Bankman-Fried heads to Brooklyn jail infamous for poor situations

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sam Bankman-Fried will put together for his fraud trial from a Brooklyn jail the place inmates starting from convicted intercourse trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell to Honduras’ former president have complained of subpar situations.

U.S. District Decide Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan dominated on Friday that Bankman-Fried, the founding father of bankrupt cryptocurrency alternate FTX, have to be jailed for tampering with witnesses whereas free on $250 million bond at his mother and father’ dwelling in Palo Alto, California.

Bankman-Fried, who has pleaded not responsible to fraud fees over FTX’s collapse, will now be housed earlier than his Oct. 2 trial in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Heart, a far cry from the luxurious Bahamas resort the place he lived till his December 2022 arrest and extradition to the USA.

Lately, MDC has been stricken by persistent staffing shortages, energy outages and maggots in inmates’ meals. Earlier this 12 months, a guard pleaded responsible to accepting bribes to smuggle in medicine. Public defenders have referred to as situations “inhumane.”

Within the winter of 2019, {an electrical} hearth lower off the jail’s lighting and warmth for days as temperatures fell to close zero Fahrenheit (minus 18 Celsius).

Legal professionals for Maxwell, who was convicted of recruiting and grooming teenage women for abuse by the late financier and intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein, mentioned uncooked sewage seeped into her MDC cell. Her attorneys in contrast the “reprehensible and totally inappropriate” situations there to Hannibal Lecter’s incarceration within the 1991 film “The Silence of the Lambs”, “regardless of the absence of the cage and plastic face guard.”

Additionally they cited “hyper-surveillance” by overbearing guards, a foul weight-reduction plan, and sleep deprivation.

Maxwell was sentenced final 12 months to twenty years and is being held at a jail in Florida.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which runs MDC, didn’t reply to a request for remark. The company beforehand has mentioned it’s dedicated to the protection of inmates and employees, and that humane remedy of inmates is a high precedence.

Based in 1994, MDC at the moment hosts 1,608 inmates. It’s now the jail housing detainees awaiting federal trials in New York Metropolis, after the Manhattan Correctional Heart closed in 2021 for enhancements. Epstein killed himself in his MCC cell whereas awaiting trial on intercourse trafficking fees.

Bankman-Fried’s legal professionals had urged Kaplan to not jail the 31-year-old former billionaire, partially as a result of a “staffing disaster” at MDC meant there can be too few guards to escort him to a room the place he may entry computer systems to overview prosecutors’ proof in opposition to him.

Kaplan mentioned through the listening to that whereas MDC “just isn’t on anyone’s record of 5 star amenities,” he was undecided whether or not housing Bankman-Fried at a minimal safety jail in Putnam County, about 50 miles (80 km) north of New York Metropolis, as prosecutors had requested, was “doable.”

It isn’t Bankman-Fried’s first time behind bars. Within the Bahamas, he was held for almost every week on the Fox Hill Jail, which a 2021 U.S. State Division report mentioned was stricken by rodents and a scarcity of bathrooms. Native authorities mentioned in December situations had improved.

Different high-profile inmates at the moment being held at MDC embody Juan Orlando Hernandez, the previous president of Honduras who has pleaded not responsible to drug trafficking fees, and Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese language businessman who has pleaded not responsible to fraud fees.

Hernandez’ legal professionals have likened his confinement situations to these of a “prisoner of struggle.” Guo’s legal professionals in March referred to as MDC “an awfully harmful surroundings,” citing a current lockdown in response to a rise in contraband together with weapons.