[HN Gopher] The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Frie...
___________________________________________________________________
The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment
[pdf]
Author : dereg
Score : 643 points
Date : 2022-12-13 15:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.justice.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.justice.gov)
| phire wrote:
| What are these campaign finance charges doing here? They seem to
| be completely unrelated to the FTX collapse, he is accused of
| bypassing campigan finance limits by donating under other
| people's names.
|
| Was he already under investigation for these, or was it something
| they discovered while investigating FTX?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > What are these campaign finance charges doing here?
|
| Sending a message.
| favflam wrote:
| He was trying to influence government policy that directly
| affected his business. This is like a level or two below
| bribing the SEC and CFTC to look the other way while breaking
| regulations.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What are these campaign finance charges doing here?_
|
| If police get a warrant to search your basement for heroin and
| find a pile of dead bodies, what do you think happens next?
| hall0ween wrote:
| A _really_ disturbing party?
| andirk wrote:
| I agree with hall0weener. Prosecutors often start with a
| whole bunch of charges and then hone in on the ones they feel
| are worthy of pursuing.
| [deleted]
| politician wrote:
| It's interesting that the US gets priority on prosecution here
| when the losses internationally are far in excess of those of US
| creditors.
| [deleted]
| ajross wrote:
| There's no "priority" at work. The DoJ just filed charges
| first. There's no reason any other jurisdiction couldn't file
| its own case simultaneously, though obviously they're unlikely
| to get him extradited while he's standing trial.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| It's the biggest economy and the strongest "rule of law" out of
| all the large countries in the world. And it has the most soft
| power in the world. I'm not too surprised
| kkielhofner wrote:
| The United States Department of Justice effectively has a 99.6%
| conviction rate[0]. As the article states most of this comes
| from pleas but in cases like this (Theranos, etc) they'll go to
| trial and almost always be found guilty anyway. That's an
| impressive stat and they want to keep it. With a conviction
| rate like that an indictment is practically a guarantee that
| anyone named in it will go to prison.
|
| They also have an incredible amount of law and leverage in
| their favor. For example, another tactic is using statutes like
| "false or misleading statements"[1]. As that article tells it
| they'll often navigate suspects towards making statements
| investigators know to be false and then come back at a later
| interview and let them know they already have them on something
| that can get them five years in prison. There have been famous
| examples of wealthy and sophisticated people (Martha Stewart,
| Dennis Hastert, etc) getting charged under that statute when
| all else fails. Basically, if they want to get you they will
| get you.
|
| All of this is pretty well known and I'm not surprised in the
| least the rest of the world is happy to sit back and watch the
| DOJ "do what it does" and put people in prison.
|
| [0] - https://www.doarlaw.com/blog/2021/04/what-you-should-
| know-ab...
|
| [1] - https://www.iannfriedman.com/blog/2019/april/federal-
| charges...
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| I guess we'll get to see what 3 billion dollars and a well
| connected mother can buy you; I doubt it'll be a free pass, but
| I'm not expecting anything that resembles justice here.
| [deleted]
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Corruption works when one is still rich. If the dude's got
| nothing now (or nothing he can get access too and others
| can't), he's not worth very much.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I'll restrict my comment to condemning the empty cynicism behind
| Elon Musk's tweet [1] that, because SBF donated to Democrats,
| there would be no investigation of SBF, much less an indictment.
|
| And AFAIK Elon Musk hasn't publicly admitted that he was wrong.
|
| [1] https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1591822387267665921
| ciropantera wrote:
| Yeah, such a silly take to imagine that politicians would go
| down with a blatant fraudster like that just because he gave
| them a couple of mil for their candidacies. A big part of being
| a skillful politician is knowing not to tie yourself to corpses
| like SBF.
| [deleted]
| axus wrote:
| Was listening to C-SPAN, they said his written statement for the
| record of the hearing was very offensive. "I would like to state,
| under oath," and then two words they wouldn't repeat.
|
| Doing a Google search of "SBF Fuck You" shows he's already told
| regulators and his lawyers to go F themselves, I'm guessing he
| said the same to the US Congress.
| TideAd wrote:
| it was "I fucked up"
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/12/13/exclus...
| kiernanmcgowan wrote:
| Maybe this guy _isn 't_ as smart as he thinks he is.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's pretty obvious by now I think. Still, he makes just
| about every other thief look like a bumbling idiot.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Forbes published it:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/12/13/exclus...
|
| He said "I fucked up" which would get C-SPAN in trouble with
| the FCC.
|
| It is a very defiant and entitled sounding statement though.
| SilasX wrote:
| Maybe not! There was that case in 2003 where Bono of U2 said
| "fucking brilliant" when accepting an award, and the FCC
| ruled that it was not a violation, because it was not in the
| context of intercourse. But then later reversed itself.
|
| https://www.rcfp.org/fcc-commissioners-find-bono-remark-
| inde...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| No it wouldn't. C-Span isn't broadcast for one thing, for a
| second it's newsworthy, and for a third they could just
| say/write 'I f**ed up'
|
| The US is so babyish about this stuff. One day people shout
| about free speech absolutism, another day they hold mock
| fainting fits over common swear words that virtually everyone
| uses. In other countries this would not merit anything more
| than an arched eyebrow on the part of a newsreader.
| chaostheory wrote:
| The US, like the EU, isn't a monoculture.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Then again, some people are hypocrites.
| chaostheory wrote:
| The US doesn't have a monopoly on hypocrisy either.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You want room 12A, next door.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Hehe, nice one.
|
| I came to realize this when the head of the school our
| son went to called me at home to say that my son had used
| an inappropriate word in school. He wouldn't say what the
| word was, even when prompted several times, as though he
| was unable to utter it. Then finally he resorted to
| spelling out 'f u c k', so I said 'Oh, you mean 'fuck''
| and he nearly lost it. I explained to him that my son
| learned pretty much all of his slang from his schoolmates
| since he'd only been in the country less than a year so
| probably the problem was on his end and left it at that.
| He never did call again...
| dopidopHN wrote:
| very true, but you guys share a common language, a
| foreign policy and some cultural artifacts like the shame
| of using some bad words. Fuck comes to mind but I'm
| honestly more disturb by the N word. Like y'all call it.
| At the same time, none of my business.
| andirk wrote:
| Forbes also published his hair on the cover [0] with glowing
| statements next to his own quote of saying he doesn't know
| anything about stuff. Along with Elizabeth Holmes. Both had
| VERY easily detectable scams for their bullshit.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/Mayhem4Markets/status/159174882554665
| 779...
| vel0city wrote:
| It's been a while since I've had a cable subscription but
| saying "fucked up" on cable was a common occurrence. CSPAN is
| a cable thing, not OTA.
| dereg wrote:
| It should be noted that SBF is facing 165 years in prison.
| [deleted]
| ivraatiems wrote:
| That's a maximum sentence, which is unlikely to match what he's
| realistically convicted of.[0]
|
| Still, he is likely to spend decades in jail.
|
| https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...
| ctrl-f "guidelines"
| likpok wrote:
| Running through the sentencing guidelines on the wire fraud
| hits 15-life real fast though. The sentence increases with
| the amount stolen and he stole a LOT of money (so much that
| the table doesn't cover it! It only goes up to $550 million).
| mikeyouse wrote:
| So aside from the totaling the points on sentencing
| guidelines, wire fraud actually maxes at a 20-year sentence
| per statute, and like Elizabeth Holmes, convictions for
| multiple counts are usually served concurrently. SBF fucked
| up a bit in that wire fraud that affects financial
| institutions (Counts 3/4) max at 30-years. But as a first
| offender, it'd be highly unlikely he sees more than half of
| that.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1343
| rootusrootus wrote:
| This was said about Holmes, too. It matters what he
| actually ends up convicted of. Early speculation always
| runs high.
| shanebellone wrote:
| If this happened before her trial, she might have walked
| imo.
| tptacek wrote:
| Not so much. Holmes guideline sentence redlined the
| sentencing levels too; she got a significantly lower
| sentence than the guidelines allowed.
| dopamean wrote:
| I got downvoted yesterday for implying this. Is it true
| that her sentencing was "right in the middle?"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33963823
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm fuzzy on this too. Her sentence was close to what the
| prosecution asked for, but the prosecution also seems to
| have asked for something much lower than the guidelines
| allowed --- so did the PSR.
| perihelions wrote:
| That's right. Holmes' sentencing guidelines went over the
| top of the scale (45/43), and the prosecution recommended
| a variance to lower that. The guideline calculation was
| 80 years.
|
| - _" Through this variance request, the government also
| acknowledges that the Holmes' crimes were not motivated
| by a short-term desire for financial gain. Second, this
| recommended sentence satisfies the 'sufficient but not
| greater than necessary' standard found in 18 U.S.C. SS
| 3553(a). Finally, the Court will achieve the important
| sentencing goal of providing adequate deterrence to
| criminal conduct through a 15-year custodial sentence."_
|
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/theranos-founder-elizabeth-
| hol... (Mitchell Epner)
| yourapostasy wrote:
| I thought it was standard federal prosecution practice to put
| up huge potential sentencing numbers, then negotiate downwards
| in hopes of securing a swift process, and therefore the initial
| indictment-implied sentencing number carries very little
| context?
