Sam Bankman-Fried is Starving in Jail
SBF appeared in public last week for the first time in months. He is not thriving.
This past Wednesday, February 21st of 2024, Sam Bankman-Fried walked into court with an awkward side-to-side sway, trying not to trip himself on his chains.
He wore a prison-issued dark brown t-shirt under a khaki scrub top, with olive-green pants. He was visibly skinny, bordering on frail: he appeared to have lost roughly 25 pounds in the four months since his November 2, 2023 conviction on seven counts of fraud.
Bankman Fried’s lawyers had previously said the Metropolitan Detention Center where he is being held was not accommodating his vegan diet, forcing him to subsist on peanut butter sandwiches. We had seen other recent evidence that he was not thriving in jail, in the form of a prison photo obtained by dogged reporter and Sam-whisperer Tiffany Fong (I talked to Tiffany about her interactions with Sam for a recent episode of the Dark Markets podcast.)
Bankman-Fried was once again at the Southern District of New York, once again in a courtroom overseen by Judge Lewis Kaplan, who had also managed his remarkably rapid and decisive criminal trial. Bankman-Fried was in court for a so-called “curcio” hearing to review potential conflicts of interests impacting his new legal team, Marc Mukasey and Torrey Young.
Even from behind, you could tell his legal team wasn’t all that had changed for Sam Bankman-Fried.
Boy Genius, Interrupted
Bankman-Fried had been brought from the MDC for the hearing, just as he was every day of the criminal trial – but by February, things were very different.
During the trial, Bankman-Fried had worn a suit, but now he wore prison-issued scrubs. During the trial, the two marshals who escorted him each day were also dressed in suits, making them barely distinguishable from his lawyers. Now, they wore matching, vaguely tactical black fleece pullovers and green slacks. One wore a black rubber glove on one hand.
During the trial, Bankman-Fried’s trademark hair had been, if not in full bloom, then at least recognizably the same as the ‘do that graced magazine covers and news broadcasts, before it all came crashing down. But on Wednesday, that hair was a disheveled mess, lumpy and uneven, the dark scruff on his neck beginning to suggest lycanthropy.
Bankman-Fried’s affect had also changed. During the trial, he seemed determined and energized, upright, constantly tapping on his offline laptop and fidgeting in his seat – however delusional or performative all that energy might have been. At one notorious moment, prosecutors claimed he was making faces and muttering angrily in response to testimony from Caroline Ellison, his former girlfriend and (decidedly junior) partner in crime. When he testified in his own defense, he seemed to talk down to his interrogator, the clinically methodical Danielle Sassoon.
But that haughty, derisive Sam was gone on Wednesday. He seemed curled in on himself, perhaps embarrassed to be seen in such a reduced state. When he glanced back at the journalists in the gallery, there was something newly needy in his gaze, as if he were hoping to find an ally, somehow.
Even more than the lost weight, which left his arms looking like sticks, these transformed mannerisms seemed to speak to many dark nights of the soul since his conviction. And in this moment of palpable need, two of Bankman-Fried’s allies were notably absent – while a half-dozen reporters had showed up for the hearing, Bankman-Fried’s parents were nowhere to be seen.
Most remarkable of all, of course, were the chains. Sam’s hands were free, only his ankles bound with fragile-seeming chrome links. They rattled musically, impossible to miss as he entered the small, mostly empty courtroom.
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This update is part of my ongoing book on Sam Bankman-Fried and the world that made him. While this update is free to the public, most draft chapters are for premium supports only. You can also support my work by buying my original courtroom sketches from the trial.
Here are previous installments in the project, roughly in recommended reading order:
The Boy Who Wasn’t There – Why Sam Bankman-Fried Matters. A statement of purpose for the entire book.
How Sam Bankman-Fried Stole the Future (Introduction Part 1).
Sins of the Mother: How the $8 Billion FTX Scam Flowed from Barbara Fried’s Philosophy (Part 1)
The Theory and Practice of Raising a Criminal (Sins of the Mother Part 2)
The Fiction of Barbara Fried. Sam’s mother wrote short stories with intriguing perspectives on parenthood and talent.
A Sam-Shaped Hole: Sam Bankman-Fried and the Allure of the Boy Genius (Part 1)
Inventing an Altruist: How Sam Bankman-Fried Faked Morality (A Sam-Shaped Hole Part 2)
Michael Lewis Thinks Sam Bankman-Fried’s Trial was Like a “Lynching.”
