What it's like to be arrested on your way to a joyful family vacation...
Around August of 2024 I was on my way to Turkey for a family vacation. I hadn't heard from the DOJ for a year at this point and my impression was that everything DOJ-related was fully resolved. I was going to Bodrum to introduce my young son to my wife's family (she is Turkish and they hadn't met him yet). I booked the flight two weeks in advance to boot.
As I'm about to board the plane, three FBI agents intercept me, put handcuffs on me in front of me in front of my wife and my son (only eight months old at the time, thankfully) and walk me through LAX in handcuffs. The agents didn't even think twice about walking me in front of a crowd of what had to be a thousand people on my way to their car. Thankfully, they were at least helpful enough to reluctantly grant my request to put a jacket over my handcuffs, which prevented too many pictures from being taken.
So why was I arrested when it seemed like the case was over and done with? Unbeknownst to me, the original prosecutor working my case quite possibly had determined that there was no wrongdoing, and was on his way out of the DOJ. However, instead of the file closing, it was instead handed off to a more junior prosecutor who got excited about it and thought I was "fleeing the country." Whether she actually thought that or she was using it as an excuse to arrest me and take my passport from me I'm not sure. But suffice it to say that if I booked a flight two weeks in advance I'd have to be the stupidest flight-risk ever...
I spent the rest of the day in a jail before being transferred to an actual prison for two more days. Why so long? Because they arrested me on a Saturday morning and the court couldn't process my bail until Monday afternoon. Government inefficiency at its finest. The first thing I did when they let me out was hug my wife and son.
At one point I was made to sit in the "visiting area," awaiting my lawyer, where I watched inmates sitting across from their family members, five feet away, no touching allowed. At one point a young child ran to quickly hug his dad and was reprimanded harshly by the warden. "Sir, this is your last warning. I would like to remind you that seeing your family is a privilege." Indeed, it really is.
Now, almost two years later, the government decided "oopsie-daisy" and dismissed all charges, both DOJ and SEC, and the latter with prejudice. Sorry we put you in chains from your hands to your feet in front of your son and had people brutally tell you to "face the wall" every time you entered an elevator. Sorry we put you in a cage for three days with violent prisoners. These things happen. Oopsie-daisy.
There's a lot more to this story that I look forward to talking about in full soon.
It sounds horrible, but I was weirdly zen about the whole experience. Not only did I know I'd done nothing wrong, but the whole experience made me realize just how important what I was working on was to me. It made me realize that to be able to work on something that you're willing to fight for, to risk being put in a cage by the state for, is something very special that not many people have. I've meet a lot of people in crypto who feel this way, and I think this is one thing that's truly unique and inspiring about our industry.