| kasey_junk wrote:
| It's not even a negotiation tactic, the defendants lawyers
| know the sentencing guidelines. It's a news release tactic.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Annoyingly, news outlets just recycle the hype. Tired of
| everything being exaggerated for attention in modern
| society, this is one reason faith in social institutions is
| on the wane.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is the rare occasion where the hype sentence might
| actually give you the spirit of how serious the charges
| are; he's "really exploring the space", as Bruce
| Dickinson might say, of how severe you can make a wire
| fraud charge be.
| smeej wrote:
| When do you think we'll start seeing the politicians who received
| SBF's illegal campaign finance contributions insisting on
| returning them to FTX customers so as to be above suspicion or
| reproach?
| favflam wrote:
| There is a campaign finance charge.
|
| The bankruptcy guy has to trace the money flows to political
| campaigns. Judging from his House testimony, this will take
| several months.
|
| I suspect the pressure will be immense to return funds once the
| donations are officially declared dirty during the bankruptcy
| proceeding.
|
| Also, if in fact SBF donated to both sides, then it will be
| quite simple for politicians to refund the money.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| I'm waiting for Sequoia to be put in jail.
| sam345 wrote:
| I'd be interested in the theory. Their investors aren't
| exactly mom and pop operations. But I do agree that their
| promotion of SBF was asinine though that's all clear to the
| world now. And I'm not in favor of criminalizing bad
| investments. Sets bad precedent and incentives.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It will be a long wait, unfortunately. More likely: Sequoia
| will be shouting from the rooftops that they too are victims.
| stickfigure wrote:
| They... literally... are? The SEC has charged SBF over
| exactly that.
| akiselev wrote:
| IANAL but that depends on what their agreements with LPs
| were, doesn't it? The managing partners have a fiduciary
| duty to the fund so couldn't they be held criminally
| liable if they failed to do some due diligence stipulated
| by an LP?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Normally these things are all agreed at the time of the
| original commitment and the closing of the fund, so
| assuming there are LPs each and every one of them should
| have a copy of the obligations of these funds.
| [deleted]
| me_again wrote:
| Already started: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/11/29/beto-
| orourke-sam-ban... . Though I somehow doubt everyone will
| follow suit.
| smeej wrote:
| Does this really count though? They said returned it because
| they weren't expecting it, long before any of the shady news
| about the company came out.
|
| I can respect that move in general, but it's hard to see it
| as a response to the scandal.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| The big issue is that money has already been spent
| [deleted]
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| It's beautiful seeing a justice system work so quickly
| okasaki wrote:
| Is there some reason why this kind of stuff is typed up on a
| typwriter?
| otterley wrote:
| It's not typed up on a typewriter, although it may appear that
| way. Back when I worked in a federal district court, we used
| WordPerfect on Windows to draft judicial documents using a
| standard template that looked much like this; I wouldn't be
| surprised if they're still using it today.
| joegahona wrote:
| Yes! Also, why do they feel the need to do the "a/k/a SBF"
| after every mention of the guy's name? Say it the first time
| then just call him SBF thereafter. I think Typewriter Guy must
| be paid by the character. Another petty thing: I've never seek
| "a/k/a" with slashes like that before -- "aka" is sanctioned by
| Merriam-Webster, and "a.k.a." is also acceptable for
| constipated purists and The New Yorker.
| millzlane wrote:
| Probably an 80's kid. I remember writing a/k/a like that and
| I distinctly remember running essays through a character
| counter and adding filler words.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _never seek "a/k/a" with slashes like that before_
|
| F/k/a is also common. I only see it in legal and compliance
| contexts.
| [deleted]
| olalonde wrote:
| Seems to be standard in those type of documents, e.g.
| https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-
| sdny/legacy...
| darcys22 wrote:
| This was my exact thoughts too! surely human beings from the
| 21st century could have improved on this.
|
| However I'm also pretty sure that lawyers have found a loophole
| to prevent their jobs from being automated, if you just make
| using technology illegal/"not to standard" then they can keep
| billing $500 per hour to use a typewriter
| feet wrote:
| You think lawyers personally are the ones writing documents?
| feet wrote:
| FYI whoever down voted this, no they generally don't. They
| have staff they pay to do that and they look docs over
| before signing them. That is when they aren't using generic
| templates that the paralegals just fill out
| abeyer wrote:
| There's some discussion at https://typographyforlawyers.com/
| about the current state of things, rules and requirements, and
| how to improve things.
| LastTrain wrote:
| Rules vary somewhat by locale, but in general:
|
| https://www.insd.uscourts.gov/sites/insd/files/local_rules/L...
|
| There is a method to the madness. Double spacing allows for
| manual markup and edits, for example.
| Macha wrote:
| Various legal systems have standards for the form for which
| documents should be submitted to them which are surprisingly
| nitpicky in terms of items like fonts and spacing. Of course,
| these standards were created when typewriters were the dominant
| use case, so had deference to what typewriters could actually
| do. Even though most of the typewriter use has fallen out of
| fashion, the standards remain, with the results that the
| documents look like they came out of a typewriter even if (as I
| suspect in this case) it's just been printed then faxed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Consistency also means that rules that state "pages" are
| meaningful limits, not something subject to unresitricted
| gaming, and that they retain that over time.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Also a method my high school English teacher used to
| standardise pages after one too many (i.e. one) comic sans
| 18pt hand ins.
|
| We could use a computer at a certain font, linespace and
| margin so a 10 page essay was consistent.
|
| Which was lots better than other teachers who just said
| 'nope, handwritten please'.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Also a method my high school English teacher used to
| standardise pages after one too many (i.e. one) comic
| sans 18pt hand ins.
|
| Yeah, exactly. The courts are more worried about
| Helvetica Narrow 6 than Comic Sans 18; flip side of the
| same coin, since they tend to have upper rather than
| lower bounds.
| andirk wrote:
| There's definitely a fax machine at some point in this
| document's journey.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Scanner probably, to capture the signatures and the clerk's
| stamp on the front page.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| At this point it also probably makes it easier for law-
| specific OCR software to round up the standard metadata. With
| the sheer volume of paperwork in that industry, nobody is
| interested in reinventing the regex wheel for every document.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Not to mention the real cost of every person reading each
| document having to relearn how this document is laid out vs
| every other document. There is a non-trivial human cost to
| not having a standard document format. Even if it is old
| and crusty.
|
| Also looks like most courts have a style guide for you to
| follow:
| https://www.jud.ct.gov/Publications/Manual_of_style.pdf
| SilasX wrote:
| Doesn't explain why they'd never get with the time and accept
| electronic submissions, which are probably easier on their
| end too.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Federal courts accept (and often have rules requiring-by-
| default, for most purpose) electronic submission.
| SilasX wrote:
| And you didn't feel the need to mention that in your
| reply to the parent comment, that introduced this
| assumption that I was building off of?
| tjohns wrote:
| Electronic submission still involves uploading a PDF,
| which has to follow the court's rules for layout of
| printed pages.
|
| It just means it the file gets directly added into the
| case's docket, rather than having to be manually scanned
| in by the clerks' office.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| You'd think by using electronic submission they'd go with
| machine readable format.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| That would be a lot more work (because of the need to
| accept exceptional paper submissions, and get them into
| the required format) and cost for both the courts and
| _every law office that might have need to file in federal
| court_ , for potentially very little benefit, since the
| processes filings support are human processes for the
| foreseeable future, independently of the data format.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also it makes things more equal. Like appellant courts can
| tell only x number of pages. And for that sort of limit to
| make sense the line spacing, font size and margins need to be
| consistent. With only set of fonts allowed.
|
| Courts really don't want to argue about how any submission is
| laid out and in best case they get to just throw out
| something looking wrong saving their time.
| breck wrote:
| Here is SBF's full statement:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/12/13/exclus...
|
| Worth a read
| rkagerer wrote:
| This part's pretty incorrigible: "I have potentially pertinent
| information concerning future opportunities and financing for
| FTX and its creditors."
| breck wrote:
| > This part's pretty incorrigible
|
| Sorry I don't understand. Can you elaborate?
| rkagerer wrote:
| He kept reaching out to the Chapter 11 exec with a
| fantastic (as in fantasy) notion that he knew a potential
| investor willing to sink billions of dollars into paying
| back users, then wondered why he wasn't getting a response.
| The exec had already told him, "There's nothing to save
| Sam". Can't imagine any sane investor throwing away $8B+ of
| their own money to dig FTX out of their hole.
| breck wrote:
| Lol. Not returning the call of the guy who built a multi-
| billion dollar business from scratch even after he says
| he has an investor willing to invest billions is shady as
| fuck.
