Prosecutors and attorneys for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried are requesting the disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur be allowed a flip-phone or one other machine that’s not a smartphone whereas on bail.
The proposal, submitted in a letter Friday, comes because the choose within the case is deciding find out how to toughen Bankman-Fried’s bail necessities amid issues the previous billionaire is perhaps speaking on digital units in methods that may’t be traced.
Prosecutors alleged final month Bankman-Fried used a digital personal community that blocks third events from seeing on-line exercise, referred to as VPN, to entry the web twice. In addition they stated he despatched an encrypted message over the Sign texting app in January to the normal counsel of FTX US, a transfer they argued may point out witness tampering.
Bankman-Fried has pleaded not responsible to expenses that he cheated buyers and looted buyer deposits at FTX, his cryptocurrency platform.
Decide Lewis A. Kaplan, who’s overseeing the case, has raised the likelihood that Bankman-Fried might need to be jailed if his communications can’t be monitored to make sure the integrity of the trial. The previous FTX head was launched on a $250 million bond in December and is confined to his father or mother’s residence in Palo Alto, California.
Beneath the proposal, Bankman-Fried’s cellphone capabilities could be restricted to SMS textual content messages and voice calls. He would even be given a brand new laptop computer with restricted use, which might be “configured so that he’s solely ready to go browsing to the web by means of the usage of specified VPNs,” that may solely allow entry to web sites which have been whitelisted. They embody websites he can use to organize for his protection, reminiscent of Ftx.com, and people for private information, like The New York Instances and Netflix.
Within the letter, the 2 sides stated Bankman-Fried would even be allowed entry to a number of functions to organize for his protection, together with Zoom, Microsoft Workplace and Adobe Acrobat. The events additionally proposed a monitoring software program be put in on the machine to trace any exercise, and have Bankman-Fried’s dad and mom submit sworn affidavits that they “won’t deliver further units into the house” or allow entry to their very own password-protected units.
Kaplan nonetheless has to resolve whether or not to approve to proposal.
