After a few minutes of waiting, I looked up to see SBF standing in the corner, wearing a chocolate-colored prison jumpsuit, with his still wild curly hair, which has always been his trademark. Nowadays, Sam looks much thinner than he did the last time we met; he seems to have lost at least 25 pounds. But to be honest, he looks better and healthier than I imagined, less bloated, less agitated, less fidgety, and his eye bags are gone.

He said he now survives on rice and beans because the prison food is predictably hard to swallow, especially the vegetarian dishes he is served, which his cellmates think smell awful. He did not complain and pointed out that in a bad situation, he has to make do. The rice he buys at the prison store has become a kind of currency inside the prison. We joked that the arbitrage opportunities in prison are better than when he was trading cryptocurrency at Jane Street Capital or buying and selling assets at Alameda.

He kept staring at me, which was something few could do before. (SBF used to have a wandering gaze, was fidgety, and had the typical traits of a nerd.)

After we shook hands, he sat down on his plastic chair, a surveillance camera watching us from the ceiling. We were surrounded by several other inmates dressed similarly, facing their visitors. Sam refused my initial offer to buy him some snacks but eventually agreed to buy a $4 bottle of water and a small $2 pack of crackers, which he then devoured.

For the next approximately 75 minutes, we talked, which was his first face-to-face interview with a reporter since being incarcerated last August. He was convicted in November on charges of two counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering. In March, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Under such extreme circumstances, our conversation was a profound and engaging experience.

Prison Diary

Sam first answered questions about life in prison. According to him, he lives in an area primarily designed for incarcerated women, but he shares a large open dormitory living area with 35 other men, featuring bunk beds, no privacy, extreme boredom, and four televisions tuned to ESPN, Telemundo, BET, and a news channel. Sam said he could try to persuade his cellmates to change the channel, but the television bored him, so he wasn't interested in that challenge. He prefers to watch movies or play some inferior video games on the tablet provided by the prison, which has no internet connection.

When I told him he looked better than I expected, he replied that he had learned to disguise it. So yes, life in prison is not as idyllic as in the Bahamas. But to be honest, I did expect his coping skills to be a bit worse. In prison, Sam is allowed to take his prescribed medications most of the time, and the combination of medications he is allowed keeps his mind clear and energizes him for the legal battles he is about to initiate.

Meanwhile, he told me he is not worried about his safety. He can use the restroom and shower several times a week and can rest easy. He has always been a light sleeper and still cannot sleep soundly in prison, mainly because sometimes his cellmates disturb him at night discussing rice exchanges. But he has not been touched or abused, and he seems particularly grateful for that.

He admitted that in prison, his criminal record is unique, and his cellmates do know him. He estimates that out of the other 35 men, about half have been turned into informants in exchange for not receiving life sentences. In prison, the consensus is that informants are the worst, even worse than child sex offenders. Sam also told me that some inmates tried to approach him, thinking they could benefit from being around a former billionaire. He said he would not cooperate with them.

We did not discuss his trial strategy, or whether he intended to move $8 billion from FTX customer funds to Alameda. Both topics seemed irrelevant. We talked about his former girlfriend Caroline Ellison, whom he chose to manage Alameda because lawyers had been questioning the conflict of interest of running FTX and a hedge fund simultaneously. (He chose to run FTX.) He admitted he had asked a few others if they were interested in the position, but they declined. He said his ex-girlfriend was good at managing people and administrative tasks, but hated making large investments and despised risk. (Clearly, this is a strange aversion for a hedge fund manager.) However, Alameda ended up doing both.

He regrets not trying harder to find another executive. He also said he should have ignored his lawyers' advice and continued to run FTX and Alameda simultaneously; the conflict was irrelevant, somewhat like how Musk manages his various companies.

Legal remedy

We talked a lot about his appeal, and he believes he was set up to be a scapegoat. His theory is that in the fall of 2022, everyone knew the ship was sinking, and by early November 2022, FTX faced a liquidity crisis. Sam first sought to reach an agreement with Binance, but the agreement quickly fell apart, or was never real to begin with, and while trying to raise billions of dollars, his lawyers suggested he hand over control of FTX to John J. Ray III, which he did. But Ray quickly filed for bankruptcy for FTX and appointed the firm's external legal advisor - Sullivan & Cromwell as the legal advisor for the debtor.

