FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was released to his parents on Thursday after they assumed a hefty $250 million bond.
Bankman-Fried will be under house arrest at his parents’ residence in Palo Alto, California, while awaiting trial on various federal charges for wire, securities, and commodities fraud, as well as campaign finance violations and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The 30-year-old arrived in New York after being extradited from the Bahamas, where he was arrested by local authorities on December 12 at the request of the U.S. government. Federal prosecutors had filed an eight-count indictment against him.
Bankman-Fried also faces separate civil charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
As The Dallas Express recently reported, shortly after his extradition was announced, news broke that Bankman-Fried’s former associates, Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, an FTX co-founder, had pleaded guilty to criminal charges and agreed to cooperate with authorities.
The charges faced by Bankman-Fried and his associates stem from alleged misconduct at FTX, which was once the second-largest crypto exchange in the world, and Alameda, a crypto hedge fund purportedly used to funnel misbegotten FTX funds.
While Bankman-Fried did not speak much at his latest court appearance, during earlier interviews with the press before his arrest, he claimed that he never knowingly defrauded anyone and that he would start a new company to make FTX users whole again.
“I didn’t want any of this to happen. I was certainly not nearly as competent as I thought I was,” he said.
The conditions of Bankman-Fried’s bail include wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet, as well as refraining from opening new lines of credit, starting a business, or entering into any financial transaction over $1,000 without government or court approval.
Bankman-Fried’s next court appearance is on January 3. If convicted on all eight federal charges, he could spend decades in prison.