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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