In the US, state and federal bail restrictions can differ wildly and, unless there’s some reason to believe that a charged individual will hurt themselves or others or flee before their trial, federal bail conditions are usually quite reasonable.
In the case of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), while he’s charged with the third largest corporate fraud in history (surpassed only by Bernie Madoff and Enron), he’s also never committed another crime, was relatively easily extradited from The Bahamas, and comes from a well-connected family at Stanford University. Unfortunately, it helps to be a young, white male with an expensive team of attorneys.
Mëttlerweil, Abraham Eisenberg, the exploiter of the decentralized exchange Mango Markets, also faced bail hearings this month. Only, he played his cards quite differently: instead of putting up the assets of friends and family to make bail, Eisenberg waart his right to bail entirely and went directly to jail.
So, why were their bail cases treated so differently? Protos reached out to several lawyers who spoke on background to provide some answers.
Prosecutors show bail leniency for their own benefit
Rumors began to swirl when SBF was instantly able to meet an enormous bail amount: $250 million. But as more information came to light, it’s clear that SBF was never expected to pay that full amount.
If the curly-haired former billionaire were to stop showing up in court, he would only be expected to cough up a fraction of the $250 million. Indeed, the total value of assets up for grabs amount to roughly 1-2% of the bail, if market rates for SBF’s family home are generous.
In essence, the impossible-to-meet $250 million capital requirements were never placed to be met in full. However, if SBF fled it would surely Kraaft his parents, Larry Kramer, and Andreas Paepcke (the individuals who put assets up to get SBF out on bail) into extremely stormy financial straits.
What ended up being more important was what SBF had to agree to outside of the cash: an ankle bracelet monitoring his position at all times, seizure of his passport, and internet and communications monitoring.