Sam Bankman-Fried Requests Confidentiality For Individuals Assisting With $250M Bail

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has requested that the identities of two people who will help secure his bail remain confidential.

In a letter filed by his lawyers on Tuesday, it was argued that "if the two remaining sureties are publicly identified, they will likely be subjected to probing media scrutiny, and potentially targeted for harassment, despite having no substantive connection to the case," Bloomberg reported.

Bankman-Fried was granted a $250 million bail package in December, one of the largest in U.S. history.

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The personal recognizance bond, which was secured by the equity in Bankman-Fried's parents' home in Palo Alto, California, must also be signed by two other people of "considerable means," one of whom cannot be a relative.

These two individuals have not yet signed the bond but intend to do so by the Jan. 5 deadline, according to the letter from Bankman-Fried's lawyers.

In the letter, Bankman-Fried's attorneys stated that "the privacy and safety of the sureties are 'countervailing factors' that significantly outweigh the presumption of public access to the very limited information at issue."

It is not uncommon for bail bonds to be secured by assets worth only around 10% of the stated amount, as the goal is often to establish harsh financial consequences for bail jumping rather than to secure the full value of the bond.

A highly concentrated stake in self-issued FTX tokens FTT/USD, which Bankman-Fried's hedge fund Alameda Research used as collateral for billions in cryptocurrency loans, accelerated the fall of FTX.

When rival exchange Binance said it would sell its holding in FTT, there was a significant outflow of money. A few days later, the company filed for bankruptcy.

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