Nearly two weeks after being released by a judge in Manhattan a $250 million bond and ordered to stay with his parents in Palo Alto, California, Sam Bankman Friedthe disgraced cryptocurrency executive returned to New York and pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges that he engaged in widespread fraud and other crimes.
Mr Bankman-Fried, 30, appeared in federal district court where he is on trial on charges that his fraud led to the collapse of FTXthe cryptocurrency exchange he founded, and billions of dollars in customer losses.
The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of the Federal District Court, set a tentative date of October 2.
Mr Bankman-Fried did not speak at the hearing and the not guilty plea was entered on his behalf by one of his lawyers, Mark Cohen. During the court hearing, which lasted about half an hour, Mr. Bankman-Fried, dressed in a tie and jacket, sat quietly between his two lawyers, bending over occasionally to confer with one of them.
Mr Bankman-Fried does arrested on December 12 in his luxury condo in the Bahamas, where FTX was located until its bankruptcy in November. After being extradited to the United States the following week, Mr Bankman-Fried appeared in court on December 22, where he was granted bail under very restrictive conditions.
An eight-count indictment charged him with a multi-year scheme that defrauded clients and lenders, and with conspiracy to violate federal campaign finance laws. Prosecutors have accused him of embezzling billions in client funds for other uses, such as buying real estate in the Bahamas, trading cryptocurrencies, investing in other crypto companies and making tens of millions of dollars in campaign donations.
Judge Kaplan also granted a request on Tuesday from Mr Bankman-Fried’s lawyers to withhold the names of two individuals who, along with their client’s parents, had agreed to sign bonds to prevent the appearance of the FTX founder in court to help insure.
In a letter filed with the judge Tuesday morning, the lawyers noted that their client’s parents – the Stanford Law School Professors Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried — had become “the target of intense media scrutiny, harassment and threats” in recent weeks.
Among other things, the lawyers wrote that the parents had “received a steady stream of threatening correspondence, including messages expressing a wish for them to be physically harmed”.
Judge Kaplan said he would grant the request, but left open the possibility that he would review the matter if there was opposition.
“I anticipate the possibility that members of the media or others may want to challenge the sealing of that information,” Judge Kaplan said.
Lisa Cruz reporting contributed.