Also referred to as SBF by his initials, Sam Bankman-Fried is an American businessman, investor, and suspected fraudster. He is the founder of FTX, a bankrupt cryto currency exchange company, along with Gary Wang.

Less than two months before his trial, a US federal court on Friday ordered Sam Bankman-Fried back to prison. This comes after prosecutors said he had broken the terms of his bail and tampered with witnesses.

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In relation to the catastrophic collapse of his cryptocurrency firm, Bankman-Fried, 31, has pleaded not guilty. The accusations are on wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, as well as violations of election financing laws.

Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang started the crypto exchange in 2019. It peaked in July 2021 with over a million customers and was the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume.

FTX, a short form of ‘Futures Exchange’, is based in the Bahamas. Its founding took place in Antigua and Barbuda. FTX and FTX.US, a different exchange accessible to US citizens, are closely related.

Prior to FTX going bankrupt, Bankman-Fried was the 60th richest person in the world by The World’s Billionaires and the 41st richest American in the Forbes 400.

Bankman-Fried was under detention in the Bahamas since December 12, 2022, and later extradited to the US.

John J. Ray III, the current CEO of FTX, is an expert in recovering money from bankrupt businesses. Ray had this to say about FTX: “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.” He further said, “This situation is unprecedented.”

Using “probable cause… that the defendant has committed the federal crime of attempted witness tampering,” the US District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Bankman-Fried back into federal detention, according to the judgement.

Using a piece of Caroline Ellison’s private writings that was published in The New York Times, the prosecution claimed that Bankman-Fried’s conduct as a source for the newspaper amounted to witness intimidation.