Inmates at a notorious Brooklyn jail housing Sam Bankman-Fried are secretly working with the feds to “extort” and “harass” the disgraced FTX mogul, according to a former New York City police officer.
Bankman-Fried, who was convicted of fraud last year, is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn while he awaits sentencing that could put him behind bars for 110 years.
Carmine Simpson, a 29-year-old former cop who was arrested in 2021 for allegedly soliciting child pornography, 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.”
“I would not wish residency here upon anyone, even my greatest enemy,” Simpson wrote to the judge, noting the “constant lockdowns, lack of basic items such as toothpaste, medicine or pillows and going days or weeks without the ability to contact family, friends and legal representation.”
Bankman-Fried has been locked up at MDC Brooklyn since last summer. His bail was revoked after Kaplan found probably cause to believe he tampered with witnesses at least twice.
Last week, a shaggy-haired and 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 lawyers have called on Kaplan to hand out a sentence ranging from 63 to 78 months.
Federal prosecutors, meanwhile, are seeking a maximum penalty of more than 100 years behind bars.
Simpson cited Bankman-Fried’s purported “effective altruism” in a plea for leniency from the judge.
“When he first told me that the main reason he worked so hard at becoming a successful and wealthy person was to donate all his money away to noble causes and those in needs, quite frankly, I thought that he was blowing smoke up my ass,” Simpson wrote in the letter submitted in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday.
Simpson wrote that he came to the realization that Bankman-Fried, who was convicted on multiple counts of fraud and money laundering for misusing billions of dollars worth of FTX customer funds to cover risky bets made by his hedge fund, “is the most self-less person that I have ever had the privilege to meet.”
“Even in jail, surrounded by some of the lowest scum in our society, Sam will only see the best of everyone,” Simpson wrote.
The ex-cop urged Kaplan to release him from custody so that can “work and strive to improve the world.”
Simpson wrote that Bankman-Fried’s “incarceration has been extremely difficult” due to the fact that he has been “frequently targeted for hazing, harassment, and assault more so than the average inmate.”
“Sam’s estimated fortune is higher than any inmate can count” — which inevitably leads to “multiple extortion attempts,” according to Simpson.
Bankman-Fried’s wealth was estimated in the billions before FTX imploded.
At a month-long trial, three former close associates of Bankman-Fried testified that he directed them to help loot FTX customer funds to plug losses at his Alameda Research hedge fund, even while presenting himself publicly as a responsible steward in the volatile cryptocurrency market.
Prosecutors said Bankman-Fried also used customer funds to buy luxury real estate in the Bahamas, where FTX was based, and to donate to US politicians who might support cryptocurrency-friendly regulations.
Bankman-Fried testified for three days, acknowledging failures including not building a risk-management team, but denying that he stole anything and saying he did not realize how much Alameda owed to FTX until shortly before both failed.
Bankman-Fried rode a boom in the values of digital assets such as bitcoin to a net worth Forbes magazine once estimated at $26 billion.
With Post wires
This story originally appeared on NYPost
