Stanford University students are reportedly “obsessed” with the ritzy mansion where disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is currently under house arrest.
Bankman-Fried is confined to his parents’ $4 million home on the sting of Stanford’s campus while awaiting trial for allegedly bilking FTX customers out of billions of dollars.
Each of his parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, are longtime professors at Stanford’s law school.
Positioned near student housing and the homes of other faculty members, the Bankman-Fried family estate “has turn out to be an unofficial campus landmark,” the Washington Post reported on Saturday.
Stanford has closed off roads near the home as a security measure.
One Stanford student admitted to using wire cutters to steal a “path closed” sign situated near the barriers arrange to stop access to Bankman-Fried’s home, in response to the outlet.
The anonymous student said they managed to withdraw about $80,000 in cryptocurrency from FTX just before the platform imploded.
One other attendee, Tyler Benster, a 31-year-old neuroscience PhD student and cryptocurrency investor, told the Washington Post that he recently identified the Bankman-Fried house while walking on campus with a date.
“People spend years and years of their life working hard and preparing to then have the privilege of being here, using the resources, being in the center of Silicon Valley,” Benster said. “And the concept someone could find yourself kind of living on campus as a consequence of an enormous uncovered fraud is fairly ironic.”
An unnamed sophomore said there was a “a weird voyeurism” on campus regarding the home and Bankman-Fried’s fall from grace. She said she turned down an invite from friends to go see the home.
“There’s a perverse desire to know what might have been, or knowing what you could possibly have been,” the scholar said.
The Post has reached out to representatives for Bankman-Fried and Stanford University for comment.
In a January court filing, Bankman-Fried’s attorneys said a automotive had driven right into a metal barricade arrange outside the house as a security precaution.
The filing said three men exited the automotive and told a security guard, “You won’t give you the option to maintain us out,” before driving away.
Bankman-Fried’s parents put up their home as collateral to assist secure his record $250 million bail package. If the 30-year-old doesn’t comply with the terms of his bail, his parents could lose the property.
In February, court filings revealed that two other individuals with close ties to Stanford University had served as guarantors on the bail package.
The guarantors were identified as Larry Kramer, the dean emeritus of Stanford Law School, and Andreas Paepcke, a senior research scientist and computer science expert at the college.
Kramer signed a $500,000 bond, while Paepcke put up $200,000. The bonds represent the amount of cash that Kramer and Paepcke would owe if Bankman-Fried doesn’t return to court as mandated.
“My actions are in my personal capability, and I don’t have any business dealings or interest on this matter aside from to assist our loyal and steadfast friends,” Kramer said in a press release on the time. “Nor do I even have any comment or position regarding the substance of the legal matter itself, which is what the trial might be for.”
A few of Bankman-Fried’s actions while under house arrest have drawn scrutiny.
Last month, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan applied recent bail restrictions after the court was alerted that Bankman-Fried had used a VPN to access the web. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers claimed he had used the VPN to observe the Super Bowl.
In a letter to the court last Friday, prosecutors asked that Bankman-Fried be limited to make use of of a flip phone that lacks web access while on bail.