The Wall Street Journal said on March 27 that Sam Bankman-Fried, the convicted founder of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been transferred from the federal prison in New York City to a transit facility in Oklahoma City.
Inmates being transported across the nation are housed in a transit facility.
The founder of FTX, also referred to as SBF, has been detained at Brooklyn, New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center. On March 6, Tucker Carlson, a journalist, conducted an interview with SBF here.
The authorities’ decision to remove SBF from the New York detention facility appears to have been prompted by this unapproved, remote jail video interview.
In the Carlson interview, SBF asserted his innocence and argued Carlson had been wrongly convicted. According to reports, his parents are working with Donald Trump’s team to request a presidential pardon for their son.
When it peaked in July 2021, FTX, which was founded in 2019, was the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume. However, depositors started taking their money out of the exchange as soon as they smelled possible fraud. FTX then declared bankruptcy in November 2022.
In November 2023, SBF was found guilty on seven counts of fraud, including conspiracy, money laundering, and fraud. He was given a sentence of almost 25 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $11 billion in forfeiture in March 2024.
Notably, on March 23, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), President Trump’s nomination for SEC chair, questioned Paul Atkins about his position as CEO of Patomak Global Partners, which had FTX as one of its clients prior to the collapse of the exchange.
