Judge Kaplan suggests prosecutors should come up with tighter bail conditions — saying: "Why am I being asked to turn him loose in this garden of electronic devices?"
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A judge has given strong hints that he's prepared to revoke Sam Bankman-Fried's bail.
SBF has landed himself in hot water for using encrypted networks while on house arrest at his parent's home in California.
He used the Signal messaging app to contact a current FTX employee — and suggested they "vet things with each other" ahead of his criminal trial in October.
That led to accusations that Bankman-Fried may be attempting to tamper with witnesses, especially considering this employee may end up giving evidence.
Things went from bad to worse when SBF used a VPN — and at the time, the disgraced crypto entrepreneur argued that he needed it to watch the Super Bowl.
Given he's currently residing at his parents' multimillion-dollar home in Palo Alto, you could argue that it wouldn't have been hard to track down a television.
Prosecutors have pointed to these incidents as proof that stricter bail conditions are required to stop him from concealing his online activities.
Judge Lewis Kaplan has given both sides 10 days to come up with "tight" conditions that SBF won't be able to circumvent — and suggested he was prepared to throw the 30-year-old behind bars if these infractions continued.
High Stakes
SBF's house arrest is part of a $250 million bond. His parents have co-signed it, as well as two of their close friends from Stanford University.
Continued infractions of the bail conditions could end up putting their life savings at risk.
During the hearing, the judge suggested that the prosecution were being too lenient in their request for tighter bail conditions — and other risks, such as the fact he could use his parents' devices without monitoring, hadn't been considered. He added:
"We are dealing with somebody, who ... has done things that suggest to me that there may very well be probable cause to believe that he either committed or attempted to commit a federal felony while on release. Why am I being asked to turn him loose in this garden of electronic devices?"
And while the hearing wasn't about revoking bail, Judge Kaplan added:
"At the moment it isn't, but we'll get there."
SBF's lawyer Mark Cohen, who has already had to contend with his client writing lengthy blog posts about FTX's collapse on Substack, insisted that his client has not violated the bail conditions — and was not intending to tamper with witnesses. Appealing to the judge, he said:
"He's literally on trial for his life."
