Meet Sam Bankman-Fried's family: His parents are Stanford law professors, his aunt is a dean at Columbia, and his brother is the founder of a nonprofit
Huileng Tan
- Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday. The US SEC has charged him with fraud.
- Bankman-Fried's law-professor parents were spotted at their son's hearing in the Bahamas on Tuesday.
Sam Bankman-Fried was raised in an academic family based in Silicon Valley. He grew up playing games like chess and bridge.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday, in a spectacular fall from grace after his crypto exchange collapsed last month.
Bankman-Fried — whose wealth peaked at $26 billion in March — has been charged with fraud by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. A judge in the Bahamas denied his bail on Tuesday.
As his troubles unravel, Bankman-Fried's high-profile family has come under the spotlight. His parents were spotted at their son's hearing in the Bahamas on Tuesday, and have been living with him on the island nation for over a month.
In November, Reuters reported that a $16.4 million house in the Bahamas listed Bankman-Fried's parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, as signatories. The house was in a gated community with beach access and was described in property records as a vacation home.
Last month, Bankman-Fried told Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times DealBook Summit that he called his parents when FTX was collapsing. He also said his parents "bore no responsibility" for FTX's downfall.
"Anyone close to me, including my parents and employees and co-workers who fought with the company to push forward, they were hurt by this," Bankman-Fried said. "They bore no responsibility for that. I feel really bad about that. I feel really grateful for the support my parents are still giving me throughout all of this."
Here are some of the prominent members of Bankman-Fried's family. Bankman and Fried did not did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, sent to a spokesperson outside regular business hours. His brother, Gabriel Bankman-Fried, and aunt, Linda Fried, also did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment sent outside regular business hours.
His father, Joseph Bankman, is a Stanford law professor who is also a clinical psychologist.
Joseph Bankman, a law professor at Stanford University, is Bankman-Fried's father.
Described in his official biography as a "leading scholar in the field of tax law," Bankman teaches mental health law and is a scholar who writes about law and psychology.
Bankman was also a paid FTX employee for nearly a year before the exchange collapsed, a spokesperson for Bankman and Fried told the Wall Street Journal on Monday. He was mostly working on charity projects at FTX, the spokesperson told the media outlet.
Bankman had a law class that was scheduled to start in January, but that has been pushed back until the spring as he remains in the Bahamas with his son, according to the Journal.
Bankman obtained a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School in 1980, per his biography on the Stanford site.
His mother, Barbara Fried, is a professor emerita of law at Stanford.
Bankman-Fried's mother, Barbara Fried, is also a law professor at Stanford University.
Her scholarly interests are "at the intersection of law, economics, and philosophy," according to her official biography posted on the university's website.
Fried cofounded Mind the Gap, a super political action committee, or PAC, that uses statistical analysis to determine the dollar-value impact of donations on Democrats running for the House of Representatives. She resigned from Mind the Gap in November, per The New York Times. The Times did not specify why she resigned.
Fried retired from teaching in September and didn't have plans to teach this year, a spokesperson told the Journal.
She graduated from Harvard with a Juris Doctor degree in 1983, per her biography on the Stanford site.
His younger brother, Gabriel Bankman-Fried, founded and ran a nonprofit called Guarding Against Pandemics — which was in part funded by SBF.
Gabe Bankman-Fried is Sam Bankman-Fried's younger brother.
In 2020, he founded and ran the nonprofit, Guarding Against Pandemics, which aims to prevent another pandemic. The nonprofit was partly funded by Sam Bankman-Fried, according to Puck.
The two brothers have spent at least $70 million since October 2021 on research projects, campaign donations, and initiatives that aim to boost biosecurity and pandemic prevention, according to the Washington Post.
Gabe Bankman-Fried stepped down as the director of the nonprofit in mid-November, per The Post.
His aunt, Linda Fried, is the dean of the public health school at Columbia University.
Linda Fried, the dean of Columbia University's public health school, is Bankman-Fried's aunt, per the Washington Post.
Described on the school's website as a "leader in the fields of epidemiology and geriatric medicine," Fried was trained in cardiovascular and chronic disease, epidemiology, and geriatrics.
Fried graduated from Rush Medical College in 1979 with a doctor of medicine and got a master's in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 1984, per her biography on the Columbia website.
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