Federal prosecutors in Manhattan mentioned on Friday that the disgraced cryptocurrency government Sam Bankman-Fried had tried to contact a possible witness in his felony case, they usually requested a choose to impose new bail situations limiting his skill to speak with former colleagues.

In a court docket submitting, the U.S. legal professional’s workplace for the Southern District of New York mentioned Mr. Bankman-Fried despatched messages over electronic mail and the encrypted messaging app Sign this month to the overall counsel of the U.S. arm of FTX, the cryptocurrency change he based. Mr. Bankman-Fried, 30, has been charged with fraud, cash laundering and marketing campaign finance violations linked to the implosion of FTX final yr.

The communication was “suggestive of an effort to affect Witness-1’s potential testimony,” the submitting mentioned. “That is significantly regarding provided that the defendant is conscious that Witness-1 has data that will are inclined to inculpate the defendant.”

Prosecutors requested Decide Lewis A. Kaplan, who’s overseeing Mr. Bankman-Fried’s case, to ban the entrepreneur from contacting present and former FTX workers or utilizing Sign or different encrypted apps to speak.

A spokesman for Mr. Bankman-Fried didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Mr. Bankman-Fried constructed FTX into one of many greatest cryptocurrency exchanges on the earth earlier than the corporate filed for chapter in November. He was arrested in December at his residence within the Bahamas, the place FTX was based mostly, after which extradited to america to face the felony expenses. Decide Kaplan granted him bail beneath extremely restrictive situations, confining him to his dad and mom’ residence close to the campus of Stanford College in Northern California.

Mr. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not responsible to the costs in opposition to him.

From his residence confinement, Mr. Bankman-Fried has entertained guests, together with the creator Michael Lewis, who’s writing a guide about him. He has additionally began mounting a protection, writing posts on Substack that element his model of the occasions main as much as FTX’s collapse.

In response to Friday’s submitting, Mr. Bankman-Fried wrote to the overall counsel of FTX U.S. on Jan. 15, saying he would “actually like to reconnect and see if there’s a means for us to have a constructive relationship, use one another as sources when potential, or not less than vet issues with one another.”

Prosecutors mentioned the witness “has firsthand information of the defendant’s conduct through the charged conspiracies” and took part in communications on Sign and the messaging system Slack with a small group of insiders the month that FTX collapsed. Mr. Bankman-Fried has additionally contacted different present and former FTX workers, based on the submitting.

The doc doesn’t establish the witness by identify. The overall counsel of FTX U.S. is Ryne Miller, based on his LinkedIn web page.

For a lot of his tenure at FTX, Mr. Bankman-Fried relied on Sign, which provides individuals the choice to robotically delete messages. In response to prosecutors, he additionally directed workers of FTX and Alameda Analysis, a hedge fund he based, to set their communications to robotically disappear after 30 days or much less.

“The autodeletion of FTX and Alameda’s Slack and Sign communications has impeded the federal government’s investigation,” the submitting mentioned. “Potential witnesses have described related and incriminating conversations with the defendant that befell on Slack and Sign which have already been autodeleted.”

Within the court docket submitting, prosecutors mentioned Mr. Bankman-Fried’s use of Sign might hinder their efforts to find out whether or not he tried to contact extra potential witnesses throughout his confinement.

“The proposed bail situations together would extra successfully forestall the defendant from obstructing justice,” the submitting mentioned.