In a letter, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers asked US District Judge Lewis Kaplan to order the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn to ensure their client has a daily Emsam skin patch for depression and three or four doses a day of Adderall for ADHD.
He has been prescribed those medications for five and three years, respectively, they said.
“Without these medications, Mr. Bankman-Fried will experience a return of his depression and ADHD symptoms, which will severely impact his ability to assist in his own defense,” the 31-year-old former billionaire’s lawyers wrote, citing a letter from his psychiatrist filed in court.
Kaplan on Friday remanded Bankman-Fried to the MDC after finding probable cause to believe he had tampered with witnesses at least twice. Bankman-Fried was only able to bring enough of the medicines to last a few days, his lawyers wrote.
Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to charges he stole billions of dollars in FTX funds to plug losses at his Alameda Research hedge fund.
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Until Friday, he had been largely confined to his parents’ Palo Alto, California, home on $250 million bond since his December extradition from the Bahamas, where FTX was based. After he was brought to a Bahamas courtroom for an initial appearance following his arrest at the luxurious Albany resort where he lived, Bankman-Fried briefly left at the start of the proceedings to change his Emsam patch, a medical strip applied to the skin to treat depression in adults.
