Until his Oct. 2 trial, FTX founder and accused fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried will be spending his days at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, a notoriously dirty and dangerous jail and the last remaining federal lockup in New York City. He is headed there at the request of Judge Lewis Kaplan, after being accused last week of witness tampering while free on $250 million bail. It’s the same jail where convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell was housed, and one that’s been infamous over the past few years for its subpar living conditions. The jail has faced staffing shortages, power outages and corruption from guards in recent years, with public defenders calling its living environment “inhumane.” At one point, Maxwell’s attorneys complained that sewage had seeped into her cell there. Bankman-Fried was initially staying in his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California. But after months of angering prosecutors and the court with his shenanigans, which included leaking documents to The New York Times about his ex-girlfriend—a likely witness in his case—Kaplan decided to lock him up until the trial.
