Sam Bankman-Fried’s bail backers revealed as former Stanford dean, research scientist
Academics from Stanford Law School and Stanford University are the previously two unknown individuals who signed bonds that allowed the release of FTX crypto exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried from prison on bail, according to court filings released Wednesday.
See related article: Sam Bankman-Fried banned from using VPNs while on bail: Bloomberg
Fast facts
- Larry Kramer, the 2004-2012 dean of Stanford Law School, and Andreas Paepcke, a computer science research engineer at Stanford University, were both identified in the filing.
- Bankman-Fried, who was arrested and charged with fraud and other crimes, was released in December on a bail package that included a US$250 million personal recognizance bond signed by Bankman-Fried and his parents. Two separate bonds were signed by two non-parent sureties — now revealed to be Kramer and Paepcke.
- Court documents released Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan showed that Kramer put up US$500,000 in an unsecured bond, and Paepcke signed onto US$200,000.
- Kramer told Forkast in an email that he supported the bail because he’s close friends with Bankman-Fried’s parents.
- “Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried have been close friends of my wife and I since the mid-1990s. During the past two years, while my family faced a harrowing battle with cancer, they have been the truest of friends … In turn, we have sought to support them as they face their own crisis,” Kramer said.
- Kramer said he acted in a personal capacity and has no business dealings or other interests in the matter, other than to support a family he regards as friends. He added that he held no position on the legal issues of the case itself as that will be for courts to decide.
- The identity disclosure came after Judge Kaplan last month granted several motions filed by news organizations to reveal the identities of the two non-parent sponsors of the bail. Kaplan wrote in the January ruling that the information sought — names of bail sureties — traditionally is regarded as public information.
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