American entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was sent to jail on Friday after a judge revoked his bail for witness tampering and VPN use.

Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, pled not guilty in connection to the alleged multibillion-dollar FTX fraud. He has been accused of stealing billions in customer funds to plug losses at his hedge fund Alameda Research. 

The 31-year-old was taken into custody in December 2022. He has since been out on a $250 million bail package which requires him to stay under house arrest at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California.

Prosecutors requested that his bail be revoked, alleging that the entrepreneur was trying to influence witnesses in the case.

On Thursday, US District Court Judge Lewis  A. Kaplan said the accused reached out twice to witnesses and sent him to custody directly from a court hearing in New York. His criminal trial is due to begin on October 2. 

All about Sam Bankman’s Fried family –

Sam Bankman-Fried’s father, Joseph Bankman-Fried, is reportedly a professor of law at Stanford University. His biography on the University’s website describes him as a “leading scholar in the field of tax law.”

Apart from being a professor, Joseph is also a clinical psychologist. He earned a degree in the field of clinical psychology from California’s Palo Alto University.

Sam’s mother, Barbara Fried, worked as a professor of law at Stanford University until her retirement in September 2022.

Barbara is also a writer. She has written multiple stories and poems and has also penned a biography of the economist and lawyer Robert Hale.

The New York Times reported that she and her husband were popular faculty members at Stanford and used to regularly host dinners for their colleagues.

Sam has a younger brother named Gabriel Bankman-Fried. He is three years younger than Sam. He graduated from Brown University in 2017.

According to court documents, Gabriel had plans to buy Nauru, an island northeast of Australia. He was reportedly preparing for a potential apocalypse and planned to establish a bunker in the island.