A shaggy-haired and bearded Sam Bankman-Fried was pictured alongside a former Bloods gang member in the first jailhouse photo of the disgraced crypto kingpin after he was convicted of fraud.
Crypto crime reporter Tiffany Fong initially posted the image to YouTube on Monday, noting that the inmate next to the disgraced FTX boss is gangster named G-Lock whom she had interviewed.
G Lock told Fong the photo was taken at the troubled Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, NY, last Dec. 17 — six weeks after Bankman-Fried was found guilty on all seven fraud and conspiracy charges related to stealing $10 billion from users of his failed crypto exchange.
Bankman-Fried, who remains at the Brooklyn jail while awaiting sentencing on March 28, is seen wearing an oversized T-shirt and gym shorts alongside G Lock, who told Fong that the 31-year-old former billionaire is “a good guy. Weird as s–t, can be strange. But he is a good guy.”
The jail only allows inmates to be photographed around Christmas time and Father’s Day.
G Lock also said that when he first met Bankman-Fried, he “had a belly, he was eating good. [Now] he’s skinny like a toothpick.”
Bankman-Fried’s defense attorney, Mark Cohen, had previously told a court that the crypto crook was “subsisting on bread and water and sometimes peanut butter” because the jail reportedly refused to serve him vegan meals.
G Lock also said that Bankman-Fried hasn’t been showering. When he first met him, he “was clean-shaven.”
“Now, scruffier than a motherf—er,” G Lock told Fong. “Full beard.”
“He’s not getting a shower, he’s not doing anything. He didn’t snitch on nobody, Sam is a gangster,” G Lock told Fong in an interview posted to YouTube earlier reported on by the Daily Mail.
“Sam is more gangster than Tekashi69, Sam Bankman stood on all ten toes. Tekashi ratted,” G Lock added, referencing the rapper, who was facing more than 40 years in prison for weapons and drug charges when he testified against his fellow gang members in exchange for a lighter sentence.
In better news, “nobody’s beating him up,” G Lock added of Bankman-Fried, who faces a sentence of as many as 110 years.
G Lock also called on President Biden to pardon Bankman-Fried.
His sentencing is set for March 28 — four months after he was found guilty on all seven fraud and conspiracy charges related to stealing $10 billion from users of his failed crypto exchange, as well as lying to lenders and investors.
The jury, comprised of nine women and three men, deliberated for just four hours before reaching a decision.
The former crypto golden boy’s conviction followed a month-long trial where Bankman-Fried made the rare and risky choice to testify in his own defense.
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