FTX’s lawyers allege Sam Bankman-Fried’s mom and dad helped shape their son’s crypto empire and received millions of dollars worth of gifts and benefits from the now-bankrupt company.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