|
| As a FTX.us user with funds held by them, I'm deeply
| suspicious of John Ray
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._Ray_III.
|
| Can I demand he speak to SBF?
|
| He's a corrupt coward if he won't even speak to him.
|
| Somebody is a crook here, and I'm thinking it's John Ray.
|
| - Breck Yunits (I'm no anon coward, unlike the others
| talking a lot of trash)
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Go to bed, Sam's friend
| hintymad wrote:
| Does such statement, given what SBF did and said, qualify as
| treacly and sanctimonious?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Not really. He's a pathological liar. There's probably great
| incriminating evidence there (as in lies that can be exposed as
| lies for not a word of that person can be trusted) and it's
| good to see him whine that his accounts got blocked but it's
| not a good read.
|
| The six counts of conspiracy are a great read though. I wonder
| who his co-conspirators are but in case they're in the Bahamas
| those implicated may not be sleeping that well: now they just
| saw that even the bahamian authorities bow to Uncle Sam.
| breck wrote:
| voganmother42 wrote:
| Curious why you believe sbf has earned the benefit of the
| doubt?
| breck wrote:
| The software was good, so I was surprised it was fraud.
| But then my funds were frozen, so I thought it was fraud.
| But now he says he didn't freeze the funds, and this Ray
| guy seems suspicious.
| marssaxman wrote:
| The aggressively useless chin mask in the lead photo sends a
| certain message.
|
| I wonder what he means by saying that "the password to my
| LinkedIn account still hasn't been returned". Is he claiming
| that the "Chapter 11 team" has taken over his account and
| changed his password? Is that... _normal_?
| once_inc wrote:
| They probably changed his keepass or bitwarden main password,
| which effectively locks anyone using those products with
| generated passwords from entering into anything.
| skullone wrote:
| Oh my god. Reading that leaves me with a single opinion: he is
| a broken, corrupt, manipulating fraud.
| breck wrote:
| once_inc wrote:
| To my knowledge, he has yet to give a reasonable answer why
| Alameda was using FTX customer funds. He can't, because that
| should never have happened, and is considered fraud anywhere.
| totalZero wrote:
| The part about the Chapter 11 legal fees is particularly
| interesting. It starts on page 8.
| norin wrote:
| SBF is no Muhammad Ali.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| From https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/13/sam-bankman-fried-denied-
| bai... :
|
| "Bankman-Fried's parents were animated during the proceeding, at
| times laughing or putting their fingers in their ears, according
| to Coindesk."
|
| ... what in the world.. I guess they really think they are going
| to somehow get him out of this.. how do they not understand that
| this type of behavior is not in any way helpful to him?
| foota wrote:
| Maybe this is a case of the apple and the tree?
| brewdad wrote:
| Maybe they already got their millions secured away in some
| untouchable country and don't really care what happens at this
| point.
| tasuki wrote:
| They were already quite well off, now their son is in
| trouble.
|
| "My son is going to prison but I have secured my millions so
| it's fine" is generally not a thing.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Maybe he never was their favorite son anyway.
| bambax wrote:
| Oh I think it's the opposite.
|
| I think they thought of him as the second coming of Jesus
| himself, and he felt he had to do extraordinary things to
| live up to that image (which of course is impossible).
|
| I think he secretly hated it and that's why he trashed
| his own hypocrisy in some interviews, saying that the
| charity talks were all an act and not true.
|
| And I also think that's a big part of his "I'm stupid / I
| fucked up" line of defense. Yes, he may think it helps
| his case (but is he actually that naive?) But the main
| goal is to tell his parents "see, the genius you thought
| I was is actually a complete idiot, what do you make of
| that?!?"
|
| I think he's happy to suffer if that makes his parents
| suffer more.
|
| (Of course that's all speculation and pop' psychology and
| as such isn't worth the electrons it's typed in; but it's
| a possibility.)
| syzarian wrote:
| I think that it is a thing for a shockingly large percent
| of parents. Historically children were the retirement plan
| (in addition to labor for the family). That type of
| thinking is fairly common.
| KMag wrote:
| But aren't his parents pretty successful lawyers who are
| pretty well of on their own? There are usual family
| pathologies and unusual family pathologies, and this
| looks like the latter.
| syzarian wrote:
| I'll rephrase. There are too many parents who don't care
| about their kids or what happens to them. This tendency
| goes up a bit, I think, if the kids are not necessary for
| retirement or care when old age sets in.
| anonporridge wrote:
| > Historically children were the retirement plan
|
| They still are. It's just that the retirement plan has
| been socialized to the level of the nation state. The
| labor of the young takes care of the old. This is
| literally true in the case of social security which is
| funded by taxing current productive labor.
|
| This isn't necessarily bad, because it's the way it's
| always been. But it is something like a multi-
| generational ponzi scheme. It can work for a very long
| time, but eventually, the last generation is left holding
| the bag with no one to pass it onto.
| c22 wrote:
| The last generation will have a lot more to worry about
| than who will take care of them in retirement.
| anonporridge wrote:
| That's exactly the point. The last generations will have
| done their jobs supporting their elder predecessors, but
| won't have anyone to come after them who will take care
| of them.
|
| Left holding the bag.
| csomar wrote:
| > This isn't necessarily bad, because it's the way it's
| always been.
|
| I'm not sure this sentence make any sense. The same could
| be said about slavery. Is slavery not necessarily bad
| because it's the way it's always been?
| anonporridge wrote:
| You're right, that sentence is bad.
|
| Maybe I should have said it isn't obviously bad or some
| new, modern evil that we just invented. It's how human
| social groups that take care of their non productive
| elderly have always operated.
| b800h wrote:
| The futurology trackers have "breakdown of
| intergenerational solidarity" as a possibility with no
| given time frame. It really didn't occur to me how
| implicated the nation state is in this until you pointed
| out the fact (in retrospect, glaringly obvious) that this
| function of family life has been subverted by government.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Do you mind dropping a link to what you're referencing? I
| haven't heard of it.
|
| But yeah, I do see it as a potential systemic problem.
| Because the care for the old has become so massively
| socialized, we also find ourselves in a situation where
| it becomes individually advantageous to not do the
| personal sacrifice of having and raising children. Not
| only is having children a huge financial burden, but it's
| also a huge time commitment. And when you don't get to
| primarily benefit from you own children's productivity,
| that burden isn't as highly rewarded as it has been in
| the past.
|
| I think we're starting to see this break down in many
| first world countries that don't have a replacement birth
| rate. I could see the reactions being one of...
|
| 1) start penalizing the childfree. There's a long history
| of this solution going back to as far as ancient Rome,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_tax.
|
| 2) increase the social reward for having and raising
| children. We already do this to some extent, e.g. the
| child tax credit.
|
| 3) develop non family oriented baby mills. Basically
| state run institutions that raise (and possibly even
| incubate with artificial wombs) children at an industrial
| scale. Brave New World is a classic example of this taken
| to the extreme. We already do this to some degree with
| public schools and face increasing calls to expand it
| with free preschool. If we can figure out how to produce
| healthy, well adjusted members of society with the
| greater efficiency of 1 adult "parent" to 30 children,
| like we do in school, rather than 2 parents to 1-5ish
| children, then we'll probably do it. Currently, it
| doesn't appear that we can do that, judging by the
| outcomes of orphanages.
| b800h wrote:
| It appears on here, for example, under the "Wildcards":
|
| https://espas.secure.europarl.europa.eu/orbis/sites/defau
| lt/...
| smeej wrote:
| The number of self-absorbed parents who care about their
| children only as accessories to their own lives, to be
| embraced when useful and ignored when inconvenient, is
| staggering.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| You'd be surprised.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| I'm glad you have great parents, but I think you vastly
| underestimate how much many parents do not care about their
| children, and will sacrifice them for their own well being.
|
| Most caring parents would aggressively caution their
| children from heading down the path SBF went, especially if
| they're smart, educated parents.
|
| There are no "boy geniuses" out there like many lead SBF to
| believe he was, people from prestigious backgrounds know
| this better than anyone. There are some really smart people
| out there, but anyone being propped up the way SBF was is
| being setup.
|
| I don't have any sympathy for SBF, but a lot people whose
| names we'll never know where more than happy to set him up
| to think he was himself an unstoppable genius because that
| helped them sell a product and they know that it will also
| help focus all the blame.
| sn41 wrote:
| His parents are Stanford law professors, so they are
| smart and educated. But doesn't mean that their child has
| to listen to them or to behave in an ethical manner.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That's the thing. You can do everything you can to
| educate your children and teach them right from wrong,
| but at some point they are free-thinking adults. Of
| course you would be distressed if they end up taking the
| wrong path, but underlying that you would know that you
| did your best and it's not your fault.
| Aunche wrote:
| This is mainstream media being sensationalist per usual. This
| is what the original Coindesk article wrote.
