Topline
There was a serious “security incident” recently at the Palo Alto, California, home owned by the parents of the disgraced former boss of the crypto exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried, lawyers representing Bankman-Fried in his fraud case said in a Thursday letter to the judge overseeing Bankman-Fried’s case.
A guard walks on a closed street near the family home of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in Palo Alto.
Key Facts
“Bankman-Fried and his parents have been the target of actual efforts to cause them harm,” wrote attorneys Mark Cohen and Christian Everdell.
After driving into a metal barricade in front of the house, three men told a security guard “something to the effect of: ‘You won’t be able to keep us out,’” according to the letter, before driving away.
The individuals have not been identified, Cohen and Everdell said, but come amid severe public backlash against Bankman-Fried as he defrauded customers of billions of dollars.
The retelling of the incident came as part of the attorneys’ request to keep private the identities of Bankman-Fried’s other guarantors of his $250 million bail bond.
No incident appears to match in Palo Alto police report logs, currently only available through January 6; the Palo Alto and Stanford police departments did not immediately respond to Forbes’ inquiries.
Key Background
Bankman-Fried has lived at the home of his parents Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried since late December when he posted bail, with his parents putting up equity in the house last assessed at $1.8 million and located a stone’s throw away from Stanford University’s campus, where both worked as law professors. Once worth as much as $26.5 billion and widely hailed as a crypto wunderkind, the 30-year-old Bankman-Fried’s fortune and reputation disintegrated in November when FTX declared for bankruptcy following revelations about its shady relationship with Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund Alameda Research, further collapsing after U.S. authorities booked Bankman-Fried on eight federal criminal counts. After pleading not guilty earlier this month, Bankman-Fried is expected to face trial in October.
Tangent
FTX’s new CEO John J. Ray III said Thursday the firm is considering relaunching the exchange amid its bankruptcy proceedings. That admission elicited a strong response from Bankman-Fried, who tweeted it’s evidence that the American arm of FTX was never insolvent, as he long claimed.
Further Viewing
Further Reading
‘I Didn’t Steal Funds’: Bankman-Fried Debuts Newsletter—And Defense (Forbes)
FTX Exploring Whether To Restart Bankrupt Exchange, New Chief Says (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2023/01/20/three-men-tried-breaking-into-home-of-sam-bankman-frieds-parents-lawyers-claim/