FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried will no longer oppose extradition to the United States, days after being detained in the Bahamas pending a hearing in his case, CNBC reports.
The former cryptocurrency billionaire will appear in court this Monday to formally waive his extradition rights, paving the way for federal authorities to secure his return to the U.S.
The extradition of prisoners between the Bahamas and the US is governed by a 1991 treaty. In practice, the process takes months, if not years, to complete because the defendants have many chances to appeal. Bankman-Freed’s legal team had initially said it planned to fight their extradition to the US.
Bankman-Freed was indicted in federal court in New York on Monday on charges of fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and money laundering. If convicted, he could face life in prison. The former FTX CEO also faces simultaneous charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Derivatives Trading Commission for similar offenses; that he worked to defraud FTX customers by siphoning off billions of dollars since 2019, the year FTX’s crypto exchange was founded.
At the heart of Bankman-Freed’s empire was Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund that federal regulators allege used FTX customer money to engage in trades that lost billions of dollars
