You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
The parents of Sam Bankman-Fried, who was arrested Monday in the Bahamas based on an indictment in the United States, are Stanford University law professors who face scrutiny for their own roles in the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, The New York Times reported.
Joseph Bankman is a professor of tax law and was a paid employee of FTX. “Mr. Bankman was a prominent cheerleader for the company, helping to shape the narrative that his son was using crypto to save the world by donating to charity and giving low-income people access to the financial system,” said the Times.
Barbara Fried did not work for FTX, “but her son was among the donors in a political advocacy network that she orchestrated,” the article added.
Fried resigned last month as chairwoman of the board of a political donor network, Mind the Gap, which supported Democratic campaigns and causes. Bankman has postponed a Stanford class he had been scheduled to teach in the winter. “The family faces huge legal bills, and they have become the subject of gossip on Stanford’s campus,” said the article.
“I had a friend who said, ‘You don’t want to be seen with them,’” said Larry Kramer, a former dean of the law school and a friend of the Bankman-Fried family. “I don’t see how this doesn’t bankrupt them.”