Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has traded his palatial Bahamas bunker for a bunk bed as he transitions from luxe to lockup.
Bankman-Fried is staying at the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn, one of the nation’s most notorious correctional facilities. Conditions at the jailhouse, where Bankman-Fried has resided for six weeks since losing his bail, are a far cry from the former billionaire’s old Caribbean stomping grounds: The internet is slow, the living quarters dirty and the cafeteria offerings slim, his lawyers have argued.
You’re reading The SBF Trial, a CoinDesk newsletter bringing you daily insights from inside the courtroom where Sam Bankman-Fried will try to stay out of prison. Want to receive it directly? Sign up here.
“[He’s] subsisting on bread and water… sometimes peanut butter,” the defense told a federal judge last month.
Former residents of the famous facility and their lawyers, however, have said there’s much more to tell about the notorious lockup. They’ve likened conditions at the jailhouse to those faced by “prisoners of war” and Hannibal Lecter in the horror movie “The Silence of the Lambs.”
But what’s MDC really like on the inside? Here’s what we know about the infamous detention center:
MDC Brooklyn is a large prison complex encompassing two buildings and housing more than 1,600 male and female prisoners, many of whom still await trial. As a mixed-security facility, the MDC houses inmates with a variety of criminal histories, including terrorism, organized crime and drug smuggling, a report from the Bureau of Prisons shows. Current inmates include Juan Orlando Hernandez, a former president of Honduras who has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges, and Guo Wengui, a Chinese businessman who has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges.
Others who have previously served short stints at the jailhouse include Epstein-accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and pharma bro Martin Shkreli.
Regimented day-to-day life
Bankman-Fried likely has a rigid schedule at MDC.
Inmates wake up at 6 a.m., and must make their beds, mop the floor and tend to their trash, an orientation handbook from the facility shows. From there, inmates like Bankman-Fried might go to work around the facility, serving as prep cooks in the jail’s kitchen, providing janitorial services throughout the complex or assisting at the facility’s maintenance shop.
At 11 a.m., they eat lunch. Dinner is served at 4 p.m. Meals are supposed to consist of a meat such as turkey, a starch like rice and a vegetable or fruit, but prisoners are actually served cold cuts, sandwich bread,