FTX, Moonstone Bank, and the CIA’s “Bank of Crooks and Criminals.” Towards one theory of why SBF has so many defenders.
All this and more is available to premium subscribers.
SBF’s New Lawyers
The nominal purpose of the Wednesday hearing was to address concerns that SBF’s new lawyers, Mukasey and Young, might have conflicts of interest with another client, Alex Mashinsky of Celsius. Celsius loaned money to Alameda Research, and is still a creditor of the bankrupt hedge fund linked to the FTX exchange. Bankman-Fried retained Mukasey and young in early January, after Mashinsky was already working with them.
At the time, it was widely expected that Mukasey and Young were taking over for Bankman-Fried’s sentencing, which is expected on March 28th. Cohen and Everdell, though admittedly working with a bad hand thanks to Bankman-Fried’s big fat mouth, did not play that bad hand with much enthusiasm, much less skill, making their departure likely.
(Marc Mukasey, very notably, is the son of Bush-era Attorney General Mike Mukasey, who helped muddy the waters on the legality of torturing terror suspects. These are not good people, and it seems likely Mukasey Jr. and SBF truly deserve each other.)
Wednesday’s hearing confirmed Cohen and Everdell’s departure, pending a judgment on the conflict of interest matter. We also learned that Bankman-Fried also has a separate lawyer for his appeals process, Alexandra Shapiro.
It’s interesting to speculate about the behind-the-scenes financials here, as Bankman-Fried’s parents are currently being sued by the FTX estate for the return of $10 million “gifted” to them by Bankman-Fried. These funds were reportedly funding Bankman-Fried’s trial defense, and presumably are still funding his sentencing and appeals teams.
Also of interest, it was mentioned that Sam is still taking "antidepressants and Aderall" for his neurological conditions.
The conflict of interest was, in the end, something of a non-issue. Mashinsky had been in court the day before to address his side of the same question, and both defendants had already discussed the matter with both their own team and independent counsel. Bankman-Fried, too, had seemingly already considered the ramifications of the situation.
On Friday February 23rd, Cohen and Everdell officially withdrew from the case.
How Much Suffering is Enough?
This was the first time members of the public were able to get a look at Bankman-Fried since his November 2 sentencing. A half-dozen reporters were present, including Tiffany Fong. Just a few days before, Tiffany had unveiled a photo of Sam in jail, which she’d gotten through a fellow prisoner, a former Bloods gang member named G Lock.
This photo was reportedly taken on December 17. What’s remarkable is that the Sam you see in this photo is the Sam I saw in court - perhaps better-shaved, but equally skinny, with the same contorted and hunched body language.
Speaking with Tiffany Fong, G Lock (to Sam’s right in the photo) said that Sam was “a good guy. Weird as shit, can be strange. But he is a good guy.”
Hilariously, G Lock contrasted SBF with Tekashi69, who ratted on his fellow gang members. (You can see their full conversation here.)
“Sam is more gangster than Tekashi69, Sam Bankman stood on all ten toes. Tekashi ratted.”
G Lock might not have fully understood that, as the apparent manipulative mastermind of his own criminal enterprise, there weren’t many people left for Sam to rat out.
But G Lock is a useful reference point for another reason. It’s tempting to look at SBF, his dishevelled hair and emaciated frame, and bemoan his excessive punishment and suffering. The MDC is indisputably a bad place to be (though you’ll note they didn’t send Sam to Riker’s Island).
This impulse is misplaced, even misguided. We are being tricked by, among other things, class and race. Surely, our brains are telling us, even if he was a criminal, this unassuming white kid doesn’t belong in lockup with gangsters.
But neither do tens of thousands of other people who go through nearly the same thing as Bankman-Fried, every single day. Lots of people go to jail, lots of people go to prison. And most of them have told fewer lies and done less harm than SBF.
I’ve seen the body language Sam displayed in court last week at least one time before that. During his December 2022 media tour before his arrest – that is, during the time he made a string of deceptive public statements that effectively guaranteed his conviction – Sam also cowered and cringed. During his interviews with George Stephanopoulous and Andrew Ross Sorkin, Sam sank into himself. He gazed up from lowered eyes in a signal of submission and contrition, exactly the look I saw him flash at reporters on Wednesday.
It seems he has become so accustomed to playacting as an innocent naif that he can’t turn it off - even now that everyone knows who he actually is.