|
| "They appeared to oscillate between dejection and defiance, at
| times holding their heads in their hands and clasping their
| hands. Bankman-Fried's mother audibly laughed several times
| when her son was referred to as a "fugitive" and his father
| occasionally put his fingers in his ears as if to drown out the
| sound of the proceedings."
|
| It definitely sounds more like a stress response.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Lol. When Coindesk is bringing more nuanced news reporting
| than CNBC, you know things are whack.
| ravel-bar-foo wrote:
| They both make money by selling ad space and attracting
| eyeballs to that space, but the audience of Coindesk is
| going to be much more interested in the financial details,
| whereas the more general audience of CNBC is going to be
| less interested in getting the details of the story right,
| and more likely to read a story that is lightly
| sensationalized.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Or maybe it's better said that Coindesk readers are much
| more likely to have real skin in the game, and therefore
| highly penalize news outlets that give inaccurate
| information.
| ccn0p wrote:
| "less interested in getting the details of the story
| right" is exactly what is "whack" about media today.
| mcv wrote:
| Some media seem more interested in getting the details of
| a story wrong.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Wrong vs right is unimportant when short term profit is
| at stake.
| humanizersequel wrote:
| I wasn't acquainted with them until roughly 6 months ago,
| but from what I've seen Coindesk has actually been an
| excellent publication.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Media arm of digital currency group. Fine people, but
| just as a disclaimer.
| catominor wrote:
| things be whack
| leobg wrote:
| What a laughable game of telephone. A writes "holding their
| heads in their hands". And B, presumably to add their own
| twist to the story, perhaps to avoid quoting A verbatim,
| turns it into "put their fingers in their ears".
|
| Edit: Just realized that A actually did speak of the father
| putting his fingers in his ears.
| joeblubaugh wrote:
| So you're saying that the facts in the sentence are true
| lr4444lr wrote:
| They watched their own flesh and blood son transition with
| breakneck speed from a high rolling billionaire who hobnobbed
| with society's elites to facing spending the best years of his
| life in prison, a disgrace to his family and their legacy. How
| do you think you'd cope with that psychological ordeal?
| H8crilA wrote:
| The act never ends. Surely, in a decade or two or three, SBF
| will be looking all innocent from behind bars and still
| unable to open his mouth without incriminating himself.
|
| I wonder how many others will be charged. This will be more
| difficult than walking all over this guy, and I seriously
| doubt he is alone in all of this.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And quite probably are near the top of the clawback list if
| it turns out that any of the funds ended up with them. They
| have very good reasons to be distressed, their sons future
| behind bars is only one of the things they need to be worried
| about. Their whole world is crashing down around them,
| besides of course becoming persona non-grata to pretty much
| all of their friends and quite possibly family in case others
| got sucked in as well. I don't envy them.
| Animats wrote:
| Oh, it's worse than that. There will at least be civil
| suits. Possibly criminal prosecution.[1]
|
| NYT: _" Mr. Bankman was deeply involved in FTX. In its
| early days, he helped the company recruit its first
| lawyers. Last year, he joined FTX staff in meetings on
| Capitol Hill and advised his son as Mr. Bankman-Fried
| prepared to testify to the House Financial Services
| Committee, a person familiar with the matter said. FTX
| employees occasionally consulted him on tax-related
| matters, the person said. Mr. Bankman visited the FTX
| offices in the Bahamas as often as once a month, a person
| who saw him there said. ... He and Ms. Fried stayed in a
| $16.4 million house in Old Fort Bay, a gated community in
| Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas; the couple's names
| appear on real estate documents, according to Reuters,
| though Mr. Bankman-Fried has said the house was "intended
| to be the company's property.""_
|
| His class at Stanford has been cancelled.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/technology/sbf-
| parents-ft...
| uplifter wrote:
| From that quote it isn't clear precisely how Mr. Bankman
| was involved with his son's firm, how much he was an
| insider, particularly in the later days as the fraud
| presumably intensified. It's plausible that SBF, digging
| himself deeper in fraud while getting high on his own
| supply, insulated his law professor father from the
| seedier proceedings at his darling company. Probably will
| take the courts to determine the apple's proximity to the
| tree.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It appears that his goose is fried, not cooked. As a
| lawyer he really should have known better.
| anon7725 wrote:
| That's what gets me about this whole thing: two law
| professor parents. A gaggle of young, incredibly wealthy
| people who all had their tickets pre-punched with
| prestige schools, A-list jobs like Jane Street, etc. I
| have to admit, this story has pissed me off more than
| most of these corporate frauds.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's never enough I guess. Holmes is another case like
| that.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Sure as hell wouldn't laugh and put my fingers in my ears
| during a hearing. They are professional lawyers. Time to man
| up and not put your son at even more risk. Who knows how
| involved they've been in his shenanigans up til now, but it's
| time to stop the madness..
| mattnewton wrote:
| This reads like a stress response to me. I don't think
| realizing your child is probably going to live behind bars
| for the rest of your life and your family will never
| recover is something you "man up" through.
| chip-8 wrote:
| I agree. People act weird under extreme stress. Once when
| I arrived at work my boss was grinning. I asked him what
| was going on and he told me my co-worker tried to kill my
| supervisor. I laughed. Other co-workers were laughing and
| grinning too.
| cutemonster wrote:
| What happened with the co-worker? (Prison?)
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| Academic lawyers (his parents) are nothing like trial
| lawyers. Don't expect them to have a good poker face.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Best years? More like all the years.
| HPMOR wrote:
| He should not go to prison for life. Nobody should ever go
| to prison for life, for wasting money. Money is literally
| made up. Sure, opportunity cost is real, but seriously
| nobody should ever lose their life for money.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| True. The focus should be as much on rehabilitation and
| restitution.
| laluser wrote:
| Think about it this way. Money is people's time. SBF
| stole billions of hours of people's personal time.
| Effort, savings, sweat, tears all bundled in what we call
| money. Why shouldn't he repay them with _his_ own time in
| jail?
| standardly wrote:
| That doesn't really repay them anything.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| What happens if they money was someone else's means to
| pay for their health care?
|
| Money is made up - that doesn't mean it doesn't have
| consequences.
| wikfwikf wrote:
| Hear me out, what if we allowed people to access health
| care regardless of who has how much money?
| oblio wrote:
| While your direct point is valid (for the US), you're
| missing the general point.
|
| Money can be tied to life changing/life threatening
| events or situations in many more scenarios.
|
| The archetypal scenarios are people losing college money,
| retirement savings, downpayments for their kid's
| apartments/houses, etc.
|
| There are many ways in which money is very, very real.
|
| Anyone who still clings to this "fiat" thesis is just
| detached from human reality.
| HPMOR wrote:
| I am of the mindset that non-violent offenders, should
| not suffer a life penalty regardless of their alleged
| crime. They played a game and lost, they should not lose
| their head as well.
| heartbeats wrote:
| A game with whose stakes?
| mcv wrote:
| As warning, not as victim blaming, I'd like to point out
| that you should never ever risk money that you can't
| afford to lose on high-risk investments. Especially not
| extremely high risk stuff like cryptocurrencies, NFTs and
| similar scams.
| j-krieger wrote:
| He stole billions of possible retirement money. Of course
| he should go to prison for life.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| How will wasting his life behind bars help bring
| restitution?
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Making him grind out restitution at $1/hr on hard labor
| would do it.
| cellis wrote:
| DPR is rotting for life, for contracting a hit on an
| entirely fictional person and mostly conducting a very
| upstanding market. I never thought that was fair, but US
| laws are US laws.
| HPMOR wrote:
| I'm not familiar with what you are referring to, however
| I would argue that attempted assassination <> losing
| custodial funds.
| ricochet11 wrote:
| DPR == Dread Pirate Roberts == Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road
| operator)
| smeej wrote:
| DPR =/= Ross Ulbricht, at least not in reality.
|
| FBI agents who were proven to have access to that handle
| are also in prison for it. There's no 1:1 "Ross is DPR,"
| and that's part of the problem.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > ... a disgrace to his family and their legacy
|
| Count 8 of the indictment: _" Conspiracy to defraud and
| violate the campaign finance law"_.
|
| Who was running the fundraiser? SBF's mom.
|
| Who was helping SBF trying to obtain regulatory capture of
| the crypto currency exchange market in DC? SBF's father.
|
| I'm not sure SBF is the only one to bring disgrace to that
| name, that'll from now on always be associated with fraud
| indeed.
| asveikau wrote:
| I think being faced with this or having your kids faced with
| this probably elicits all kinds of stress responses and coping
| mechanisms.
|
| I could totally see myself engaging in nervous laughter if one
| of my kids fucks up this badly. I could also see twisting my
| worldview to make my kids innocent in my own mind, as a form of
| denial, unconditional love for the kids, etc.
|
| From press reports it seems possible those parents did a poor
| job raising him, that the apple didn't fall far from the tree,
| but I think also we shouldn't rush to judgement or draw
| conclusions where another explanation might suffice.
| Aleksdev wrote:
| They must live in ivory towers and don't understand exactly how
| bad this is..
