameda Research, the trading firm she led, and misleading investors.

According to the civil filings, Wang created software to help divert FTX customer funds to Alameda, which Ellison misappropriated for Alameda's trading activity. The filings allege that Ellison and Wang were aware that Bankman-Fried's public statements about FTX's financial condition, risk management, and disentanglement from Alameda were "false and misleading."Bankman-Fried is expected to be held in the Metropolitan Detention Center, a federal jail in Brooklyn, while awaiting trial. The MDC has been plagued by years of scandal, as inmates — including Jeffrey Epstein associate and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as convicted serial rapist R.

Kelly — have complained about rodents, poor drinking water, and the pervading stench of feces. A federal judge said last year it was "run by morons."US District Judge Ronnie Abrams, who is overseeing Bankman-Fried's case in a Manhattan federal court, has scheduled for his criminal case to move forward in the coming months.Bankman-Fried may request a new bail hearing. If he does, he will be required to file paperwork with financial information — putting to test his claim that he has lost tens of billions of dollars and has only $100,000 to his name following FTX's collapse — and make arguments that he is not a flight risk ahead of a criminal trial.