| SBF at
SDNY Triggers
Crypto
Cooperator Qs
As Ex Ellison
Pleads Out
Amid Bahamas
Flight
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell
book
NY
Mag
LITERARY SDNY,
Dec 21 –
In the week
after the SDNY
press
conference
about Sam
Bankman-Fried,
in the
courthouse and
its Press Room
the tension
built.
Court
artists came,
since
photography is
prohibited in
the
courthouse.
Reporters
staked out the
courtroom of
District Judge
Ronnie Abrams,
to whom the
case had been
assigned, and
the small
Magistrates
Court where on
most days Kurt
Wheelock was
the only
member of the
media, or even
member of the
public. It was
all different
now.
"Crypto
Man" was
coming, as one
non-techie
reporter put
it. Kurt tried
to get
ready.
Since
one of Kurt's
beats before
he came to the
courthouse was
banking, or
anti-banking
more
precisely, he
submitted
Freedom of
Information
requests to
the agencies
which had
allowed FTX /
Alameda to buy
a stake in
Farmington
State Bank
(subsequently
renamed
Moonstone
Bank), and put
customers'
money into
Silvergate
Bank.
And
then, as
always, a
break in the
case.
As
Kurt Wheelock
tried to
re-index his
website while
uploading
stories about
the day's more
obscure
criminal
cases,
including a
woman from
Columbia
seeking asylum
after her
husband was
murdered -
and, yes,
selling
fentanyl - two
plea
agreements and
a video came
in, from the
prosecutors.
Caroline
Ellison and
Gary Wang had
pleaded
guilty, it
said, with the
agreements
signed on
December
19.
Apparently
they withheld
them until SBF
was in the air
and couldn't
turn back. Or
could he?
Also, a
recorded video
from US
Attorney
Damian
Williams, that
SBF "will be
transported
directly to
the Southern
District of
New York."
That
seemed to
preclude an
overnight in
Essex County
Correctional
Facility in
New Jersey, or
the MDC in
Brooklyn - in
the EDNY. So
was SBF in the
same
courthouse
where Kurt sat
typing, and
shaking his
fist at
censorship,
and looking
out the window
at Chinatown
below?
It emerged
overnight that
SBF had been
flown into the
Westchester
airport in
White Plains -
yes, in the
SDNY - and
would from
there be taken
to the
courthouse in
the morning.
And so Kurt
headed
there....more
on Patreon here 1
and here
2
***
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