Judge Signals Jail Time if Bankman-Fried’s Internet Access Is Not Curbed

On Feb. 1, Judge Kaplan ordered him to stop using encrypted apps while he weighed the issues. Eventually, though, prosecutors reached a deal with Mr. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers that would have prohibited him from using some apps, while explicitly permitting others.

But at a hearing last week, Judge Kaplan said he wasn’t convinced that those arrangements would fully prevent Mr. Bankman-Fried from secretly communicating with the outside world.

Then, on Monday, prosecutors said in a court filing that Mr. Bankman-Fried had twice used a virtual private network, or VPN, to gain access to the internet. His lawyer said he had used the VPN to watch National Football League playoff games, including the Super Bowl, through an international streaming subscription that he bought when he lived in the Bahamas.

At Thursday’s hearing, Judge Kaplan seemed skeptical about this explanation, noting that Mr. Bankman-Fried was living in “California, which is in the United States,” and could watch the Super Bowl on television.

But Judge Kaplan reserved his most pointed questions of the afternoon for the government. He interrupted a prosecutor, Nicolas Roos, as he laid out ideas that would broadly limit and monitor Mr. Bankman-Fried’s access to the internet and communications technology.

“There is a solution,” the judge said. “But it’s not one anyone has proposed yet.”

Mr. Roos gave a hesitating response before Judge Kaplan continued, saying that according to the government’s own account, Mr. Bankman-Fried had done things that suggested he “either committed or attempted to commit a federal felony while on release.”

Judge Kaplan said that even if he granted the government’s suggestion to monitor Mr. Bankman-Fried’s cellphone and computer, that would not prevent him from using other computers and phones that were not monitored in his parents’ home.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/business/bankman-fried-crypto-fraud-bail.html