Sam Bankman-Fried’s mother lashed out at US prosecutors and the FTX bankruptcy estate, blasting them as “McCarthyite” over their recent legal salvos in the epic fraud case against her 31-year-old son.
Barbara Fried, who along with her her son’s father was sued for “millions of dollars in fraudulently transferred and misappropriated funds” last week, also claimed that FTX’s debtors are on a “relentless pursuit of total destruction,” in an emailed statement to The New Yorker.
“It takes a lifetime to build up a reputation as honorable people,” Fried added in an email to the publication ahead of her son’s fraud trial set to kick off on Oct. 2. “It takes five minutes to destroy it, which they now have done.”
Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried’s parents — both longtime Stanford Law School professors — are gearing up for a high-profile trial where their son faces 155 years behind bars should be convicted on all charges relating to securities fraud and conspiracy fraud counts.
Should he lose, Bankman and Fried have already started talking about how they might handle his appeal, according to The New Yorker.
In the meantime, Bankman and Fried — who met at Stanford in 1988 but never married — have been flying from their home on the edge of the university’s campus in Palo Alto, Calif., every Tuesday to visit their son, who’s awaiting his trial in a Brooklyn jail, per the publication.
The Post has sought comment from Fried’s lawyer, Michael Tremonte.
Fried’s comments came after a group of FTX debtors led by led by John J. Ray III — who’s been serving as FTX’s CEO to lead the company through its complex bankruptcy — filed a lawsuit in Delaware bankruptcy court, seeking to claw back eye-watering funds Bankman-Fried’s parents received before the crypto exchange’s house of cards came crumbling down.
The hefty sum includes a $10 million cash gift Bankman and Fried received from their son, who also gave them a $16.4 million luxury property in the Bahamas, where FTX was headquartered, the court filing said.
In addition, “Bankman and Fried also pushed for tens of millions of dollars in political and charitable contributions,” including a donation from FTX’s sister hedge fund, Alameda Research, to Stanford to the tune of $4 million, the latest filing said.
FTX’s debtors claimed that the donations “were seemingly designed to boost Bankman and Fried’s professional and social status at the expense of the FTX Group.”
Stanford University has since said that it plans to return the millions of dollars it received from Bankman and Fried.
The bombshell court filing also revealed that Fried urged her son to “avoid” disclosing millions of dollars in FTX donations to her pro-Democrat political action committee.
Fried headed the Mind the Gap super PAC and advised Bankman-Fried to make the donations through his underlings “to “avoid (if not violate) federal campaign finance disclosure rules,” creditors for the doomed crypto firm claimed.
The lawsuit went on to paint Fried’s stewardship of Mind the Gap — which solicited money from Silicon Valley executives to support Democratic candidates — as one marked by “stealth” and a “cone of silence.”
She “focused heavily on masking Bankman-Fried’s identity as a political donor,” according to the complaint.
Tremonte told The Post after the filing that the claims in the lawsuit are “completely false,” and called the court documents “a dangerous attempt to intimidate Joe and Barbara.”
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