Sam told me that Sullivan & Cromwell reported to federal prosecutors on November 9, 2022, a day or two before the bankruptcy filing, discussing what they believed Sam might have orchestrated between FTX and Alameda, described as having stolen $8 billion in customer funds. Soon after, he became a target of federal prosecutors. In a sworn affidavit regarding that report, Sullivan & Cromwell attorney Andrew Dietderich stated that he only reported to the Justice Department about the 'coordination issues of digital assets and rights' that FTX's U.S. General Counsel Ryan Miller told him about, and did not mention Sam or the alleged illegal acts he was accused of.

Sam told me that if he hadn't been persuaded by Sullivan and his personal lawyers to step down as CEO, the company would not have filed for bankruptcy and would still be a thriving business, valued at possibly $80 billion now, and his net worth might have reached $40 billion, and he certainly wouldn't be in prison. (Sullivan & Cromwell declined to comment on the theory of SBF's case. It is reiterated that Sam was sentenced to 25 years in prison after the jury found him guilty of the aforementioned crimes.)

I clearly feel that Sam still does not believe he committed any crimes; he absolutely thinks he is just the scapegoat responsible for FTX being caught in the whirlpool of a bank run and the cunning actions of competitors, somewhat similar to the failures of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers in 2008. Sam wonders why no one from Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers faced criminal charges while he was prosecuted? In our conversation, while Sam is regretful and punished, he does not fully express remorse: aside from some degree of negligence, he maintains his innocence, believing these negligence issues might face civil repercussions rather than criminal penalties and a 25-year sentence.

According to Sam's theory, he is imprisoned not for mixing FTX and Alameda's assets. Rather, he is innocent because he did not get the chance to negotiate with federal prosecutors. They simply presented him with an indictment and told him he could plead guilty and be sentenced, or appeal. Sam said that due to the lack of a negotiation agreement, he chose to contest the charges at trial and ended up failing. Unlike other inmates, Sam said he talks to his new lawyer for about an hour almost every workday as the focus of his appeal begins to emerge. He expects to file an appeal this fall.

Yes, he will appeal, but most people think his chances of success are slim.

On the day I visited, Sullivan & Cromwell, still the debtor in the FTX bankruptcy case, submitted a draft of the reorganization plan, which seems to allow its clients and creditors to recover all their money, even a little more—returning $15 billion on a $12 billion claim, largely due to investments made by Sam through Alameda. The plan, although it has a long way to go before confirmation, also grants Sullivan and other FTX advisors 'indemnity' from future lawsuits related to this matter. This is not uncommon in reorganization plans.

Head west

I am not sure how much longer Sam will stay in MDC prison, and he is not sure either. He requested to remain in Brooklyn at least until the fall, when his appeal will be submitted. But that is certainly not up to him. I was told that he might be transferred to California, closer to his hometown of Palo Alto, where both of his parents are professors at Stanford Law School. At that point, it will depend on whether he is placed in a federal prison (which are mostly filled with habitual offenders) or, like Mike Milken (who was previously imprisoned and later pardoned by Trump), placed in a minimum-security prison.

If he is transferred outside of Brooklyn, it could take as long as four months, handcuffed in a seat, slowly crossing the country. Such prison buses often stop to pick up new inmates and drop off others, which explains why it takes them so long to reach their final destination. Another possibility is that he might be scheduled to take a plane from the U.S. Department of Justice, known as an 'aerial prison.'

In either case, Sam will be completely unable to communicate with his family and lawyers until he arrives at his new cell in California. This will deprive him of the very limited internet and email access he currently has in Brooklyn.

Just as we were about to discuss some tricky issues, like his choices during the trial or how those who used to work for him had turned against him to save themselves, our visiting time was up. We quickly shook hands to say goodbye, and Sam returned to his cell while I stepped outside to greet a beautiful spring afternoon.

Hopefully, if Trump comes to power, SBF will have a fresh start!!