Sam Bankman-Fried Attorneys Protested Lack of Internet Access in Jail

Before FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sent to jail, his attorneys reportedly argued that he would have difficulty accessing evidence and materials for his trial without internet access.

The attorneys said this in a letter sent to the judge before Bankman-Fried was moved from the comforts of his childhood home in Palo Alto, California, where he was under house arrest, to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, Bloomberg reported Tuesday (Aug. 15).

His $250 million bail package was revoked Friday (Aug. 11) after Judge Lewis A. Kaplan found that Bankman-Fried likely attempted to tamper with two witnesses.

In the letter to the judge, Christian Everdell, Bankman-Fried’s attorney, said, per the report: “This is not about white-collar defendants getting ‘special treatment’ because their cases involve numerous documents, as the government claims.”

Without access to the internet, which is not available at the MDC, Bankman-Fried will be confined to using his laptop in the visitor’s area, but inmates are often kept in their cells, Everdell said in the letter.

The conditions at the MDC have long been a source of controversy. Colleen McMahon, former chief judge, said during a 2021 hearing: “The single thing in the five years that I was chief judge of this court that made me the craziest was my complete and utter inability to do anything meaningful about the conditions at the MCC [Metropolitan Correction Center], especially at the MCC and the MDC.”

While Bankman-Fried is at MDC, his parents and some friends will be allowed to visit him in for one hour, according to the report.

Bankman-Fried is awaiting a trial that is scheduled to begin in October.

He had been under house arrest at his parents’ home in California since his arrest on fraud charges in December, but his bail was revoked and he was sent to prison after prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried of giving documents to the media to intimidate a witness in the case.

The FTX founder’s legal battle could see him spend the rest of his life behind bars.

His lawyers have appealed the decision to revoke his bail, but pending the outcome of that appeal, Bankman-Fried will remain in jail until his trial.