Sam Bankman-Fried's doing surprisingly well in prison: Reporter

Former FTX executive Ryan Salem has now been sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. That term longer than the defense or the prosecution had asked for and indicates how tough the judge will be toward perhaps other members of Sam Bankman-Fried's inner circle. The sentencing comes as the FTX co-founder himself reportedly awaits transfer to a California facility. William Cohen, founding partner at Puck News, spoke with Bankman-Fried earlier this month. He joins us now. And you spoke to him in prison and you wrote about that for Puck News. And what's fascinating to me is not just the conversation you had with him, but the whole process. It's really interesting, Bill. So welcome, first of all. Thank you. Great to be here. And tell us about that. Well, you know, it's a beautiful day out here in New York today. And it was that kind of similar day on May 7th. You can only visit on Tuesday. And this is in Brooklyn at the Metropolitan Detention Center, which is in Sunset Park, a part of Brooklyn I've never been. And not many people really, you know, hang out there. You know, there's two monolithic buildings. You know, of course, I went to the one, you know, that looked more inviting. That turned out to be, which is sort of where the men, most of the men are kept. But it turns out he was kept with a group of 35 men in the women's side of the prison. So I had to go back over there. But because they're understaffed, they didn't let you in at the appointed hour that they're supposed to let you in. So we all had to sort of wait around anyway. I got in there eventually. It was quite a challenge and then ended up talking to him for about an hour and 15 minutes. He just suddenly we were in this cafeteria area, which was sort of bright and cheery and welcoming to families. And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sam in his chocolate brown jumpsuit, you know, noticed the hair looking much thinner and sat down and we just talked for an hour and 15 minutes. Couldn't bring in any recording device. That is rough. And not even a pad and pen, Bill? No pad and pencil, not a pen, just my brain, which, so I had to focus on what he was saying and focusing on the remembering. And how did he, I'm just curious, but did you get a sense, like, just how he seemed to you? What was his mood to the extent that you could kind of read it? I mean, look, I would have thought that it would be an incredibly depressing experience knowing that you're going to be in a place like this for 25 years unless there's some degree of leniency. I mean, maybe it's obviously early days. He's been there since August. He's only been, you know, convicted since last year and his sentence was in March. So I actually found him in better spirits than I thought he'd be, quite honestly. He said that he's actually been treated pretty well, which, I mean, or at least not badly, you know, because we've all seen the, you know, prison movies. We know sort of the gestalt of prison life. It's probably not something any of us would want to experience. But he seemed, you know, pretty, pretty good frame of mind, frankly. I'm a little surprised. I mean, he talks to his lawyer and his parents, who are probably also acting as lawyers, you know, former Stanford law professors, you know, for at least an hour a day. He plays video games, watches movies on a tablet that they give him that's not connected to the internet. And he's also can send, you know, emails through core links. So I'm sure it's not great. I think he's, you know, I'm sure he feels like he's wasting his mind there. But, you know, this is what he's got right now. His mind right now seems also really focused on an appeal process. Totally. So, I mean, do you feel like, Bill, is he in denial? Does he strike you as a person in denial? I mean, the whole world has a certain perception of this guy, I think, fair to say, or most of the world. And he pretty steadfastly has said, like, he didn't mess up. Yeah. I mean, actually, at one point I said to him, do you feel finally like you're being punished for something that you did wrong? And you're, you know, maybe the sentence was too long or it was unfair, but you really did feel like you did something wrong. And you're willing to admit that. And now you're getting punished for it. Or do you feel like you're in here unfairly and you're being punished for something you didn't do? No surprise. I think he was the latter. He still maintains his innocence that he did nothing wrong. So no real sense of remorse there, Bill? No, I have to say. I mean, he's not adamant about it. He's not, like, pounding the table. He's not, you know, emotional about it, because I don't think that's his nature. But he definitely feels like he did nothing wrong. Well, that's been the argument, right? I sort of like, you know, I made a mistake, but it wasn't. It wasn't criminal. It wasn't gross negligent. It wasn't negligent. You know, if they had just let me, you know, and he blamed Sullivan and Cromwell, of