The Federal Bureau of Prisons has transferred Sam Bankman-Fried to a prison in California, according to the BOP’s inmate database. The former CEO was first at a medium-security prison in Victorville, a small city east of Los Angeles, through Thursday. He was then transferred to a low-security prison in Los Angeles as of Friday.
Kyle Sandler, a federal prison consultant who was released from federal custody a year ago, said Victorville was a “notoriously hard” facility. Terminal Island, where Bankman-Fried now resides, is cushier. "You're living in a dormitory and such," Larry Levine, another federal prison consultant, told Fortune, in reference to low-security facilities.
When reached on Thursday, a spokesperson for the BOP declined to say whether Victorville is Bankman-Fried’s long-term destination. On Friday, the spokesperson also declined to comment.
Lawyers for Bankman-Fried did not respond to a request for comment.
The arrival of the onetime crypto mogul in California potentially puts an end to speculation on where Bankman-Fried would reside after a federal judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison in March 2024. A jury previously found the former CEO guilty of fraud for siphoning more than $8 billion of customer funds from his crypto exchange in one of the largest financial crimes in U.S. history.
Throughout his trial, Bankman-Fried had been in a Brooklyn holding facility in a section reserved for high-profile inmates like Sean “Diddy” Combs and Luigi Mangione. The judge presiding over his case recommended that the BOP transfer him to a prison in California to be closer to his parents, who are professors at Stanford University, in the Palo Alto area, about 400 miles north of Los Angeles.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyers, however, asked for him to remain in Brooklyn as he appealed the jury’s guilty verdict. In late March, the BOP moved the former CEO to a federal transit center in Oklahoma, where he resided for about two weeks before he was sent to California.
In addition to his appeal, Bankman-Fried is reportedly seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump. Before the BOP transferred him from Brooklyn to Oklahoma, the former CEO waged a media blitz in an apparent bid to curry favor with the president. He even conducted an unauthorized video interview from prison with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who now has his own program.
The publicity stunt reportedly landed Bankman-Fried in solitary confinement and may result in further punishments against the onetime crypto wunderkind.
Update, April 11: Reworked the headline and top half of the article after Bankman-Fried was transferred from Victorville to Terminal Island.