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Direct link to PDF without Javascript: curl -s
| https://www.docdroid.net/kxfZltq/unsealed-indictment-in-us-v-
| bankman-fried-22-cr-673-abrams-as-sam-bankman-fried-of-ftx-heads-
| to-sdny-echoes-of-onecoin-and-un-bribery-cases-pdf \ |tr
| -d '\134'|sed -n 's/u0026/\&/g;s/.*\"application\/pdf\",\"uri\":\
| "//;s/\".*//;/https:/p'
|
| Q+D script using curl to download from "DocDroid"
| #!/bin/sh read X Y; unset Y;Y=${X##*/}; echo
| "$X" \ |sed 's/^/url=/' \ |curl -4sK- \ |tr
| -d '\134' \ |sed -n 's/u0026/\&/g;s/.*\"application\/pdf\"
| ,\"uri\":\"//;s/\".*//;s/https:/url=&/p' \ |curl -4o
| "$Y".pdf -K-
|
| For example, echo
| https://www.docdroid.net/kxfZltq/unsealed-indictment-in-us-v-
| bankman-fried-22-cr-673-abrams-as-sam-bankman-fried-of-ftx-heads-
| to-sdny-echoes-of-onecoin-and-un-bribery-cases-pdf \
| |1.sh; muPDF unsealed-indictment-in-us-v-bankman-
| fried-22-cr-673-abrams-as-sam-bankman-fried-of-ftx-heads-to-sdny-
| echoes-of-onecoin-and-un-bribery-cases-pdf.pdf
|
| More DocDroid URLs can be found at
|
| https://www.reddit.com/domain/docdroid.net
|
| and of course
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=docdroid.net
| dang wrote:
| Thanks. We've since changed the URL from
| https://www.docdroid.net/kxfZltq/unsealed-indictment-in-us-v...
| to the proper source, which I assume is a direct link with no
| fuss.
| [deleted]
| ksala_ wrote:
| This is an interesting way of writing a quick and dirty script,
| completely different than I would have written it (I would have
| definitely have used a lot more subshells, temporary variables,
| escaped the characters in the commands, "#" in sed instead of
| "/" and a lot less sed magic).
|
| If anyone is curious as it took me a bit to decipher (and I
| consider myself quite familiar with shell scripting!):
| read X Y
|
| Read the stdin into X and Y. I'm honestly not sure why read Y
| here as it's unset and re-defined on the next line?
| unset Y;Y=${X##*/};
|
| Unset Y, use Parameter expansion to match the regex " _/ "
| greedy and delete it from the string, assign it to Y. Also I
| believe that using "_" here is a "bashism" so it would not work
| on a strict posix shell :) echo "$X" \
|
| Echo X to be piped as stdin in the next command
| |sed 's/^/url=/' \
|
| Use sed to prepend url= to the string |curl
| -4sK- \
|
| Connect over ipv4 (-4), don't output (-s, silent) and read the
| config from stdin (-K-). Apparently curl support reading what
| to fetch from a config file, I was not aware that curl
| supported that |tr -d '\134' \
|
| Delete all backslashed from the input. "\<number>" is the octal
| ascii code of the character |sed -n 's/u0026/\
| &/g;s/.*\"application\/pdf\",\"uri\":\"//;s/\".*//;s/https:/url
| =&/p' \
|
| Several substitutions, and don't echo the output automatically
| (-n). Replace "u0026" with "&" (u0026 is the unicode number of
| ampersand - not sure why but docdroid use that in their page),
| all occurrences. Select the line that matches
| '.*"application/pdf","uri":"' Match "https:" and prepend it
| with "url=", and print it curl -4o "$Y".pdf -K-
|
| As above, parse the config file to download the output to
| $Y.pdf (-o) over IPv4
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| read X Y
|
| "Read the stdin into X and Y. I'm honestly not sure why read
| Y here as it's unset and re-defined on the next line?"
|
| You can drop the Y but then if you unintentionally have
| anything after the URL on stdin the script will break.
| unset Y;Y=${X##*/};
|
| "Unset Y, use Parameter expansion to match the regex "/"
| greedy and delete it from the string, assign it to Y. Also I
| believe that using "" here is a "bashism" so it would not
| work on a strict posix shell :)"
|
| There is no regex. This is globbing. It is a shell feature
| sometimes called "Parameter Expansion". This will delete
| everything up to "/".
|
| I am not a bash user. I use NetBSD ash as both the
| interactive and scripting shell. |curl -4sK-
| \
|
| "Connect over ipv4 (-4), don't output (-s, silent) and read
| the config from stdin (-K-). Apparently curl support reading
| what to fetch from a config file, I was not aware that curl
| supported that"
|
| I only use curl in HN examples. I do not use it otherwise, so
| the -K- option is just a stupid hack to make curl behave more
| like the programs I actually use: yy025, nc and so on.
| |sed -n 's/u0026/\&/g;s/.*\"application\/pdf\",\"uri\":\"//;s
| /\".*//;s/https:/url=&/p' \
|
| "Several substitutions, and don't echo the output
| automatically (-n). Replace "u0026" with "&" (u0026 is the
| unicode number of ampersand - not sure why but docdroid use
| that in their page), all occurrences. Select the line that
| matches '. _" application/pdf","uri":"' Match "https:" and
| prepend it with "url=", and print it"
|
| This does not select the line that matches the pattern, it
| deletes everything up to that pattern in _all* lines of the
| input. It then deletes everything after double quotes from
| all lines of the input.
|
| Yes, I escaped the forward slashes. That adds some
| characters. Sometimes when dealing with URLs as input I will
| use a character that is not permitted in URLs as a separator,
| such as "<" or ">". As a matter of course, I do not use "#"
| as a separator because, for me, it makes inline sed comments
| prefixed with "#" more difficult to distinguish. I also
| superfluously escaped the double quotes out of habit. No need
| in this case.
| [deleted]
| jayess wrote:
| I'm a civil lawyer, not criminal, but maybe a criminal lawyer can
| chime in. Don't they have to allege specific facts in an
| indictment? If I were served with this as a civil complaint, it
| would be deficient on its face.
| DannyBee wrote:
| This is just the Federal grand jury indictment.
|
| See https://www.justice.gov/usao/justice-101/charging
|
| It is a pretty typical indictment, fact wise. They don't often
| include the level of line by line detail you would find in a
| civil complaint. They mainly exist to let you know what you are
| being charged with, not to make the case to you that you are
| guilty.
|
| Civil complaints are also deliberately meant to be detailed
| enough that people try to settle them ahead of time, pre
| discovery.
|
| If you looked at non grand jury state proceedings, the criminal
| complaint would look closer in detail to a civil one.
|
| Though I believe they have to extradite here so you will likely
| see a more detailed version that ends up in Bahamas court,
| depending on what they/the treaty requires
| johndhi wrote:
| Also a civil lawyer so not certain but I know there's a saying:
| "you can indict a ham sandwich," meaning the standard is very
| low.
| [deleted]
| ivraatiems wrote:
| How anyone could look at this man's behavior over the last few
| weeks and _not_ think he was on a fast track to a federal
| penitentiary is beyond me.
|
| A word to the unwise: If you have done something, anything, that
| you have a credible reason to believe the United States
| government thinks is illegal, _shut up_. Do not do any of the
| following:
|
| * Go on a podcast and talk about it
|
| * Go on a Twitter livestream and talk about it
|
| * Tweet about it
|
| * Answer questions from those you committed the crime against
| about it
|
| * Speak to journalists about it
|
| Instead, _shut up_. Shut up shut up shut up shut up. Your defense
| attorneys and your ankle will thank you.
|
| It does not matter whether it was an honest mistake or not. It
| does not matter whether you agree, philosophically, that it ought
| to be illegal. It does not matter whether Congress wants to talk
| to you about it first. It doesn't matter whether you've lived a
| life so sheltered and privileged that you cannot conceive of the
| idea that anyone from the government might be out to get you.
|
| Imagine the US Justice Department as an extremely patient,
| extremely hungry predator, and yourself as a delicious, plump
| prey animal with two broken legs hiding behind a rock. _Anything_
| you do or say to anybody except your lawyer will be used against
| you. So shut up.
| birracerveza wrote:
| No, no, let him talk.
