Convicted FTX fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried has been doling out crypto investment tips to jail guards at the notorious Brooklyn federal facility while he awaits sentencing, according to a report.
The disgraced crypto whiz kid — who faces more than 100 years in prison after being found guilty of fraud and money laundering last year — has been telling guards at the Metropolitan Detention Center to buy Solana, The New York Times reported.
The blockchain platform’s value has jumped 8% this year, giving it a market cap of more than $57 billion.
Its digital coin, called SOL, was selling for $130 on Thursday, up more than 10%.
Bankman-Fried’s stock tip comes as the world’s most popular digital currency, bitcoin, blew past $60,000 for the first time in two years on Wednesday.
As of Thursday, it was trading at $62,315 — within range of its late 2021 record high just under $69,000.
Bankman-Fried has also been using his time behind bars to work on his case, according to the Times.
His lawyers plan to argue in court that their client deserves leniency because FTX had enough assets to make their customers whole again.
Bankman-Fried’s mother, Stanford Law professor Barbara Fried, said in court papers that her son’s place on the autism spectrum puts him in “extreme danger” in prison due to the fact that he has trouble reading social cues.
Bankman-Fried was arrested after authorities said he used $8 billion worth of customer funds to cover risky bets made by his hedge fund.
On Tuesday, his attorneys filed a memo in Manhattan federal court in which they ask for a sentence between five and a quarter and six-and-a-half years.
Marc Mukasey, one of Bankman-Fried’s attorneys, called a 100-year guidelines range calculated by probation officers “barbaric”, saying it was based partly on a faulty assertion that FTX’s customers lost billions.
He pointed to the bankrupt company’s recent assertion that it expected to repay all customers in full to back up the argument that Bankman-Fried did not set out to steal.
Bankman-Fried was “deeply, deeply sorry” for “the pain he caused over the last two years,” according to the memo.
“His sole focus after the collapse of FTX was making customers whole.”
Lawyers for Bankman-Fried pressed their case for leniency by including a character letter written on their client’s behalf by Carmine Simpson, a 29-year-old former NYPD cop who was arrested three years ago for allegedly soliciting child pornography.
According to Simpson, MDC inmates are secretly working with the feds to “extort” and “harass” the disgraced FTX mogul.
Simpson urged US District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to show leniency toward Bankman-Fried, who has been relegated to eating weekly meals of “undercooked rice, a scoop of disgusting-looking beans and week-old brown lettuce.”
Simpson described the conditions at MDC as “cruel and inhumane.”
Last week, a bearded Bankman-Fried was pictured alongside a former Bloods gang member in the first jailhouse photo of the disgraced crypto kingpin after he was convicted of fraud.
Bankman-Fried’s wealth was estimated in the billions before FTX imploded.
He pleaded not guilty and is expected to appeal his conviction and sentence.
Bankman-Fried acknowledged making mistakes running FTX, but testified at trial that he never intended to steal customer funds.
Kaplan is set to sentence the former billionaire, who turns 32 next week, on March 28.
The Post has sought comment from Bankman-Fried.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
