Barbara Fried wanted to get close to her son.
During breaks in the monthlong criminal fraud trial of her firstborn child, Sam Bankman-Fried, she would sometimes leave her seat and walk up to the railing that separated him from the gallery. Watching him and his lawyers, often in silence, she was just inches away yet no more able to intervene on his behalf or prevent the conviction that many saw coming.
Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried had hovered nearby when their son soared to prominence as the crypto industry’s biggest star, and advised him as his company collapsed and the government made its case against him. And after a federal jury delivered a guilty verdict that could send him to prison for decades, his parents are trying to prepare him for what comes next.