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > How anyone could look at this man's behavior over the last
| few weeks and not think he was on a fast track to a federal
| penitentiary is beyond me.
|
| That was obvious, but some of us who have seen some version of
| this before have been saying he was going to end up in prison
| when he entered US political donating/purchasing influence
| since the beginning of 2022; it was clear where this was all
| going and the hope was that it would take down all the alt
| scams, but somehow despite not having any BTC it has taken down
| the entire cryptocurrency market for no discernible reason.
|
| Its the epitome of contagion effect in practice; and while
| hindsight is 20/20 I fear that the greatest take away here will
| be missed because of the ire that has been fomented in the
| media: insiders will use anything to achieve their largess,
| that regulation is a loosely held panacea when said insiders
| use influence and resources to grift.
|
| I think he will get a light sentence, relative to the amount of
| money that has been lost, like Elizabeth Holmes as he scammed a
| lot of big players/rich people but it will not be the 2 life
| sentences that Ross Ulbricht, and that is the real point: we
| have a multi-tiered judicial system with a very clearly
| established selective application of the Law.
| freyr wrote:
| It's common knowledge to keep your mouth shut at this point.
| You don't need to have highly-regarded lawyers advising you to
| know this, but SBF had (at least) two: his parents, who were
| with him in the Bahamas.
|
| Even if he was under a delusion that the rules wouldn't apply
| to him, we can assume his parents would do everything in their
| power to reign him in if this was not some sort of strategy.
|
| From what I understand of the interviews, he carefully avoided
| going into details, and instead used the opportunity to present
| himself as an "aw, shucks" borderline simpleton with a heart of
| gold who just got in over his head. He was going to be arrested
| either way, so how do you see this as not a carefully-planned
| attempt to improve his public image?
| xnyan wrote:
| >You don't need to have highly-regarded lawyers advising you
| to know this, but SBF had (at least) two: his parents, who
| were with him in the Bahamas.
|
| My experience has been that working with family or very close
| friends often nullifies or severally weakens professional
| sensibilities. It would be very understandable and almost
| expected if his parents are too closely involved emotionally
| and financially to be objective in this situation, and even
| if they were, the parent-child relationship also affects how
| one takes advice.
|
| I would never rely on a close family member for important
| legal services, it seems almost as bad an idea as relying on
| yourself for legal services.
| drooopy wrote:
| No kidding. If my business had lost billions of dollars
| belonging to other people, I would only be talking to a small
| army of lawyers. This guy acted like he had a deathwish.
| [deleted]
| jwmoz wrote:
| SBF is quite obviously on the spectrum and I think that has a
| lot to do with his inability to use "No comment".
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > SBF is quite obviously on the spectrum and I think that has
| a lot to do with his inability to use "No comment".
|
| He may be, but going for the Lauri Love defense as your 'hail
| mary' may have been his only move left; they'll likely claim
| that this will be clear indication of his mental state in
| order to to get a lighter sentence or end up in a white-
| collar prison rather than a stint in Chino.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| SBF is a self entitled, privileged prick. He has no concept of
| infallibility. He is smart and rich so he thinks he will be
| given a pass
| dang wrote:
| Ok, but can you please stop posting unsubstantive/flamey
| comments to HN? You've done that repeatedly, unfortunately.
|
| You may not owe ex-billionaire fraud defendants better, but
| you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I don't think it would have made much of a difference either
| way. The feds did their own investigation and would have
| arrived at the same conclusions anyway
| wslack wrote:
| Honestly though, I'm happy he talked more in this situation. We
| shouldn't decry people who acted horribly unethically digging
| their own legal grave.
| [deleted]
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| But, he has a savior complex... And you should too!
| dilawar wrote:
| Today there was an article about his parents in nytimes. I
| think at at least one of them is professor of law. And both
| parents seems to be involved with his company. I wonder if he
| didnt get any advice from them about not talking?! Maybe he
| knew that he is done legally and there is no downside to
| talking to public.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| There's a pathology amongst wealthy people where they think
| that the law doesn't apply to them, period, and are simply
| shocked when it does.
|
| Some other recent examples of this include the lawyer Michael
| Avenatti going to jail for decades for stealing from his
| clients, and everything that has ever happened to Donald
| Trump.
|
| (In my experience as a white person it is mostly other white
| people who think this, but I don't want to generalize.)
| techdmn wrote:
| I would argue they have this belief because it is so often
| true. Exceptions are surprising to many people.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| It's true _to an extent_. It 's rarely true to the extent
| they imagine.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Check this out
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
| MarcoZavala wrote:
| foobazgt wrote:
| > (In my experience as a white person it is mostly other
| white people who think this, but I don't want to
| generalize.)
|
| How to casually stereotype without stereotyping?
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Wealthy is subjective, I know, and here, on HN, it's
| certainly more subjective than most places, but are
| Stanford professors really consider wealthy? By northern
| california standards?
| [deleted]
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The guy is a thief who defrauded millions. His hubris is what
| got him in this situation.
| CodeIsMyFetish wrote:
| Both of his parents are in law too. Like, you'd think he'd know
| enough to not say anything.
| jayess wrote:
| It's often arrogance that leads to these things. I have a
| feeling he thought that the "aw shucks, I didn't know what was
| happening and I want to make things right" shtick would somehow
| work. He seems like a pretty dumb guy.
| [deleted]
| engineer_22 wrote:
| SBF's mother and father are both Standford law professors - so
| he knows all this.
|
| He has another angle. Maybe he was trying to taint the jury
| pool. He was up to something, but what?
| belter wrote:
| Parents also not out of the woods.
|
| "The FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried's mother and father, who
| teach at Stanford Law School, are under scrutiny for their
| connections to their son's crypto business." -
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/technology/sbf-parents-
| ft...
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I'm beginning to suspect this story is deeper than it
| looks.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Judge people by their observed behaviors, not what you assume
| they should know. Lots of people should be smart and should
| act more intelligently than they do.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| There are many accounts of SBF's capacity for subterfuge. I
| don't believe he was blabbing about what he did because
| he's stupid.
| hef19898 wrote:
| You can be a smart crook and still be stupid enough to do
| stupid things. Especially if you think you are smart
| enough to get away with it.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgWHrkDX35o
| Xeoncross wrote:
| I don't pity SBF, but this advice is important for innocent
| citizens. It's unfortunate that anything you say to law
| enforcement can be used against you - but none of it can be
| used for you. A police officer can testify against you, but if
| they try to support you it will be dismissed as "hearsay".
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| He didn't speak to the police though. Just to randos with
| podcasts in the crypto sphere
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > It's unfortunate that anything you say to law enforcement
| can be used against you - but none of it can be used for you.
|
| Is it really unfortunate? There is simply an implicit
| assumption that humans avoid incriminating themselves when
| possible but are very quick to offer excuses. That seems to
| align pretty well with my experience. Therefore, we assume
| that if someone says something contrary to their own interest
| is is more likely to be true.
| p0pcult wrote:
| >Is it really unfortunate?
|
| Yes; the system should not be biased towards guilt.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| This is arguably biased towards justice, not guilt.
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that
| one innocent suffer."[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
| 2devnull wrote:
| There are times when it doesn't apply. But yes, for most
| people in most situations, as most of us know, you don't
| talk. It's called the fifth amendment. School children learn
| about it in civics class.
| thefaux wrote:
| Do we even have civics in most schools anymore?
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes.
| p0pcult wrote:
| Let me guess: you live in the suburbs, or your kids go to
| a private school, or you are relying on your past.
| tptacek wrote:
| I live in Illinois, where it's a statewide requirement
| for graduation.
| freejazz wrote:
| Because one is hearsay and one is a party admission. This is
| basic evidence law.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
|
| obligatory "don't talk to the police" link.
| thathndude wrote:
| Lawyer here. I give this guy's book out to anyone I care
| about. Friends, family. I even highlight the bit at the end
| with the practical advice. Everyone needs to know this.
|
| The friendliest police officer in the world is not your
| friend
| TrickyRick wrote:
| I'm impressed it took a whole 33 minutes for this to be
| linked!
| danso wrote:
| I'm surprised this classic video is 10+ years old but has
| only 18M views.
|
| edit: Saw that the professor, James Duane [0], has his
| own Wikipedia page, almost entirely on the popularity of
| the Youtube lecture. Even more surprising, his Talk page
| seems to be free of debate over Duane's notability.
| Pretty impressive for a single videoed lecture!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Duane_(professor)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Should be shown in elementary schools as part of the
| curriculum.
| p0pcult wrote:
| But then youd be disrupting the school-to-prison
| pipeline![1]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/School-to-
| prison_pipeline
| smegger001 wrote:
| I was shown it in high-school by a particularly good
| social studies teacher.
| belter wrote:
| Yes but they always miss Part 2 :-)
|
| "Don't Talk to the Police Part 2" -
| https://youtu.be/tIt-l2YmH8M
| gamblor956 wrote:
| OTOH, as a former public defender I have no problems
| talking with the police.
|
| The police aren't your friend. They're also not your enemy.
|
| Talking to the police as part of an investigation doesn't
| make you a suspect. Seriously, how do people think criminal
| investigations are done? Talking to witnesses is a huge
| part of investigating. People very rarely finger themselves
| as potential suspects; it's almost always the _other_
| witnesses who identify them as suspects.
