Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested. This is what happens next.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s arrest in the Bahamas on Monday marks the beginning of a new chapter in the FTX saga, one that will pit the former crypto billionaire against the Southern District of New York.

The indictment is expected to remain sealed until Tuesday morning. U.S. prosecutors haven’t commented, and neither the Attorney General of the Bahamas nor the Royal Bahamas Police Force would confirm the nature of the charges against Bankman-Fried.

The New York Times reported that the charges against Bankman-Fried included conspiracy to commit wire fraud and securities fraud, as well as standalone charges of securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.

The SEC has initiated a separate set of charges against Bankman-Fried, relating to “violations of our securities laws, which will be filed publicly tomorrow in the Southern District of New York,” enforcement director Gurbir Grewal said in a statement on Monday.

A spokesperson for the SEC declined further comment.

The charges could land Bankman-Fried in prison for decades, legal experts told CNBC. But before he ever serves time, U.S. prosecutors have to secure an extradition from the Bahamas back to New York.

An effort to extradite

“It is inconceivable to me that the Justice Department would have charged this case unless they were confident that they could extradite him,” Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, told CNBC.

Mariotti anticipates an extradition will take weeks to complete.

“The statement by the Bahamian government suggests that they’re going to cooperate,” Mariotti said.

The U.S. and the Bahamas have had an extradition treaty in place since 1931, with the most recent iteration codified in 1990. Because Bankman-Fried hasn’t been convicted in the Bahamas yet, U.S. prosecutors had to secure an arrest warrant and provide sufficient evidence to the Bahamians that he had committed a crime.

Extradition is the first step in a process that could take years to finish. Given the magnitude of Bankman-Fried’s alleged crimes, prosecutors and regulators will be pursuing concurrent cases around the world.

A trial in the U.S. “may not occur for years,” Mariotti said.

“The more that they charge, the bigger that the case is, the more time they’re going to need to get in motion,” he said. “I would say late 2023 is the earliest a trial would occur.”

Prosecutors could argue that FTX breached its fiduciary duty by allegedly using customer funds to artificially stabilize the price of the company’s self-issued FTT coin, Mariotti said.

Intent is also a factor in fraud cases, and Bankman-Fried insists he didn’t know about potentially fraudulent activity. He told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times DealBook conference that he “didn’t knowingly commingle funds.”

“I didn’t ever try to commit fraud,” Bankman-Fried said.

In prepared testimony for the House Financial Services committee, new FTX CEO John Ray confirmed that…