Prosecutors claim in a court document posted Friday that Bankman-Fried asked to “vet things with each other” in a Signal communication to FTX US General Counsel Ryne Miller.
After his arrest and bail hearings on December 22, 2022, in Manhattan Federal Court, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried departs the building.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan was sent a letter by federal prosecutors on Friday asking him to add a prohibition on Sam Bankman-private Fried’s conversations with current and past employees of FTX and Alameda Research to the bail terms.
The DOJ has made its request after learning that Bankman-Fried attempted to contact at least one FTX employee, Ryne Miller, the current general counsel for FTX US, in an effort to sway Miller’s potential witness testimony.
Bankman-Fried was ordered by Judge Kaplan to stop using Signal and any other “encrypted or ephemeral call or messaging service.”
Prosecutors claim that Bankman-Fried used the messaging app Signal to contact Miller and other current and former FTX employees, describing them as “the very people who until recently were the defendant’s underlings whom he supervised and financially compensated, and who are therefore most vulnerable to intimidation.”
Prosecutors said that Bankman-communication Fried’s was an “insidious” effort to “influence [Miller’s] future evidence,” which was “especially troubling” given Miller’s first-hand knowledge of Bankman-behavior Fried’s leading up to the collapse of FTX.
During the “relevant events” of November 2022, “[Miller] engaged in Signal and Slack discussions with the defendant and a limited number of corporate insiders,” according to the prosecution. “Among other things, [Bankman-Fried] provided orders for liquidating Alameda’s assets to meet FTX client withdrawals, and stated that he moved about $45 million dollars of Alameda’s cash to FTX US to repair an apparent hole in FTX US’s balance sheet,” the report said.
If the prosecution’s assertion holds water, it will contradict Bankman-Fried’s repeated claims on social media and elsewhere that FTX US remained financially stable. At the same time, the rest of his business fell apart.
Potential witnesses have recounted pertinent and damning talks with the defendant that took place on Slack and Signal, but these chats have already been auto-deleted due to settings placed at the defendant’s command, according to prosecutors.
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