Hartford Courant

Founder of FTX heads to court for bail hearing

- By Larry Neumeister

NEW YORK — FTX founder Sam Bankman-fried will head to a New York courtroom Thursday to face a federal judge who said his effort to contact a likely trial witness against him seemed designed so they would “sing out of the same hymn book.”

On Tuesday, Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected Bankman’s-fried’s lawyers’ request that oral arguments about his bail be canceled because lawyers on both sides have settled their difference­s on necessary changes to his bail package in order to prevent inappropri­ate contact with witnesses or damaging encrypted social media communicat­ions.

The arguments, set for Thursday morning, will proceed as scheduled, the judge ruled as he declined to approve new bail conditions that defense lawyers said prosecutor­s had agreed with, including the exemption of some individual­s from a no-contact list and permission for Bankman-fried to place audio and video calls.

The bail hearing was scheduled after prosecutor­s said Bankman-fried sent an encrypted message over the Signal texting app Jan. 15 to the general counsel of FTX US.

Kaplan said the question of whether further measures should be taken to restrict Bankman-fried’s actions was also raised by allegation­s that he directed employees in the past to use applicatio­ns whose communicat­ions could be erased.

Bankman-fried, 30, has been confined with electronic monitoring to his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California, since his December arrest on charges that he cheated investors and looted customer deposits on his cryptocurr­ency trading platform, in part to finance political donations and make trades at Alameda Research. He has pleaded not guilty. A trial has been set for October.

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