Sam Bankman-Fried s parents are embroiled in the crypto exchange s troubles. Here s what we know about the Stanford Law professors
A representative for Bankman-Fried declined to comment to Insider. Legal representatives for Bankman and Fried did not immediately to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.
It’s not just FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried. His parents also face legal trouble
Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents face legal trouble of their own as FTX looks to claw back millions of dollars in compensation and benefits from the couple. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images; Drew Angerer/Getty Images; David Dee Delgado/Getty Images hide caption
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images; Drew Angerer/Getty Images; David Dee Delgado/Getty Images 
Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents face legal trouble of their own as FTX looks to claw back millions of dollars in compensation and benefits from the couple.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images; Drew Angerer/Getty Images; David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
As disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried gears up for the start of his trial on Tuesday, two people close to him are now facing legal trouble of their own: his parents.
For almost a year, Bankman-Fried’s mom and dad, both of whom are well-respected professors at Stanford Law School, have accompanied their son to pretrial proceedings at a courthouse in Manhattan.
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But now Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman are being sued by FTX, which filed for bankruptcy late last year.
Lawyers are trying to claw back millions of dollars from them — in cash and gifts, including a $16.4 million villa in The Bahamas, where FTX was headquartered before filing for bankruptcy late last year.
The civil suit against Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents alleges they helped run their son’s crypto empire, and that for their work — some official, some unofficial — they were handsomely rewarded.
“Bankman and Fried wielded their influence and status as Bankman-Fried’s parents to enrich themselves at the expense of the FTX Group,” the plaintiffs said.
FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrives at Manhattan Federal Court in New York City for a court appearance on March 30, 2023. SBF is set to start his blockbuster trial on Tuesday. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images hide caption
FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried arrives at Manhattan Federal Court in New York City for a court appearance on March 30, 2023. SBF is set to start his blockbuster trial on Tuesday.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Having spent more than three decades on the Stanford faculty, Bankman and Fried have become institutions in their own right — important figures and beloved members of a close-knit community. They have won numerous awards for their scholarship and teaching, and many of their colleagues consider them close friends.
After FTX filed its lawsuit, NPR reached out to every professor at Stanford Law School for comment, and fewer than a dozen replied.
In an email, Robert Gordon, who has known the couple since the 1980s, said, “Anyone who knows Barbara Fried and Joe Bankman well will believe it absurd to think that they were engaged in self-dealing — since for many years they have given generously of their time and money to good causes.”
Here’s a closer look at Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents.
Who is Joseph Bankman?
Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried have taught at Stanford Law School since the late 1980s.
Bankman is, according to his official biography, “a leading scholar in United States tax policy,” and at Stanford, he “teaches mental health law and writes on the intersection of law and psychology.”
He is also a practicing therapist, who received a doctorate in psychology late in his career. He continues to have an affiliation with a practice called the Pacific Anxiety Group in Northern California, which says Bankman specializes “in the treatment of anxiety, depression, and adjustments in both teens and adults.”
“I never intended to quit my day job,” he told the Stanford Lawyer, a magazine for Stanford Law School alumni, in 2015. “But my scholarship and policy were venturing into behavioral psychology and the law, and I wanted to understand more about human behavior.”
Joseph Bankman, father of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, leaves after a bail hearing for his son at Manhattan Federal Court in New York City on Aug. 11, 2023. Bankman has taught at Stanford Law School for decades and has also worked as a therapist. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images hide caption
Joseph Bankman, father of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, leaves after a bail hearing for his son at Manhattan Federal Court in New York City on Aug. 11, 2023. Bankman has taught at Stanford Law School for decades and has also worked as a therapist.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
For years, Sam Bankman-Fried’s father hosted a talk show on SiriusXM called “Stanford Legal” with his colleague Pam Karlan, who was his classmate at Yale Law School.
Bankman was a guest on NPR’s Planet Money in 2017, and he came across as quick-witted and incredibly passionate about tax reform. During the interview, Bankman cracked a joke about his clothes. He pointed out his pants were stained, and his cuffs were frayed.
