On Thursday, the crypto community on social media site X (formerly Twitter) speculated that Binance co-founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, had been released from prison a month before the end of his four-month sentence. Recent reports have revealed a different story.
CZ Moves to Long Beach Facility
Contrary to circulating rumors, Zhao has not been released from prison outright. Instead, he has been transferred to an administrative facility in the Greater Los Angeles area, just 38 days before his scheduled release from prison.
According to information from the US Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), Zhao is now classified as an inmate under the Residential Reentry Management (RRM) Long Beach office, which oversees federal offenders in central and southern California.
Zhao’s legal entanglements stem from a November guilty plea to violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). In April, a federal judge sentenced him to a sentence that was shorter than prosecutors had sought but longer than sentences given to other cryptocurrency executives for similar offenses.
He is currently serving his sentence In Lompoc II, a low-security federal prison in Santa Barbara County, California, Zhao’s conditions stand in stark contrast to those of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who is serving a 25-year sentence in New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC).
Binance Founder’s Legal Odyssey
Last November, Zhao resigned as CEO of Binance and admitted to a crime as part of a settlement with U.S. authorities. The agreement included a $4.3 billion civil penalty for Binance and a ban that prevented Zhao from holding executive positions in any cryptocurrency company in the future.
Before going to prison, Zhao wanted to spend his time on a writing assignment while incarcerated. Despite online speculation, there is no substantiated evidence to suggest that Zhao was released after his transfer, as the BOP website lists his release date as September 29.
With a reported net worth of $36.5 billion, detailed According to Bloomberg, Zhao’s imprisonment potentially makes him the richest person ever imprisoned in the United States.
At the time of writing, the exchange’s native token, Binance Coin (BNB), was trading at $585 for the first time in nearly a month, before the market crash on August 5 that sent the token plummeting to a 6-month low of $400.
Amid Friday’s broader market rally led by the largest cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC), Binance Coin posted a 1.6% price increase. However, the fourth-largest digital asset is still down 18% from its all-time high of $717 on June 6 this year.
Main image of DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com