Sam Bankman-Fried has a new currency to trade in prison: rice
- The FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried gave an interview to Puck from prison.
- Bankman-Fried told Puck he spent his days in a large dormitory with 35 other men.
Sam Bankman-Fried has a new currency to trade now that he's at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
The disgraced FTX founder and cofounder of Alameda Research was convicted in November of wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy.
He was sentenced to 25 years in March and recently gave his first in-person prison interview to Puck's William D. Cohan.
In the interview, published Thursday, Bankman-Fried discussed the conditions in the federal prison. He also said he did not do anything wrong and planned to appeal his conviction.
Cohan was not permitted a pen, pad, recorder, phone, or watch during the interview, so his observations were subsequently written down.
The former cryptocurrency-exchange CEO told Puck that he subsisted off beans and bags of rice purchased from the commissary and that his rice "has become one of the currencies of the realm inside MDC."
Cohan estimated Bankman-Fried had lost 25 pounds and said he looked fitter, which may be in part because Bankman-Fried said the vegan food he's served was inedible, with his fellow inmates telling him it smelled gross.
The former crypto mogul told Puck he was in a section of the prison that mainly housed female inmates but that his ward was a large room with bunk beds that held 35 men. He said that maybe half the men had been convicted of murder and became cooperating witnesses.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider about Bankman-Fried's prison quarters. Sullivan & Cromwell, the law firm representing the debtors, declined to comment. Bankman-Fried's outside counsel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
His days, he told Puck, consist of sitting in the room with the other men while four televisions play different channels. He doesn't watch much TV, he added, but uses a tablet to play games or watch movies.
He told Puck that he had not been abused and did not "fear for his safety." The only time he's pestered is at night "about those bags of rice, which they intend to use to barter," he said.
Bankman-Fried was found guilty of stealing $8 billion from FTX customers. After he was convicted, Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Bankman-Fried "perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in American history — a multibillion-dollar scheme designed to make him the King of Crypto." He was found guilty of commingling FTX customer money with that of Alameda Research, money that prosecutors said went to enriching executives.
FTX said this week that it planned to pay back customers.
This story has been updated with Sullivan & Cromwell's reaction.