FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried jailed by federal judge for alleged witness tampering

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried had his bail revoked and was ordered to be sent to jail Friday by a federal judge in New York after prosecutors alleged he was trying to influence witnesses in his fraud case. U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said Bankman-Fried reached out to witnesses and ordered him remanded to a federal detention center. 

Prosecutors said he'd tried to harass a key witness last month in his fraud case when he showed a journalist the private writings of his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who was the CEO of Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency hedge fund trading firm that was an offshoot of FTX, as well as in January when he reached out to the general counsel for FTX with encrypted communication, the Associated Press reported. 

There were no bail conditions that would stop Bankman-Fried from tampering with witnesses, prosecutors said.

As of late Friday afternoon local time, Bankman-Fried was not yet currently in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, according to a prison spokesperson.

He was charged in March with directing $40 million in bribes to one or more Chinese officials to unfreeze assets relating to his cryptocurrency business. Bankman-Fried had been staying at his parents' house in California on a $250 million bond while awaiting trial for the collapse of his cryptocurrency firm, which prosecutors say cheated investors out of billions of dollars.

–Reporting contributed by Pat Milton.

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• Cryptocurrency
• Crime

Cara Tabachnick

Cara Tabachnick is a news editor for CBSNews.com. Contact her at [email protected]