“I really love explaining things,” he told Stanford Law School graduates in a 2008 speech, after he received the John Bingham Hurlbut Award for Excellence in Teaching — an honor Fried has won several times. “I love taking something opaque and make it seem a little less opaque.”
What about Barbara Fried?
Sam Bankman-Fried’s mother is an eminent academic in her own right.
Barbara Fried, who decided to retire from teaching during FTX’s heyday, is widely known for her work on legal ethics.
She was an undergrad and graduate student at Harvard University in the 1970s and 1980s, when influential philosophers John Rawls and Robert Nozick were on the faculty, and throughout her career, Fried has grappled with their ideas about free will.
She has also written about how society treats criminals. In an article titled “Beyond Blame,” which was published in 2013, she argued everybody is ultimately compromised.
“The reality is that we are all at best compromised agents, whether by biology, social circumstance, or brute luck,” Fried wrote in the Boston Review. “Tellingly, the more information people have about the context of the crime, the person who committed it, and the circumstances he or she came from, the more nuanced are their views of moral responsibility.”
Barbara Fried, mother of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, leaves after a bail hearing for her son at Manhattan Federal Court in New York City on Aug. 11, 2023. Fried is an eminent academic widely known for her work on legal ethics. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images hide caption
Barbara Fried, mother of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, leaves after a bail hearing for her son at Manhattan Federal Court in New York City on Aug. 11, 2023. Fried is an eminent academic widely known for her work on legal ethics.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
In recent years, as Joseph Bankman branched into psychotherapy as a sort of second career, Fried turned to writing poetry and short stories.
“One unanticipated joy of writing fiction has been the opportunity it has offered me to escape from myself, and reimagine the world through the lives and eyes of others,” she notes on her personal website.
Politics became another passion project, and in recent years, she co-founded a nonprofit organization called Mind the Gap, which was described in a Vox article as “a secretive group led by Stanford University academics” that “has unleashed millions of dollars in political spending from Silicon Valley.”
What was Joseph Bankman’s alleged involvement in FTX?
Joseph Bankman’s and Barbara Fried’s lives took another turn as FTX grew into a multi-billion dollar company, according to the lawsuit.
FTX’s lawyers said Bankman was “a de facto officer, director, and/or manager” in Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire before he joined it in an official capacity as a senior advisor to the FTX Foundation, its philanthropic arm.
In a 2022 interview with The FTX Podcast, a show FTX produced and has since deleted from YouTube, Bankman said his son had asked him for years to join his crypto empire.
“The company didn’t have any lawyers,” he said, of FTX’s early days. “So, I think my utility there was pretty obvious.”
“As early as 2018,” plaintiffs said, Bankman began offering strategic advice — not only to his son, but to other executives. Bankman helped with hiring decisions. He vetted outside counsel. And he made decisions about where FTX should spend substantial amounts of money.
In 2021, Bankman went on leave from teaching at Stanford Law School to focus on FTX full time.
In that paid role, Bankman decided where and how FTX made charitable contributions. According to the lawsuit, on several occasions, he funneled money to Stanford University, where he worked. Those donations totaled more than $5.5 million.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Stanford University said the school plans to return those contributions “in their entirety.”
“Bankman portrayed himself as the proverbial adult in the room — and was uniquely positioned to fulfill that role,” FTX’s lawyers said. “Bankman was virtually the only grow-up in the room, guiding the FTX Group and other executives, many of whom were recent college graduates in their mid-20s and had never before run a company, let alone managed billions of dollars.”
What about Barbara Fried’s involvement?
In their lawsuit, FTX’s lawyers stress Barbara Fried “never had a formal position at the FTX Group,” unlike Joseph Bankman. But she was, they note, “the single most influential advisor regarding Bankman-Fried’s and the FTX Group’s political contributions.”
Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Bankman-Fried personally donated around $40 million to political candidates, committees, campaigns and causes, which made him one of the most powerful donors in the United States.
