Sam Bankman-Fried, the jailed founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has been extradited to the United States, where he faces criminal charges, Bahamian authorities said.
Reporters on the scene witnessed Bankman-Fried leave a Nassau magistrate court in a dark SUV early Wednesday. The vehicle was later seen arriving at a private airfield at Nassau Airport, from where it is expected to be flown to the United States. He is due to land in New York and will likely appear before a US judge on Thursday.
After several days of conflicting signals from Bankman-Fried’s US and Bahamian legal teams, the disgraced crypto king appeared in court in Nassau to inform a magistrate of his decision.
At the hearing, Bankman-Fried consented to extradition to the US. Reuters reported that her lawyer read an affidavit in which Bankman-Fried said she has decided to accept extradition in part out of a “desire to make the relevant clients whole.”
“The Bahamas has determined that the provisional detention and subsequent written consent of (Bankman-Fried) to be extradited without formal extradition proceedings meets the requirements of the (U.S.-Bahamas Extradition Treaty) and the Act of extradition from our nation,” Bahamian said. Attorney General Ryan Pinder, in a statement.
After the hearing, Bankman-Fried was to be transferred to US custody and returned to the US to face criminal fraud charges related to the dramatic collapse of FTX.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charged Bankman-Fried, 30, with eight criminal counts, including wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, including making illegal political contributions.
The 30-year-old could spend the rest of his life in prison.
In a series of sometimes distorted media interviews, Bankman-Fried has said she had no plans to commit fraud and was unaware of what was going on at Alameda Research, a hedge fund she founded that allegedly received billions in FTX customers’ funds.
Federal prosecutors hinted last week that some members of the FTX-Alameda team in the Bahamas had turned government witnesses. “This was not a case of mismanagement or poor oversight, but of intentional fraud, plain and simple,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said last week.
Williams said Bankman-Fried’s wrongdoing included “fraud of customers, investors, lenders and our campaign finance system.”
Bankman-Fried’s return to the US resolves what appeared to be a conflict between her US and Bahamian legal teams. In a chaotic hearing in Nassau on Monday, Jerone Roberts, Bankman-Fried’s lawyer in the Bahamas, told a judge he did not know the reason for the proceedings.
After speaking with both groups of lawyers, Bankman-Fried agreed to extradition.
“He waives extradition to curry favor with the government, either through a deal to save the government from potentially spending years trying to extradite him, or he tries to cooperate,” said Jeffrey Lichtman, a defense attorney who has participated in a series of of high-profile criminal defense cases, including that of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
“If he waives extradition,” Lichtman added, “he won’t go to trial. That’s not exactly a surprise in a case like this because he might not have a defense. In a case where the fraud is simple and easy to prove, he may not go to trial, so he may very well be looking for the best deal he can get.”
According to Lichtman, Bankman-Fried is likely to try to cooperate, but the government may not want him to, given that as the founder and CEO of FTX, he is at the head of the alleged fraud scheme.
Bankman-Fried’s initial defense attorney, Paul Weiss, resigned two weeks ago saying he could not represent the accused speaker, saying his “incessant and disruptive tweets” impeded the task.
Bankman-Fried was denied bail Friday after a judge in the Bahamas ruled she was a flight risk. The founder and former CEO of FTX, once worth tens of billions of dollars in paper, is being held at Fox Hill Prison in the Bahamas, which has been cited by human rights activists for having poor sanitation and be infested with rats and insects.
Once he returns to the US, Bankman-Fried’s lawyer will be able to request that he be released on bail.
The Associated Press contributed to this report