Greetings, listeners. Serious Trouble will return in podcast form in January, but we thought the surprising news that Sam Bankman-Fried was released on bail shortly after he agreed to be extradited back to the United States deserved a swift lawsplainer.

How, you may ask, does a dude who is so clearly impervious to reality, who had to be arrested in the Bahamas, and who is accused of billions of dollars in fraud, get out on bail? Fair question.

Start with this: in federal criminal cases, bail is governed by the Bail Reform Act of 1984. That scheme starts out with a presumption that a person should be released on their own recognizance or on an unsecured appearance bond — that is, a promise to pay a certain amount of money if they fail to show up for court. The magistrate judge may only deviate from that presumption if he or she “determines that such release will not reasonably assure the appearance of the person as required or will endanger the safety of any other person or the community.” The magistrate judge may only detain the defendant pretrial if he or she finds that “no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the appearance of the person as required and the safety of any other person and the community.”

In other words, in the federal system you start out with the presumption that you’ll be released on a mere promise to appear, and the magistrate judge adds more conditions or restrictions to the extent they think it’s necessary to make you appear for trial and prevent you from being a danger. For some crimes there’s a rebuttable presumption that you’re a flight risk and a danger — mostly drug crimes, violent crimes, and sex crimes, but not (as one might expect) white collar crimes involving vast amounts of money.

So what happened with Sam Bankman-Fried?

On December 22, at his first appearance in the United States, the magistrate judge released Bankman-Fried on bail terms agreed to by the prosecution and the defense. You can read those terms in two documents. First is the minute order (basically a clerk’s description of what happened) of the hearing:

Next is the bond itself, which spells out the terms:

What are the terms? They include:

• He’s on home detention at his parents’ house with an ankle monitor.

• He’s under “intensive” pretrial supervision, which means Pretrial Services — sort of like a probation office for people before trial — will be watching him very carefully and checking in frequently. They’ll also determine when he’s allowed to lea