By Chris Dolmetsch | Bloomberg
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried asked a judge to keep confidential the identities of two people who will help secure his bail.
Lawyers for Bankman-Fried on Tuesday filed a letter seeking redactions of the names of the two people who intend to sign on as sureties to his bail package, saying there is no need for public disclosure.
“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.”
Bankman-Fried was granted a $250 million bail package in December, one of the largest in US history. The personal recognizance bond approved by the judge was secured by the equity in Bankman-Fried’s parents home in Palo Alto, California, which is almost certainly not worth anywhere near that amount. But outsized bonds are more a means of establishing harsh financial consequences for bail-jumping and are often backed by assets worth only around 10% of the stated amount.
In addition to Bankman-Fried and his parents, the judge asked that the bond must be signed by two other people of “considerable means,” one of whom can’t be a relative. The two people haven’t signed on yet but intend to do so by the Jan. 5 deadline, his lawyers said in the letter.
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