“We’re ambitious and looking to make a splash,” Bankman-Fried’s brother, Gabe, told NBC News at the time.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents are embroiled in the crypto exchange’s troubles. Here’s what we know about the Stanford Law professors.
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- Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman are the parents of FTX cofounder Sam Bankman-Fried.
- Fried and Bankman, who stuck close by their son’s side through the fallout from FTX’s collapse, are now being sued by FTX.
- Here’s what we know about them.
FTX has sued Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents, seeking to recover millions
FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been embroiled in legal troubles since the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange in November.
The 31-year-old faces seven charges of fraud and conspiracy relating to the exchange’s collapse and is in jail. His trial on federal fraud charges is scheduled to begin on October 3.
Now, Bankman-Friend’s parents — longtime Stanford law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried — are caught up in FTX’s troubles too.
On September 18, FTX Trading filed a lawsuit against Bankman and Fried accusing them of using their influence to “siphon” millions of dollars from the company for their own personal benefit and “their chosen pet causes.”
FTX alleged, among other things, that Bankman and Fried had accepted the transfer of a $10 million cash gift and a $16.4 million luxury property in The Bahamas to them — even when they knew the exchange was on the brink of collapse.
“Despite presenting itself to investors and the public as a sophisticated group of cryptocurrency exchanges and businesses, the FTX Group was a self-described ‘family business,'” the lawsuit claims.
The complaint filed in the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange’s bankruptcy case in Delaware seeks to recover some damages from Bankman and Fried.
A representative for Bankman-Fried declined to comment to Insider. Legal representatives for Bankman and Fried did not immediately to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.
Attorneys for Bankman and Fried told the Associated Press in a Wednesday statement that the lawsuit is a “dangerous attempt to intimidate Joe and Barbara and undermine the jury process just days before their child’s trial begins.”
They added that the claims in the lawsuit are “completely false.”
Bankman-Fried, the disgraced cofounder and former CEO of collapsed crypto exchange FTX, is in jail
Bankman-Fried, who faces multiple fraud charges tied to the spectacular collapse of FTX, is now in a Brooklyn jail known for its poor conditions.
Bankman-Fried has been held in the Metropolitan Detention Center for more than a month after US District Judge Lewis Kaplan revoked his bail on August 11.
The former crypto mogul was previously on house arrest after posting a $250 million bail on December 22, shortly after he landed in the US after being extradited from the Bahamas.
As part of his bail terms, Bankman-Fried, who also cofounded crypto trading firm Alameda Research, was required to stay at his parents’ home while he awaits trial.
His parents live in a multimillion-dollar home in Stanford, in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to state records and news reports.
Zillow estimated the value of the five-bedroom home at about $4 million, while Redfin’s estimate was $3.1 million as of January.
Bankman-Fried’s parents have stuck close by their son since he was arrested in the Bahamas.
Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas on December 12, and said he was staying in a complex with his parents at the time. The next day, his parents attended his court hearing in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, where he was denied bail. They later visited the prison where their son was being held.
In December, The Wall Street Journal reported the couple as telling friends that they expected their son’s legal bills to wipe them out financially.
Bankman-Fried — who was — also appeared beaten down after his arrest.
“I’m broke and wearing an ankle monitor and one of the most hated people in the world,” Bankman-Fried wrote in an unpublished draft of a Twitter thread written after his arrest late last year, the New York Times reported on September 19.
“There will probably never be anything I can do to make my lifetime impact net positive,” added Bankman-Fried in the published draft of a Twitter thread.
Puck reporter Teddy Schleifer, who visited Bankman-Fried in January while he was under house arrest, said that his parents were some of the only people he still spoke to. Bankman-Fried told Schleifer that he hadn’t spoken to former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, former FTX director of engineering Nishad Singh, or former FTX CTO Gary Wang since mid-November.
“A lot of the people who I was closest to were my colleagues,” Bankman-Fried said when asked whether he still had any childhood friends living nearby. “Most of the people who I was friends with are not talking to me.”