|
| If you're worried that you've done something wrong, talk to
| a lawyer first. 99.9% of the time, they'll tell you it's
| fine. Of course, if you tell the police you need to talk to
| your lawyer first, they'll want to know why you think you
| need a lawyer; if I were your lawyer, that's the first
| thing I'd wonder too. And if you weren't considered a
| potential suspect before you definitely will be on their
| short list after.
| rurp wrote:
| I can see why someone familiar with the law would be
| comfortable speaking with the police, but it's tough for
| a lay person to know if they are being lied to or will
| inadvertantly say something seemingly benign that causes
| them grief. Given that police are allowed to lie with
| impunity and _might_ become your enemy, it 's almost all
| downside for oneself to speak to them.
|
| If cops were obligated to be honest in more respects I
| would be more willing to open up, but of course they
| don't want any restrictions in that area. Cops in the US
| want to be able to lie whenever it's convenient and also
| have everyone trust them, but that's not a very fair
| bargain for the general public.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| If the police are asking you questions, they're not lying
| to you...they're just asking questions.
|
| And if the police say something seemingly benign that
| causes you grief, you can look forward to a large-ish
| settlement to make up for your troubles.
|
| People on HN rarely interact with the police and it seems
| they have an unrealistic, media-driven perception of how
| cops actually act. For point of reference, it's the same
| as how non-techies assume that every tech employee can
| hack their way into a bank account or rig together a go-
| kart from spare parts.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| they're not .. not lying to you, either. Maybe!
|
| https://reischlawfirm.com/police-allowed-to-lie/
| gamblor956 wrote:
| That's mostly FUD from a criminal defense firm trying to
| scare people into hiring them.
|
| Cops are not as bad as people think they are. Cops
| behaving badly (in the U.S.) is news _because it is the
| exception and not the norm._
| hprotagonist wrote:
| ~30% of wrongful convictions is just rounding error,
| right?
|
| https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/detai
| lli...
| paulpauper wrote:
| It all depends. For a speeding ticket, giving your info to
| the police tends to make it easier, although you do not
| have to answer his questions.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| The lawyer mentions this in his talk.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| If an officer testified in support of you about what he
| witnessed, why would that be hearsay?
| pliftkl wrote:
| If you tell a police officer that you did a crime, then
| your words are admissible as evidence against you. If you
| tell a police officer that you did not commit a crime, you
| can't have the police officer testify in your defense that
| you told him that you did not commit the crime.
|
| Witnessing things is a completely different matter.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| "If you tell a police officer that you did a crime, then
| your words are admissible as evidence against you."
|
| This is because the people who wrote the evidence rules
| believe nobody would admit to a crime unless they are
| guilty. So it's a hearsay exception.
|
| The exception isn't meant to be a sinister trick to treat
| you unfairly, it's meant to lead to the right people
| going to jail and the right people not going to jail.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Talking to the "regular" police and talking to a federal
| investigator are two completely different things. At the
| federal level they have "false or misleading
| statements"[0] which is a felony with a five year max.
| People have been convicted and done prison time on this
| alone based on nothing other than the notes and testimony
| from a federal investigator. At the state level probably
| the best they have is "obstruction of justice"[1] which
| requires things like physically interfering with the
| police or destroying evidence and even those actions have
| lesser penalties than "false or misleading statements".
|
| I have a friend who is a federal criminal investigator
| and his advice when/if the feds show up is to say nothing
| other than "Do you have a business card? Someone will be
| in touch." and get a lawyer ASAP.
|
| [0] -
| https://www.iannfriedman.com/blog/2019/april/federal-
| charges...
|
| [1] - https://www.pallegarlawfirm.com/obstructing-
| justice-in-flori...
| SilasX wrote:
| Ehhh that's still misleading. It makes it sound like when
| the officer testifies about your statements, it goes
| through a magical filter in which only the inculpatory(is
| that the word?) stuff can come in, but not the
| exculpatory. Like...
|
| During Mirandized interrogation:
|
| Doe: "I grabbed her wrists after she picked up a knife to
| attack me."
|
| In court:
|
| Prosecutor: "What, if anything, did you learn from
| questioning Mr. Doe?"
|
| Officer: "He said he grabbed her wrists."
|
| Defense attorney on cross-examination: "In what context
| did Mr. Doe grab her wrists?"
|
| Officer: "After she picked up a kni--"
|
| Prosecutor: "Objection! Hearsay!"
|
| Judge: "Sustained. Jury will disregard anything about the
| accuser picking up a knife. Wrist grabbing stuff is
| fine."
|
| ^Not remotely how it works, at all, but what you might
| falsely believe from being told "your words are
| admissible against you, not for you".
| jayess wrote:
| Because hearsay is an out-of-court statement, but there are
| exceptions, including a statement against the person's
| interest. FRE 804(b)(3).*
|
| In other words, if you try to introduce an out-of-court
| statement that _supports_ your case, it 's hearsay; if the
| statement is against your interest, it's allowable.
|
| Of course there are other exceptions and nuances, but this
| is the jist of it.
|
| * https://www.rulesofevidence.org/article-viii/rule-804/
| SilasX wrote:
| But it's not like that acts as a filter against anything
| in your interest, since it would still come out on cross,
| right? I tried to illustrate with my comment here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33973220
| rootusrootus wrote:
| At first, that sounds weird. Then I read the link you've
| provided. Now I understand how it makes perfect sense.
| Thanks for the explainer.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| IANAL.
|
| But it's unlikely the Police officer actually _"
| witnessed"_ anything that'll help you.
|
| If you tell police officer you did something bad, it's
| essentially a confession and reported as such.
|
| If you tell police officer you did something good, it's
| hearsay - you told it to officer who told it to judge &
| jury.
|
| Then there's jurisdictional details as to their role and
| rules of evidence etc that will vary from country to
| country.
|
| But it's a shocking revelation to most people that Police
| cannot effectively help you in court. That's not their
| role.
|
| -----------------------
|
| Edit: Found it - federal rule of evidence 801(d)(2)(a) -
| Opposing Party Statement
|
| https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/federal_rules_
| o...
| bushbaba wrote:
| Also if a cop lies hard to say who is right. But if you
| never talked to a cop unless your lawyer was present with
| recording equipment, etc. well, that's a much more solid
| defense.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| There are plenty of exceptions to the hearsay rule,
| though; there are also times when something that seems
| like it's hearsay isn't. Exception: maybe you made the
| statement to the cop while you were covered in blood and
| blubbering about something you had witnessed, making it
| an excited utterance. Or maybe your lawyer is eliciting
| the statement from the cop not to suggest to the jury
| that it's true, but to show you had no motive, making it
| fall outside of the hearsay rule.
|
| Police have a responsibility to testify truthfully under
| oath, within the constraints of the rules on hearsay. But
| that doesn't mean they are forbidden from saying anything
| in your favor, no matter what.
| freejazz wrote:
| It's hearsay 101 - an out of court statement by someone who
| didn't say it, being offered for the truth of the
| statement. it's not hearsay when you say it to the officer
| because that is a party admission.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I really don't get this either. The guy has got to have a whole
| legion of lawyers. How are they allowing him to still speak
| publicly? I'm not even important and I've been consoled by
| company lawyers to not talk about stuff just "just in case".
| Yet this guy is is involved in one of the most high profile
| cases of all time screaming from the mountaintops about it.
|
| This whole FTX thing is very suspicious on all kinds of levels
| internally and externally. So many things about FTX don't make
| sense as presented.
| xena wrote:
| He ignores the lawyers.
| mindslight wrote:
| The strategy of ignoring advice from attorneys has "worked"
| for Trump and Musk. Welcome to the age of solipsistic anti-
| expertise, where _cult_ ivating your personal brand matters
| above all else. It seems like an inevitable condition of
| deep set post-reality. The interesting question is what
| develops next.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Fascism. Large flowery fascism.
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How anyone could look at this man 's behavior over the last
| few weeks and not think he was on a fast track to a federal
| penitentiary is beyond me_
|
| Seeing how thoroughly he convinced people that he had political
| influence, and given his general lack of awareness, I'm willing
| to give merit to his believing he was immune. Similar to how
| people outside securities think insider trading is more rampant
| than it is, insider trade in the most obnoxiously obvious way,
| and then promptly get caught.
| SilasX wrote:
| Yeah, and he was also in a state where the same strategy kept
| working again and again, so he may have been convinced it's a
| fundamental aspect of reality.
|
| Any time SBF ran into trouble, he could just raise another
| round of financing, or borrow against artificial valuations,
| or "smooth things over" with the right people.
|
| Once that happens enough, I imagine a lot of people would
| start to feel some cosmic _entitlement_ to it, like that 's
| just how it is, the FTT tokens _must_ be worth $24 each, it
| 's only a matter of "getting liquidity"[1], you can always
| raise more money, you can always call in a favor, you can
| always borrow against what you think the assets are worth,
| there's no reason to hold customer assets in their original
| form.
|
| Heck, even to the very last days, when his attorneys and CFO
| were telling him he _had_ to declare bankruptcy, he adamantly
| insisted that new funding was _just about_ to come through --
| and even that he got the offer moments after declaring --
| but, of course, he can 't say who, or under what terms, even
| _why_ they would invest. [2]
|
| Personally, I always try to maintain a frame of "these good
| times don't have to last, they can go away at any moment, so
| make sure you're ready for if/when that happens". But maybe
| I'd falter too, in the same position.
|
| [1] A frame even _informed_ observers buy into! Earlier
| comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33539326
|
| [2] ctrl-f for "Mr. Bankman-Fried was also frustrated.":
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/technology/sam-bankman-
| fr...
