The incarcerated founder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX is now detained in a correctional facility in Los Angeles, California.

According to the inmate database of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), Sam Bankman-Fried is currently serving time at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Terminal Island. 

The 33-year-old was previously held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, but the BOP moved him to a series of locations. FCI Terminal Island houses more than 900 low-security male inmates.

Last month, Bankman-Fried was brought to the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, which houses inmates who are being transported through the prison system. He was then taken to a medium-security federal prison in Victorville, California, before his subsequent move FCI Terminal Island.

The former crypto golden boy was sentenced to 25 years in prison after he was found guilty of charges arising from the misuse of FTX customer funds. The multi-billion-dollar collapse of the crypto exchange marked the height of the 2022 digital asset bear market.

Bankman-Fried is set to be released in December 2044, but his parents are taking action to reduce his sentence.

Stanford Law School professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried reportedly met with people connected to US President Donald Trump earlier this year to discuss potential clemency for their son. Political insiders do not think this will happen, though.  A crypto lobbyist interviewed by Fortune said that the probability of a pardon is “near zero.”

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Sam Bankman-Fried, currently serving a 25-year prison term, has a new home after completing an unauthorized interview with Tucker Carlson. Before the interview, SBF was housed at the Metropolitan Detention in Brooklyn, where the March 25th remote interview was conducted. The Brooklyn facility was famous for holding high-powered personalities, including R. Kelly, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Although Bankman-Fried’s transfer caught many by surprise, others in the know have long expected the move. Last May, there were rumors that officials would move SBF out of his cell, with SBF’s representatives believing their client may be transferred to Mendota, California.

Unauthorized Interview With Tucker Carlson

Bankman-Fried’s remote interview with Carlson was hosted last March 5th, without authorization by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The interview lasted for over 42 minutes, with the video and outline of the interview available on Carlson’s social media page. 

Bankman-Fried talked about various topics, including his experiences inside the prison, how these experiences changed and shaped his perspectives, and his thoughts on the crypto industry. Also, the interview touched on SBF’s financial standing and his thoughts on the Democratic Party.

Bankman-Fried’s remote interview surprised many since he was largely silent and unavailable since his 2023 conviction. Immediately after the interview, prison officials sent SBF to solitary confinement. Then, the prison officials decided to transfer SBF to another prison facility.

SBF Used Remote Interview To Address The Charges

Tucker Carlson posted a summary of the remote interview on his Twitter/X account on March 7th. The interview covered many topics and issues, and SBF also used the opportunity to deny the charges against him again. When asked by Carlson, SBF re-stated that he doesn’t consider himself a criminal. He then suggested that FTX “was solvent” at its collapse.

Bankman-Fried also contested the charges against Ryan Salame, the FTX Digital Markets co-CEO, saying they were “bogus.” He then implied that the filing of these cases was politically motivated.

Bankman-Fried Continues To Attract Controversies Even While Serving Time

Even after his conviction, Bankman-Fried continued to attract attention and controversy. His latest stunt with Tucker Carlson didn’t go under the radar; the BOP flagged the unauthorized interview, which led to the resignation of SBF’s crisis manager, Mark Botnick.

Even in detention, SBF caused some controversies and has been the subject of investigations. In August 2023, officials revoked his bail over allegations that he attempted to sway witnesses. To help counter SBF’s negative image, his legal team recommended that they work with conservative media personalities, including Tucker Carlson. The team hoped that working with conservative commentators could boost the chances of SBF getting a presidential pardon.

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Imprisoned FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been on the move.

The former crypto executive was previously incarcerated in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, but Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) data indicates he now resides at FTC Oklahoma City, a transfer center that temporarily houses inmates being transported through the prison system.

No reason for Bankman-Fried’s transfer was provided, but the FTX founder did recently conduct an unauthorized YouTube interview with conservative media personality Tucker Carlson. The New York Times, citing “a person briefed on the situation,” reported earlier this month that the unsanctioned conversation landed Bankman-Fried in solitary confinement.

The FTX founder reportedly interviewed with Carlson as part of a longshot effort to secure a pardon from President Donald Trump.

Crypto lobbyists are doubtful the disgraced FTX founder’s efforts will be successful, with one telling Fortune that Bankman-Fried had a “near zero” chance of landing the pardon.

FTX imploded and filed for bankruptcy in November 2022 amid accusations that Bankman-Fried mishandled the exchange’s funds by loaning out billions of dollars’ worth of customer deposits to Alameda Research, the firm’s trading arm.

The exchange’s multi-billion dollar collapse led to a sharp downtick in crypto prices, and US federal authorities arrested Bankman-Fried the following month.

A US judge sentenced the FTX founder to 25 years in prison last year after he was convicted of fraud charges in 2023. His current release date is scheduled for November 17th, 2044, per FBOP data.

Earlier this year, Bankman-Fried’s parents, Stanford Law School professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, reportedly met with lawyers and other figures considered close to Trump to discuss potential clemency for their son.

Joseph Bankman even penned an opinion piece in the Washington Post (with Berkeley law professor Mark Gergen) praising Trump’s plan for a US sovereign wealth fund.

