Reportedly, Stanford students are “obsessed” with the luxurious mansion where disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is currently under house arrest.
Bankman-Fried is locked in his parents’ $4 million home on the outskirts of the Stanford campus, awaiting trial for allegedly defrauding FTX customers out of billions of dollars.
Both of his parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, are longtime professors at Stanford Law School.
Located near student residences and other faculty members’ homes, the Bankman-Fried family estate “became an unofficial campus landmark” the Washington Post reports on Saturday.
Stanford closed roads near the home as a preventive measure.
One Stanford student admitted to using wire cutters to steal a “path closed” sign positioned near barriers arrange to stop access to the Bankman-Fried home.
An anonymous student said he managed to withdraw around $80,000 in cryptocurrency from FTX just before the platform exploded.
Another participant, Tyler Benster, a 31-year-old neuroscience PhD student and cryptocurrency investor, told the Washington Post that he recently drew attention to the Bankman-Fried house while walking around campus with a date.
“People spend years of their lives working hard and preparing to have the privilege of being here, using resources, being in the guts of Silicon Valley,” Benster said. “And the concept that someone could continue to exist campus due to a large uncovered fraud is sort of ironic.”
An anonymous sophomore said there was a “weird voyeur” on campus regarding the Bankman-Fried home and demise. She said she declined an invite from friends to see the home.
“There is a perverse desire to know what may need been, or to know what you would possibly have been,” said the coed.
The Post reached out to representatives from Bankman-Fried and Stanford University for comment.
In a January lawsuit, lawyers for Bankman-Fried said the automobile drove right into a metal barricade arrange outside the home as a precaution.
The file stated that the three men got out of the automobile and told the safety guard, “You won’t have the option to stop us” before driving away.
Bankman-Fried’s parents placed their home as collateral to secure his record $250 million bond. If the 30-year-old doesn’t comply with bail conditions, his parents could lose their property.
In February, court records revealed that two other individuals with close ties to Stanford University served as guarantors for the bail package.
The guarantors were Larry Kramer, Dean Emeritus of Stanford Law School, and Andreas Paepcke, a senior scientist and computer science expert at the varsity.
Kramer signed a $500,000 bond and Paepcke contributed $200,000. The bonds represent the amount of cash Kramer and Paepcke would have owed if Bankman-Fried had not returned to court as ordered.
“My actions concern me personally and I haven’t any interests or interests on this matter aside from helping our loyal and steadfast friends,” Kramer said in an announcement. “Nor do I even have any comment or position on the substance of the particular legal issue that the hearing is speculated to address.”
Some of Bankman-Fried’s actions while under house arrest have come under scrutiny.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan applied recent bail restrictions after a court was warned that Bankman-Fried had been using a VPN to access the web. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers claimed he used a VPN to look at the Super Bowl.
In a letter to the court last Friday, prosecutors requested that Bankman-Fried be restricted to using a flip phone that doesn’t have Internet access while on bail.
