Palm trees, pool and massive lawn: Sam Bankman-Fried under house arrest in luxe $4M Silicon Valley home
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA: Sam Bankman-Fried is residing with his parents and is under house arrest as a result of his world-record $250 million bond. The comfortable home is near the Palo Alto, California campus of Stanford University.
According to documents obtained by the New York Post, the house was bought by Stanford Law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried in 1992 for about $700,000 or roughly $1.5 million today. The house is currently thought to be valued at more than $4 million. The four-bedroom and three-bath home temporarily went on the rental market in June 2013 for less than $14,000 a month. By year's end, the house was available for rent at a slightly lower monthly asking price of $12,000. In January 2014, it was removed from the rental market. The 1917-built residence which is situated on a nearly 1-acre plot is a part of the Palo Alto Stanford Heritage, an organization devoted to the preservation of Palo Alto's historic structures.
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There are walls of windows throughout the about 3,000 square foot home, a huge living area with a fireplace, a renovated kitchen with a large island, and a dining room with a white brick fireplace. Palm trees, a guarded pool, and a big lawn surround the outside area. David Leavitt, an American author, was raised there before the Bankman-Frieds moved in. The agreement was approved by US District Judge Gabriel Gorenstein on December 22, allowing the disgraced FTX founder and former CEO to depart New York for his home. Bankman-Fried, 30, left his Bahamian paradise in exchange for extradition and now faces a plethora of allegations that could result in a 115-year prison sentence. The businessman is charged with wire fraud, securities fraud, conspiracy, money laundering, and offenses related to campaign funding. He is charged with scamming investors of an astounding $1.8 billion in federal charging documents. The vanquished crypto king will have an ankle monitor installed while they wait for a federal trial.
Bankman-Fried was the founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency trading company Alameda Research as well as the FTX exchange. Late in 2022, FTX went through a crisis that caused FTT, the currency that FTX was built on, to crash. Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO of FTX during the crisis and declared he would wind down operations at Alameda Research. FTX then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on December 12, 2022, pending possible extradition to the US. On December 13, a sealed indictment against him filed with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York was made public, outlining a number of accusations.