course. And if they had just let me, you know, continue raising the money that I was trying to raise when we had the liquidity crunch, it all would have worked out fine. You can see now everybody's getting their money back. The investments that I made were actually fine. You know, it was just a time period where they just went to town on me and tried to, you know, the perception was the boat was sinking, every man for himself. And, you know, who gets thrown off the boat or, you know, puts in irons first is the, you know, the CEO. And, you know, I think that's what he thinks happened to him. Everybody else got to cut a deal, including Ryan, including everybody else that reported to him. S&C, you know, he claims went to the Southern District of New York and sort of reported on him in an effort, you know, potentially to save themselves and keep them out of any, you know, any potential litigation. So I think he felt like he was quite lonely and that they were gunning for him and wanted to make an example of him. I want to switch gears to another thing that you have been writing a lot about recently, maybe on the subject of self-delusion, maybe not, I don't know, media executives. You have been looking into that world a lot, and there's obviously a lot of action there with Paramount still being in place somehow and some of the troubles with some of the other media companies. What's kind of your big takeaway? It's the landscape right now. And how are, I mean, you always, one of your real talents, Bill, is you have like an ear for these types of executives or these characters, right? I'm very character-driven kind of writer, so I love it when I find a great character. Yeah, so how are these characters in media feeling right now and facing these challenges? I mean, I think that we've got, that's a big media, let's call it, you know, not as opposed to like the tech media. Big media, I think, is in disarray right now, you know, whether it's Disney or Warner Brothers or Paramount or, with the exception of, say, Netflix, which I guess is tech media. That's the one everybody else seems to be still trying to chase. If they can, but I mean, they're so, their business model is like completely different. They don't have any of the legacy problems. I mean, you know, the, I mean, as a former M&A guy to watch, and I worked on, by the way, the original Viacom acquisition of Paramount back many years ago when I was at Lazard. And so to see this M&A process drag out so long and so publicly and so foolishly, I, it's just an amazing situation to me. I mean, you know, you could ask yourself, why are we so, why in the media are we so fixated on the Paramount story? It's just because I think, you know, what Sumner Redstone built and then what Sherry took over, and now what she's finally made the decision to sell, you know, it's obviously the wrong time, the wrong moment. She can't find the right buyers, even though there's been some creativity. I mean, I give, you know, the Ellison crew credit for creativity and Sony Apollo, probably there's plenty of good ideas coming out of them. But, you know, Sherry can just say no whenever she wants to, and nobody can do a darn thing about it. And yeah, and everybody knew that they couldn't do a darn thing about it because she is the controlling shareholder with the voting stock. So, and meanwhile, the stock continues to tick down. It's just a sorry situation. And people like, you know, Gabelli, I mean, I don't know what he was thinking owning that stock for decades now. He's not going to kind of get the payday that he wanted. And he's a smart guy. So to me, it's fascinating, really. Even if there was a deal, Bill, what's your sense of what they could do with Paramount that maybe Paramount couldn't just do on its own at this point? It will obviously, you know, the Ellison crowd has a lot, a lot of, you know, interesting ideas, and they're going to bring in, you know, a whole new management team and, you know, focus on the studio, marrying it with Ellison's studio. Sony and Apollo, you know, who obviously is the owner of this network, you know, I think they have a lot of interesting, my sense is a lot of interesting creative ideas. It's probably more of the, you know, cut and peel off assets strategy and, you know, really reshape the business. You know, with the Ellison deal, you know, Paramount would remain a public company. So, you know, investors who obviously won't get the kind of payout that Sherry will get if that deal will happen will have the opportunity to participate if, you know, David Ellison and company are able to, you know, turn that company around. But it's, you know, it's so small on a relative basis. I mean, Comcast is $250 billion market. You got Disney's about that. I mean, you know, Netflix is $400 billion. I mean, you know, this is what, $10 billion. But it's drama, Bill. Oh, great. It's drama. It's great drama. Succession's over. We need something to watch. We love the drama, no doubt about it. There we go. Bill Cohen, good to see you. Thanks for coming in. Appreciate it.