Judge Rules Identities of 2 Parties Who Backed Sam Bankman-Fried’s $250M Bond Can Be Revealed

CORRECTION (Jan. 31, 13:03 UTC): Corrects dollar amount to million in headline. An earlier version said billion.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled on Monday that the names of the two currently unidentified people who co-signed Sam Bankman-Fried’s $250 million bail bond can be made public.

It's already known that the FTX founder's parents also co-signed, but the other names were kept private.

The New York judge overseeing Bankman-Fried's criminal trial ruled in favor of four separate petitions by a number of news organizations seeking the names of these individuals, who signed onto the bond earlier this month. The ruling is stayed pending a possible appeal until at least Feb. 7.

A slew of media companies, including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and CoinDesk, had filed suit to get the court to release the identities of the two people, saying that “the public’s interest in this matter cannot be overstated.”

Bankman-Fried’s lawyers had argued the possibility of physical threats to the parties were reasons to keep their identities private.