Manhattan federal district court Judge Lewis Kaplan revoked the bail of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried just months before his scheduled trial, a decision that placed the former crypto exchange executive in handcuffs on Friday, YahooFinance.com reported. Federal prosecutors had alleged Bankman-Fried violated his bail agreement by communicating with a New York Times reporter about his former girlfriend and primary witness for the prosecution, Caroline Ellison. A gag order is not “a workable solution longer term particularly with someone who has shown a willingness and a desire to risk crossing the line in an effort to get right up to it no matter where the line is,” Judge Kaplan said. Ellison previously served as CEO of Alameda Research, an FTX-affiliated hedge fund, which prosecutors claim Bankman-Fried used to misappropriate FTX customer funds. Ellison has plead guilty to multiple fraud charges and entered a plea deal to testify against Bankman-Fried. "Mr. Bankman-Fried’s contact with the New York Times reporter was not an attempt to intimidate Ms. Ellison or taint the jury pool," the fallen crypto executive's lawyers wrote in a letter to Judge Kaplan. "It was a proper exercise of his rights to make fair comment on an article already in progress, for which the reporter already had alternate sources."