“For a number of years, I was incredibly lucky and fortunate in terms of a lot of the relationships and support that I had,” Bankman-Fried continued. “Now there’s basically nothing left.”
Schleifer reported that Bankman-Fried spent his days playing video games, scrolling Twitter, writing pages of recollections about his last days at FTX, and “doing a hell of a lot of ruminating and antsy pottering” around his parents’ home. Bankman and Fried also bought their son a German shepherd called Sandor, Schleifer reported.
So what do we know about Joseph Bankman?
Bankman helped FTX recruit its first lawyers, joined FTX executives in meetings on Capitol Hill, and advised his son as he prepared to testify before the House Financial Services Committee, The New York Times reported in December. Bankman regularly flew to the Bahamas, per The Times.
The Times also reported that Bankman organized an FTX event at Miami Heat’s FTX Arena in March 2022, where local high school students pitched business ideas to a panel of judges.
A spokesperson for Bankman told The Wall Street Journal in December that Bankman was a paid FTX employee for 11 months, during which he worked on charitable projects, and was not involved in running the company.
FTX alleged in its September 18 lawsuit against Bankman and Fried, that the latter he had complained about his $200,000 salary, according to an exchange between Bankman-Fried and his father in January 2022.
Bankman had emailed FTX’s head of administration that he should’ve been getting $1 million a year instead, the lawsuit alleged. He then brought the complaint to Bankman-Fried’s attention and looped in Fried on the issue.
FTX’s lawyers then wrote that: “In other words, Bankman lobbied his son to massively increase his own salary.”
Bankman-Fried then gifted his parents $10 million in funds from Alameda and the $16.4 million property in Bahamas within two weeks of his father’s complaint about his salary, the lawsuit alleged.
The lawsuit also alleged Bankman donated $5.5 million to Stanford University to “curry favor with and enrich his employer at the FTX Group’s expense.”
What about Barbara Fried?
Barbara Fried worked as a professor of law at Stanford until she retired from teaching in September 2022. Her scholarly interests were “at the intersection of law, economics, and philosophy,” according to her biography on the university’s website.
The New York Times reported in December that Fried and her husband were popular faculty members at Stanford and regularly hosted dinners for colleagues.
Fried writes short stories and poems. She also penned a biography of the economist and lawyer Robert Hale and worked as a review editor for the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs.
Fried graduated from Harvard University in 1983, per her Stanford biography. Her first job after graduating was as a law clerk to US circuit judge J. Edward Lumbard of the Court of Appeals. She went on to practice as an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison.
Fried joined Stanford as an assistant professor in 1987 and went on to win multiple awards for excellence in teaching. She also had stints as a visiting professor at New York University Law School, her biography says.
Fried cofounded Mind the Gap, a Democratic super-PAC, from which she resigned in November 2022, The Times reported.
Bankman-Fried’s parents may have helped shape his interest in effective altruism.
Prior to FTX’s collapse, Bankman-Fried was a poster boy for effective altruism, a movement in which followers commit to doing the most good for the largest number of people using science, evidence, and reason.
Will MacAskill, an academic at Oxford University and a central force behind effective altruism, is said to have introduced Bankman-Fried to the movement. However, Bankman-Fried’s parents appear to have had some hand in shaping his philosophical outlook.
An article published on the website of Sequoia Capital, the venture capital firm, said Bankman and Fried raised their son on utilitarian beliefs, including family discussions about how to do the greatest good for the largest number of people.
Both have an academic interest in corporate ethics, and his mother has written a review of a book by Peter Singer, the philosopher seen by many as the originator of the effective altruism movement.
Bankman-Fried has praised his parents for the support he’s received since FTX collapsed.
Bankman-Fried said at The New York Times DealBook Summit that his parents “bore no responsibility” for FTX’s downfall.
“Anyone close to me, including my parents and employees and coworkers, who fought with the company to push forward, they were hurt by this,” he said.”I feel really grateful for the support my parents are still giving me throughout all of this.”
September 22: This story has been updated throughout with new developments.
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