Sam Bankman-Fried says cell-block mate Diddy is ‘always kind’ to him in NYC lockup — where Luigi Mangione is also being held
Convicted crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried revealed that he’s become pals with Sean “Diddy” Combs in the high-security Brooklyn jail unit where they’re being held together — telling Tucker Carlson the accused sex trafficker has “always been kind to me.”
“I’ve only seen one piece of him, which is Diddy in prison. You know, he’s been kind to people in the unit,” Bankman-Fried told Carlson from Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center in a video call released Thursday.
“What we see are just the people that are around us on the inside, rather than who we are on the outside,” the 33-year-old added. “He’s been kind to me. It’s a position no one wants to be in. Obviously he doesn’t, I don’t. It’s kind of a soul crushing place.”
Bankman-Fried and 55-year-old Combs are both being housed in 15-man Special Housing Unit at the federal lock-up, where they’ve been isolated from the general prison population due to their high-profile cases.
In addition to who Bankman-Fried described as “alleged ex-gangsters,” he and Diddy are also joined by accused UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione, and the high-flying Miami real estate broker brothers accused of rape, Oren, Tal and Alon Alexander.
“I’ve made some friends,” Bankman-Fried said of his fellow inmates. “It’s a weird environment.”
What’s surprised him most, however, has been his experience with the less-famous inmates housed in the unit, some of whom he described as “former armed robbers who don’t speak English and probably didn’t graduate middle school.”
“A surprising number of them are fairly good at chess. I’m not saying they’re grandmasters. I lose games to them all the time. I was not expecting that,” Bankman-Fried said.
“Some of them I think are thinking, ‘Wow this is sort of a big opportunity to meet people they wouldn’t otherwise get to meet … boy is that not how I think about prison.” he added. “Laughing’s all you can do sometimes, there’s no better alternative.”
Bankman-Fried has been housed at the Metropolitan Detention Center’s Special Housing Unit since he was sentenced last March to 25-years behind bars for stealing more than $8 million from customers of his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX.
Combs is being kept there while he awaits trial for sex trafficking, racketeering, and prostitution charges which has has pleaded not guilty to — and has furiously denied.
Mangione, 26, was placed in a solitary confinement cell in the unit when he arrived
By a strange coincidence, the attorneys for Combs and Mangione are husband and wife.
The jail unit — known as “the hole” — has held several other high-profile inmates over the years, including the prolific sex abusers R. Kelly and Ghislaine Maxwell.
It also has a reputation for less than pleasant conditions — including reports of frequent power outages, and maggot-infested food.
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