Despite an agreement between the creator of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and prosecutors to address any witness tampering issues, a federal court on Tuesday denied a petition to amend Sam Bankman-Fried’s bail restrictions.
The United States District Judge in Manhattan, Lewis Kaplan, did not offer any explanations for the decision to deny bail, and he said that the bond hearing for Bankman-Fried will still take place on February 9.
The letter motion is denied without prejudice pending oral argument, which remains scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on February 9, 2023.
Judge Kaplan wrote in response
The proposed modifications to Bankman-Fried’s bail conditions that were negotiated by his lawyers and the federal prosecutors working on his case were not approved by the court. In exchange for allowing Bankman-Fried to have supervised communication, his attorneys stated that they would not fight a separate order that prohibits him from transferring assets related to FTX and Alameda Research. This was done so that Bankman-Fried could receive the benefit of the supervised communication.
After the government exempted particular persons from the proposed no-contact restriction, the attorneys for Bankman-Fried, Mark S. Cohen and Christian R. Everdell, asked Kaplan for permission to change the terms of Bankman-Fried’s bail in order to comply with the new regulations.
The attorney for Bankman-Fried has requested that his client be granted permission to utilize FaceTime, iMessage, Zoom, SMS messages, email, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp, on the condition that all of their conversations be subject to scrutiny. In the letter, the agreement between the prosecution and defense requested that Judge Kaplan allow Bankman-Fried to use WhatsApp if monitoring technology is installed on his cellphone that automatically logs and preserves all WhatsApp communications. This request was made in accordance with the terms of the agreement.
The judge Kaplan indicated that the oral arguments would proceed. On Thursday, the hearing is scheduled to start at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
