A former dean of Stanford’s law school and a computer science researcher at the university co-signed indicted FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s bond, according to court records made public on Wednesday.
Bankman-Fried, 30, has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges over the collapse of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange. He has been out on $250 million bond co-signed by his parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, who pledged their Palo Alto, California, home as collateral for his return to court.
His parents are both professors at Stanford Law School. The names of two other sureties had been redacted until Wednesday, when U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered their identities be made public.
An individual named Larry Kramer signed a $500,000 bond to ensure Bankman-Fried’s return to court, while an individual named Andreas Paepcke signed a $200,000 bond, the newly-unredacted records showed.
According to Stanford’s website, Kramer is a former dean of the law school while Paepcke is a computer science researcher. Paepcke did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Kramer could not immediately be reached for comment.
Bankman-Fried’s lawyers have said his parents had been harassed and received physical threats since FTX’s collapse and bankruptcy in November, and there was “serious cause for concern” the other guarantors might suffer similar treatment.
The group of media outlets, which also included the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Dow Jones, argued that the public right to know the identity of Bankman-Fried’s guarantors outweighed their privacy and safety rights.
Copyright 2023 Thomson/Reuters