A federal judge has granted Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers permission to meet with their client in prison after revoking the FTX founder’s bail just weeks before his trial, an order the judge issued Wednesday shows.
According to the order, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers “can take unlimited advantage of the legal visitation hours” at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York to prepare their client for a weeks-long trial slated to begin October 3. Bankman-Fried will have “frequent access” to a computer at MDC to review discovery materials, and can request “selected materials” be loaded onto hard drives for his viewing, the judge said in the order.
The order also references other accomodations made by the Bureau of Prisons in New York, but these accomodations were redacted in a letter filed by prosecutors last week.
Judge Lewis Kaplan’s concessions fell short of the defense’s requests that Bankman-Fried be released for daily hours-long meetings at his lawyers’ office in Manhattan, New York, or transferred to a lower-security prison in Putnam County, two hours north of New York City.
Bankman-Fried landed in a high-security prison two weeks ago after the case’s judge ruled the former executive repeatedly violated his bail conditions by attempting to contact witnesses slated to testify against him. The crypto kingpin was chastised by prosecutors for using a virtual private network (VPN) to speak to one of his former executives earlier this year. Months later, he faced similar rebuke for allegedly leaking former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison’s diary entries to the New York Times in what prosecutors said was an attempt to intimidate Ellison.
