FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Ordered to Court Over VPN Use
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been asked to appear in court for the second time in a week due to an alleged breach of his bail conditions.
According to prosecutors, Bankman-Fried attempted to use a VPN to access the internet, despite being warned against doing so by Judge Kaplan.
The hearing, which is scheduled for Feb. 16, was set after prosecutors submitted a letter indicating that Bankman-Fried had twice used a VPN to access the internet, most recently on Sunday, and was discovered through a pen register on his personal Gmail account connected to the VPN.
During the Feb. 7 hearing, Judge Kaplan had cautioned Bankman-Fried against using Signal’s encrypted messaging app. He was only asked to refrain from using VPNs until after it had been discussed in court.
Prosecutors are now claiming that Bankman-Fried’s use of a VPN presents several potential risks, including the ability to hide online activities from the government and disguise the user’s whereabouts.
READ MORE: Tether Dominates Stablecoin Market as Total Supply Shrinks in 2023
They also suggested that some people use VPNs to access international cryptocurrency exchanges that block U.S. users.
Bankman-Fried’s legal team requested additional time to negotiate new bail conditions, which Judge Kaplan declined. All parties, including Bankman-Fried, are expected to appear in court on Feb. 16.
Alexander Stefanov
Reporter at CoinsPress
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
