Sam Bankman-Fried asks to stay in Brooklyn prison for appeal

Judge Lewis Kaplan said at a March 28 sentencing hearing that the former FTX CEO would serve his time at a medium- or low-security prison in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried, recently sentenced to 25 years in federal prison, has requested a judge allow him to temporarily remain incarcerated in the New York City area instead of California.

In an April 8 filing in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Bankman-Frieds lawyers asked Judge Lewis Kaplan to approve an order allowing the former FTX CEO to remain at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he has been since August 2023. According to the legal team, SBF wanted to stay at the Brooklyn prison to “facilitate access to his appellate counsel” as part of his expected appeal for his conviction and sentencing.

Source: Courtlistener

Before Judge Kaplan announced Bankman-Fried‘s 25-year sentence on March 28, attorney Marc Mukasey said his team intended to appeal SBF’s conviction on seven felony counts. No filing appeared in the online portal for the U.S. Court Of Appeals for the Second Circuit at the time of publication. Some legal experts have also suggested that the former FTX CEO could have years knocked off his time in prison based on good behavior.

The judge initially ruled that Bankman-Fried would serve his sentence at a medium- or low-security prison in the San Francisco Bay Area, likely due to family members living nearby. Before Judge Kaplan revoked SBF‘s bail in August 2023, the former FTX CEO was mainly confined to his parents’ California home near Stanford University.

Bankman-Fried was one of the only individuals tied to the collapse of FTX and Alameda Research to plead not guilty and face a jury. Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, Nishad Singh and Ryan Salame — others associated with the crypto firms charged in the same case as SBF — pleaded guilty and accepted deals.

Salame is scheduled to be sentenced on May 28, but it was unclear when Wang, Ellison, and Singh would appear before a judge. Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty to one felony count in a separate case involving cryptocurrency exchange Binance, will be sentenced on April 30.