Academics from Stanford Law School and Stanford University are the previously two unknown individuals who signed bonds that allowed the release of FTX crypto exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried from prison on bail, according to court filings released Wednesday.
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Fast facts
- Larry Kramer, the 2004-2012 dean of Stanford Law School, and Andreas Paepcke, a computer science research engineer at Stanford University, were both identified in the filing.
- Bankman-Fried, who was arrested and charged with fraud and other crimes, was released in December on a bail package that included a US$250 million personal recognizance bond signed by Bankman-Fried and his parents. Two separate bonds were signed by two non-parent sureties — now revealed to be Kramer and Paepcke.
- Court documents released Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan showed that Kramer put up US$500,000 in an unsecured bond, and Paepcke signed onto US$200,000.
- Kramer told Forkast in an email that he supported the bail because he’s close friends with Bankman-Fried’s parents.
- “Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried have been close friends of my wife and I since the mid-1990s. During the past two years, while my family faced a harrowing battle with cancer, they have been the truest of friends … In turn, we have sought to support them as they face their own crisis,” Kramer said.
- Kramer said he acted in a personal capacity and has no business dealings or other interests in the matter, other than to support a family he regards as friends. He added that he held no position on the legal issues of the case itself as that will be for courts to decide.
- The identity disclosure came after Judge Kaplan last month granted several motions filed by news organizations to reveal the identities of the two non-parent sponsors of the bail. Kaplan wrote in the January ruling that the information sought — names of bail sureties — traditionally is regarded as public information.
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