Sam Bankman-Fried is Facing Jail Time. His Crime? Leaking His Weirdo Orgy Cult Girlfriend's Journal Entries.

Louis Lanzano. Shutterstock Images.

I never thought I'd find a topic I know less about and am more unqualified to comment on than the international crytpocurrency markets. But I did. I seems I have even less knowledge and understanding when it comes to the sexual politics of polyamorous orgy cults. 

I know this now because I was today years old when I learned that Sam Bankman-Fried, who made billions of his investors' life savings disappear practically overnight has been walking the streets a free man. But is being threatened with jail time by a judge for leaking the private thoughts of one member of his sexual polycule, Caroline Ellison. 

Just to reacquaint you with Ellison, she's the one who was CEO of FTX's sister company, Alameda. This Caroline Ellison:

She would be the one who went by the online handle Fake Charity Nerd Girl and posted about how "the only acceptable style of poly is best characterized as something like ‘imperial Chinese harem’” and railed against "non-hierarchical bullshit" in relationships saying, “Everyone should have a ranking of their partners, people should know where they fall on the ranking, and there should be vicious power struggles for the ranks.”

Now like me, you might assume that anyone who is as big on sharing her personal sexual philosophy with the world as Caroline is wouldn't mind having all her private thoughts out there in the public square. But we'd both be mistaken. Because a judge is considering putting SBF back into the Stony Lonesome for doing that very thing:

Source - The 31-year-old former crypto billionaire was back in a Manhattan courthouse Wednesday after allegedly trying to tamper with the testimony of the prosecution's star witness, his ex-girlfriend and former business partner Caroline Ellison.

Prosecutors alleged that he leaked intimate messages from Ellison to the New York Times to discredit her, because she is expected to testify against him during his trial. 

The messages, which were leaked from a 2022 Google drive, saw Ellison journal about her struggles as CEO of Alameda Research, the hedge fund arm of FTX. …

After hearing arguments at the bail hearing, US District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan handed down a gag order, and is set to weigh whether to keep Bankman-Fried in jail for the next three months. …

The New York Times article at the heart of Wednesday's hearing was titled 'Inside the Private Writings of Caroline Ellison, Star Witness in the FTX Case', and featured intimate information about her time as CEO of Alameda Research.

She detailed being 'unhappy and overwhelmed' by the role, and wrote in one leaked message from February 2022: 'At the end of the day I can’t wait to go home and turn off my phone and have a drink and get away from it all.' 

Ellison's battle to stay afloat at the company before it dramatically collapsed is fascinatingly detailed in the messages, including one addressed to Bankman-Fried where she said she wanted to leave because Alameda 'felt too associated with you in a way that was painful.'

She also wrote that when Bankman-Fried was around, she had 'an instinct to shrink and become smaller and quieter and defer to others', adding that 'it doesn't really feel like there's an end in sight.'

Another shared document addressed to Bankman-Fried in April 2022 revealed  Ellison's breakup from Bankman-Fried had 'significantly decreased my excitement about Alameda' - and that she had cut off communication with her ex-beau.

'I felt pretty hurt/rejected,' she wrote in the document seen by the Times. 'Not giving you the contact you wanted felt like the only way I could regain a sense of power.'

Before we move on, let me just remind you again that these were written by a the CEO of a financial giant. Someone that thousands of people entrusted with their families' generational savings. And she's writing about it like it's a Drama Club production of High School Musical. And she's losing interest in the show because the boy who plays Troy Bolton has been paying way too much attention to the girl who plays Sharpay Evans than to her and it's just too hard for her to take so she's just going home every night and crying into her pillow. This was written by someone so emotionally fragile, you wouldn't trust them with the morning opening of your convenience store. But people handed their hard-earned retirement nest eggs. 

All that said, there's a legal term for leaking your ex's admittedly goofy and juvenile thoughts. The lawyers call that a Dick Move. Anyone who would release confidential, private communications just to make the other side look ridiculou is a scumbag, plain and simple. Especially if that other person is one of the 11 people you had an intimate relationship with. Though I'll try not to let that destroy my faith in the integrity of all sex polycules. 

But this is what's going to get Bankman-Fried put behind bars? Not all the fraud, the lying, the perjury, the attempts to escape prosecution or thousands of different ways he abdicated his judiciary responsibilities to his clients? We're going to jail him because he sent the NY Times his crackpot ex-1/12th girlfriend's Google drive entries that she wrote in the same style as her 2012 Twilight fanfic. 

Believe me, I won't shed a tear for this socially awkward criminal mastermind. Anything that gets him put in prison is fine with me. After all, it was the tax accountants who took down Al Capone. It just seems like a misplaced set of priorities to me. But whatever it takes. I guess I'm just sad these two beautiful kids couldn't make it work out between them.