Binance Founder CZ Leaves US Prison, Not Fully Free Yet – Details

On Thursday, the crypto community on social media site X (formerly Twitter) speculated that Binance co-founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as CZ, had been released from prison a month before the end of his four-month sentence. However, recent reports have revealed a different story.

Contrary to the circulating rumors, Zhao has not been entirely freed from incarceration. Instead, he has been transferred to an administrative facility in the Greater Los Angeles area just 38 days before his scheduled release from custody.

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 field office, which oversees federal offenders in central and southern California.

Zhao’s legal entanglements stem from a guilty plea he entered in November for violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). In April, a federal judge sentenced him to a term shorter than prosecutors sought but longer than penalties imposed on other cryptocurrency executives for similar offenses.

Currently serving his sentence in Lompoc II, a low-security federal prison in Santa Barbara County, California, Zhao’s circumstances are 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).

Last November, Zhao stepped down as CEO of Binance and admitted to a felony charge as part of a settlement with US authorities. The agreement included a $4.3 billion civil regulatory penalty for Binance and a prohibition preventing Zhao from holding executive roles in any cryptocurrency company in the future.

Before entering prison, Zhao intended to dedicate his time to a writing endeavor during his term of incarceration. Despite online conjecture, there is no substantiated proof to suggest that Zhao was at liberty post-transfer, as the BOP website maintains his release date as September 29.

With a reported net worth of $36.5 billion, as detailed by Bloomberg, Zhao’s imprisonment positions him as potentially the wealthiest individual ever detained in the United States. 

At the time of writing, the exchange’s native token, Binance Coin (BNB), is trading at $585 for the first time in nearly a month, before the market crash on August 5 that sent the token 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 gain. However, the fourth largest digital asset is still down 18% from its all-time high of $717 on June 6 this year.  

Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com