Trump pardoned Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht in January, fulfilling a campaign promise to Libertarian voters. Bankman-Fried, however, has much less grassroots support than Ulbricht.

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Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has resurfaced on social media following a protracted two-year hiatus. The sudden reemergence on X, late Monday evening, triggered a flurry of debates throughout the crypto sphere. Bankman-Fried, who is currently serving a 25-year sentence at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center for orchestrating one of the largest crypto scams in history, used the platform to reflect on the trials of terminating employees and navigating internal corporate hurdles.

Crypto’s Most Notorious Figure Resurfaces

“I have a lot of sympathy for gov’t employees: I, too, have not checked my email for the past few (hundred) days … And I can confirm that being unemployed is a lot less relaxing than it looks,” he began, in a series of posts that many observers found unexpectedly introspective. Over the course of ten tweets, he provided blunt assessments of what he describes as the universal challenges of letting staff go, remarking that it “sucks for everyone involved,” while also emphasizing that “it is usually not the employee’s fault that they got fired” but that “it is usually correct to let them go anyway.”

Bankman-Fried went on to detail how, in his view, systemic organizational misalignments sometimes necessitate dismissals, whether due to mismanaged departments, ill-fitting work environments, or a mismatch of talents and roles. “Maybe we just didn’t really have anyone free to manage them right then. Maybe they worked best remotely, but our company communicated in-person,” he wrote. “Maybe they wanted to work on a particular project, and it just wasn’t what the company needed.”

He also discussed issues that stem from organizational confusion, citing an example in which “competitors […] hired 30,000 too many employees” and departments were left uncertain of the tasks at hand. In his words, “There’s no point in keeping them around, doing nothing.”

While the tweets offered unvarnished opinions on corporate culture and responsibilities, they have raised acute questions about the practicalities of Bankman-Fried’s social media usage from within the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center. Legal experts and onlookers alike have expressed curiosity about how the former crypto magnate is gaining access to X. As of this writing, his legal team has not provided clarifications regarding the mechanisms of his account management or whether his statements were relayed through intermediaries.

Only days prior to this online reappearance, Bankman-Fried gave his first interview from prison, in which he openly voiced hope for a presidential pardon. During that interview, he characterized his conviction as emblematic of what he sees as prosecutorial overreach under the Biden administration.

Although details remain sparse, sources close to the Bankman-Fried family have indicated that his parents are exploring every possible avenue to secure relief. Reports suggest they have initiated conversations with lawyers possessing ties to figures in the Republican Party, including those close to Donald Trump, as part of a broader strategy to seek a presidential commutation or pardon.

The FTT token experienced a brief surge following Bankman-Fried’s posts but has since come under pressure due to the broader crypto market downturn. As of press time, the FTX related crypto token FTT was trading at $1.72.

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The possibility of FTX’s co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) being released from prison has arisen again. This comes following his latch ditch political efforts to gain a presidential pardon from Donald Trump.

Sam Bankman-Fried Seeks To Gain Favor From Donald Trump

Sam Bankman-Fried is looking to get in Donald Trump’s good books and possibly get a pardon from the US president. In a recent interview with the New York Sun, SBF moved to throw the Democratic party and Biden’s administration under the bus in hopes of gaining sympathy from Trump and the Republican party. 

The crypto founder stated that he was really “frustrated and disappointed with what [he] saw of Biden’s administration of the Democratic party. It is worth mentioning that SBF was one of the biggest donors of the biggest donors of the Democratic party before he was convicted of fraud and misappropriation of customers’ funds and sentenced to 25 years on March 28, 2024. 

The FTX co-founder also tried to gain sympathy from the current administration by showing support for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E), which has been tasked with cutting government expenses. SBF said that some things need more than a 10% cut and added that it could go as far as 30,50, and 70%. 

SBF has maintained his innocence up until now. In the interview, he once again mentioned that he doesn’t think anyone was guilty in reference to him and other FTX executives who were found guilty. 

Before now, Bitcoinist had reported that Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents were appealing to Donald Trump to get a presidential pardon for their son. As such, this interview may be one of the avenues that SBF and his parents are using to get the US president’s attention. 

FTX’s SBF Also Takes Aim At Biden’s Judiciary

Sam Bankman-Fried also criticized Judge Lewis Kaplan, the judge in charge of his case, and the Department Of Justice (DOJ) under Biden’s administration. The crypto founder lamented the “politicization of the DOJ over the last decades,” although he remarked that things look to be changing under Trump. 

Interestingly, Kaplan was also the same judge who presided over the civil case against Trump in which the jury reached a verdict that he sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll. SBF looked to take advantage of this common interest with Trump, stating that he knows the US president had a lot of frustrations with Judge Kaplan. He added that he did as well. 

Sam Bankman-Fried filed an appeal last year in which one of his major arguments was that Judge Kaplan was biased. He suggested that the Judge had declared him guilty from the onset and didn’t give him a fair hearing in his case.

Sam Bankman-Fried could become the second crypto criminal that US President Donald Trump pardons. The president already pardoned Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht, a promise that he made even before he took office.

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