FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's bail conditions amended by judge

Sam Bankman-Fried is now prohibited from contacting current or former employees of FTX ( FTT-USD ), the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange he co-founded in 2019, or its affiliated trading firm Alameda Research, according to a Wednesday filing. The 30-year-old onetime billionaire, accused of defrauding investors and customers at a large scale, also got banned from using Signal or any other encrypted or ephemeral massaging applications, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled. A hearing on the matter is slated for Feb. 7. The amended bail conditions came after federal prosecutors were said to have requested such changes last week on the basis that Bankman-Fried initiated contact with an employee to allegedly tilt his future witness testimony in his favor. "I would really love to reconnect and see if there’s a way for us to have a constructive relationship, use each other as resources when possible, or at least vet things with each other. I’d love to get on a phone call sometime soon and chat," SBF said, as quoted by the DoJ letter . "It appears to have been an effort to have both the defendant and Witness-1 [the employee] sing out of the same hymn book," Kaplan said. SBF was released on Dec. 22, 2022, on a $250M bond and was allowed to live in his parents' house in California , where he remained under house arrest. About a week later, he then pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in federal court .