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Sam Bankman-Fried — the disgraced crypto bro convicted for playing ringmaster to a multi-billion dollar fraud scheme — no longer shares a prison block with Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Instead, he’s being relegated to the flat lands of Oklahoma, at least for the time being, after appearing in an unapproved video interview with Tucker Carlson.
The 33-year-old SBF famously went from trading billions of dollars‘ worth of cryptocurrency to peddling commissary ramen packs after a massive federal investigation uncovered rampant fraud perpetuated by his blockchain company, FTX. His sentence is 25 years followed by three years of supervised release, which began in March of 2024.
The Wall Street Journal reports that SBF was awakened at 3 am from his cot in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Correctional Center and carted off to a facility in Oklahoma City, which typically serves as a holding place for incarcerated people in transit to their long-term destination.
Whether the change of scenery was a punishment for the Carlson appearance or a coincidence isn’t yet known. Prior to SBF’s arrest, he had scrawled a fallout plan with contingencies like “come out as extremely pro crypto, pro freedom,” and “go on Tucker Carlsen [sic], come out as [R]epublican.” He seems to be pushing that latter vision hard lately, in a possible bid to get the attention of president Donald Trump, whose second term is coming with a slew of crypto-friendly policies and pardons.
In the Carlson interview, SBF pushed a narrative familiar to the second Trump administration, claiming he was punished harshly because of his donations and growing ties to the GOP in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.
“One fact that might be relevant is, in 2020 I was center-left, and I gave to Biden’s campaign,” SBF told Tucker. “I spent the next few years in DC a lot. I made dozens of trips there, and was really, really shocked by what I saw there, and not in a good direction. By late 2022 I was giving privately to Republicans privately, as much as Democrats, and that started becoming known right around FTX’s collapse.”
SBF had previously used his social media account — via posts “shared with a friend” — to send his sympathies to Elon Musk’s DOGE as it rips through the federal government to the widespread ire of taxpayers.
“Firing people is one of the hardest things to do in the world,” he wrote. “It sucks for everyone involved… but there’s no point in keeping them around, doing nothing.”
Where SBF ends up now is anyone’s guess. People close to him have previously told CNN they believe he’s being sent to Mendota, California, a close drive to his parent’s home in Stanford, where Bankman-Fried grew up. Until then, he’ll have plenty of time to reflect on his crimes from within the sixth-poorest state in the country. If nothing else, maybe they can school him on some of that middle-American work ethic.
More on crypto tycoons: Jack Dorsey’s Flailing Crypto Business Is Laying Off More Than 900 Employees
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