Sam Bankman Fried's Appearance In Court Was An Absolute SCENE

John Angelillo. Shutterstock Images.

Sam Binky appeared in court on Tuesday… but not before getting mobbed by paparazzi and probably a few people hoping he had some of that missing crypto in his dorky ass backpack (at least get an LL Bean one with 'SBF' embroidered on it).

Shit got ‘Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial’ levels of chaotic when SBF rolled up to the courthouse in Manhattan. At one point Sam’s roommate/mom got dropped like JFK in Dealy Plaza. Ms. Fried slipped on the wet asphalt when she was getting out of an SUV. If only those shoes bought with stolen FTX customer money were more weather appropriate.

CNBC - Bankman-Fried arrived outside the courthouse in a black SUV and was swarmed with cameras from the moment his vehicle arrived. The scrum grew so thick that Bankman-Fried’s mother was unable to exit the vehicle, falling onto the wet pavement as cameras scrambled to catch a glimpse of her son.

Or if you’re more of a visual learner…

SBF could learn a thing or two about stiff arms from the GOAT…

Once inside the courthouse Sammy Steals was about as spineless as you’d expect. He pled NOT guilt to all 8 charges of being a colossal scumbag (think: wire fraud, money laundering and securities fraud) I’m told that’s the savvy legal play when you’re totally fucked. If only he hadn’t admitted to half this stuff before his lawyers could tell him to step away from the Twitter Spaces. What an idiot.

We also found out when SBF’s trial will get underway: October 2, 2023. As in 271 days from now. SBF will be living his best life at his parent’s house, chatting it up with crypto influencers and rubbing elbows with best-selling authors while FTX users are left to wonder “why didn’t I just use a cold wallet?” This is an absolute tragedy. And it’s exactly what’s wrong with the criminal justice system in the US. Unless of course they’re using all of this time to build a case that ensures the only polyamory SBF is getting into for the next 100 or so years is in a group shower setting at a Federal Penitentiary.

And that might not even been the most outrageous development in the SBF drama yesterday. Earlier in the day SBF’s lawyers asked a judge to seal the names of the two incredibly wealthy individuals that co-signed his bail. 

Bloomberg - FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried asked a judge to keep confidential the identities of two people who will help secure his bail to protect them from public scrutiny and potential harassment.

Lawyers for Bankman-Fried filed a letter seeking redactions of the names of the two people who intend to sign on as sureties to his $250 million bail package, saying there is no need for public disclosure. Their request was granted Tuesday by US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in New York, after Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty to eight criminal charges. A trial date was set for Oct. 2.

Courts frequently require sureties to sign onto significant bail packages to ensure a defendant’s appearances in court. Defense lawyers sometimes seek to mask the identities of the sureties to protect them from public scrutiny. Kaplan said he’d consider any requests seeking disclosure of the names, as long as they were filed with the court by Jan. 12. 

“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,” Bankman-Fried’s lawyers wrote. “Consequently, 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.” 

Nothing to see here. Definitely nothing sketchy at all going on.

Every day at 5 PM Large and I (and a rotating cast of internal and external characters) hop on to discuss the day's biggest finance and markets stories in 15-minutes or less (think: Barstool Rundown but make it finance). On yesterday's Short Squeeze we got into the Winklevoss' Gemini crypto exchange being on the brink, SBF's day in court, and Tesla's piss poor delivery numbers.