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Reminds me of someone or other who committed voting fraud, to
| prove that it's easy to get away with committing voting
| fraud, and immediately got caught.
| bredren wrote:
| Do we have some examples of people who have amassed great
| real or perceived fortunes (and power) that have not become
| drunk on it?
|
| Musk on stage with Chapelle last night, Elizabeth Holmes, or
| SBF's whole schtick, who are the ones who have kept their
| feet on the ground?
|
| What are the attributes of these others who don't lose
| themselves in fawning attention and (sometimes short-lived)
| mountains of capital?
| mlindner wrote:
| Elon on a comedian's show is not not having your feet on
| the ground...
|
| You realize that he's not asking to go on the show, people
| are asking him to come on the show. Your questions should
| be directed at Dave Chappele.
| yibg wrote:
| Probably the hundreds of billionaires you've never heard
| of.
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| While not popular here, I would say Bezos has done a
| relatively good job of keeping his head amongst madness.
| astrange wrote:
| The popular wisdom is Amazon got into the video business
| entirely so Bezos could get dates with more actresses.
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| That may be a popular wisdom but it doesn't make sense.
| You really think a multi-billionaire who is moderately
| good-looking couldn't get a date? With literally anyone?
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| It IS pretty damning that Bezos (and Gates IMO) are the
| ones held up as "not letting the wealth and power change
| you". Bezos literally flew in a giant cock-rocket wearing
| a cowboy hat.
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| Sure that is great comedy fodder, but it isn't really at
| the same level of the others.
| IncRnd wrote:
| There are so many people who have obtained fortunes and not
| become drunk on that.
|
| The person who built a liquor store and grew into 20 stores
| across the city. People who started consulting companies.
| That immigrant family who scraped and scraped for decades
| while living above their restaurant. The list is endless,
| especially compared to the much shorter list of crypto
| criminals who are drunk on their illusory power and fame,
| which seems to always disappear overnight.
|
| Any fool can make a fortune; it takes a person of brains to
| hold onto it.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Liquor stores and consulting companies don't stack up to
| the " great fortunes" gp was asking about.
| alexcabrera305 wrote:
| That imaginary liquor store owner, even as an imaginary
| person, has more of a fortune than SBF at this point.
| IncRnd wrote:
| Except "great fortunes" isn't what gp wrote. GP wrote,
| "great real or perceived fortunes". Besides, how do you
| know what fortunes people have made with their liquor
| stores or consulting companies?
|
| Ross Perot was a billionaire from consulting, before
| being a billionaire was a thing. Plus he was a genuinely
| good person.
| [deleted]
| mrandish wrote:
| > There are so many people who have obtained fortunes and
| not become drunk on that.
|
| Both my perception and my experience from knowing several
| extremely wealthy 'self-made' people is that the vast
| majority are fairly quiet, prudent, bright and hard-
| working people who've managed to make (mostly) good long-
| term decisions and continue doing so consistently over
| time. I suspect the "crazy, playboy billionaire"
| stereotype is based more on high-visibility outliers
| rather than the majority. Outlandish, eccentric and/or
| entitled behavior makes for good stories and click fodder
| while typical long-term value-building behaviors are
| pretty boring.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Money really is wasted on some people
| ksaxena wrote:
| See some videos on YouTube of Warren Buffet and Charlie
| Munger conducting Berkshire's annual shareholder meetings.
| It will help.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Quick link to 2022:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E_seuUbfUGw
|
| Although I get the impression a large part of Buffet's
| normalcy is because he's chosen to spend his time making
| money for other people.
|
| If you're ridiculously rich... you could do worse than
| thinking of common people as your boss, for perspective.
| llimos wrote:
| Warren Buffett might be one example
| irrational wrote:
| Some possibilities are Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos and Bill
| Gates ex-wives (though, maybe they don't count as amasssing
| their fortunes), um...
| idontpost wrote:
| Rockefeller avoided the press entirely (to his detriment
| really) until well after he'd retired.
| copperwater69 wrote:
| parenthesis wrote:
| Jeff Bezos: Hey MacKenzie, let's quit our great jobs at
| DE Shaw, move across the country to Seattle, and start an
| online bookstore! [In 1994!]
|
| By saying yes, she was, in effect, Amazon's first
| investor, and worked there in the early days. The value
| of positive support from family cannot be underestimated
| (see also Jeff Bezos' parents' early investment in the
| company).
| misnome wrote:
| I can well imagine there being a selection bias towards the
| ones who want to build a cult of personality being the only
| ones that "make news".
| boringg wrote:
| I would argue most do especially those who accrue it over
| time. Most power isn't in the broad open nor does attract
| attention necessarily (unless thats where it draws its
| source of power). It's those who attain it (power/money) in
| very short order that have significant difficulty adjusting
| to their change in circumstances.
|
| You are only pointing to the very few who couldn't handle
| it or are drawn to attention.
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| Warren Buffet? Maybe Bill Gates? Queen Elizabeth II?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Gates seems to be caught up in Epstein stuff. Maybe. So
| I'm not sure where he stands. He does know when to shut
| his pie hole though.
| datavirtue wrote:
| It runs in his family.
| autotune wrote:
| The only thing he has done that I am aware of is become
| Farmer Gates in the retirement years.
| etothepii wrote:
| I don't think QE2 amassed her wealth and power. She was,
| officially, given it by God.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| If the comparison point is SBF, then pg exceeds this bar.
| He doesn't flaunt it, but it's there.
|
| Power is hard to measure, but in this context it seems
| reasonable to include lots of founders in the list. The
| Collison brothers, sama, and Brian Armstrong, to name a
| few. They're all in charge of fortunes that normal people
| can only dream of.
|
| I don't think any of them have made critical errors. And
| it's arguable whether Musk has, but time will tell.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Yes, you've likely never heard of them:
| https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/
|
| I have no clue who these people are:
|
| Hank & Doug Meijer
|
| Tom & Judy Love
|
| Stewart & Lynda Resnick
|
| Andrew & Peggy Cherng
|
| In fact the list of ones I recognize is tiny compared to
| the whole list.
|
| Some of them don't even have pictures, but they're all
| billionaires. And yes, I consider even a single billion to
| be a great, real fortune. Most people will never crack a
| million.
| [deleted]
| comte7092 wrote:
| >Seeing how thoroughly he convinced people that he had
| political influence
|
| We've gotten tot he point where we've gone way too far off
| the deep end when it comes to this narrative around political
| influence. the collective imagination seems to have risen to
| comic book level proportions.
|
| All people saw was SBF gave a bunch of money and thought, "he
| must have a ton of influence". Meanwhile, in my state, he
| gave $11 million to a democratic candidate who lost in the
| primary and was transparently an absolute joke of a
| candidate.
| noelsusman wrote:
| His donations to Democrats accounted for 0.025% of all the
| money Democrats spent on the midterm election last month.
| Anyone who genuinely believed that can buy you a get out of
| jail free card for billions of dollars in fraud should
| seriously re-evaluate how they think the world works.
| lisper wrote:
| You're not wrong, but on the other hand... the limit on
| direct contributions to federal campaigns is $5800. I can
| tell you from personal experience that this is enough to
| get a meeting with any senator or congressman except the
| most senior leadership (their price is about 10x more).
| So for about $3-4M/yr you can have every incumbent
| senator and representative on speed dial. They won't
| necessarily do your bidding, but they will return your
| calls.
| wmorein wrote:
| Is this really true? How does it actually work? You
| donate $5800 then give them a call and ask for a meeting?
| I assumed that would take a lot more.
| lisper wrote:
| If you give them $5800 they will start calling you to ask
| for more money. If it's a Congressman they will usually
| call you themselves. If it's a Senator they might call
| you personally, or they might have their campaign manager
| call. But from there it's pretty easy to get a meeting if
| you want one.
|
| You don't even have to give $5800 in most cases. $1k is
| plenty to get the attention of junior congressmen and
| even some less well known senators.
|
| Just to put all this in perspective, it's actually
| possible to get meetings with these people without giving
| them money, especially if you're a constituent. But the
| more money you give, the higher you move up in the
| priority queue, and it doesn't take much to move to the
| front of the line.
| JoblessWonder wrote:
| Just seconding everything you are saying. We dabbled in
| political contributions at my workplace for a project and
| it was easy to get a meeting with just about anyone
| (except our Senators who we didn't need to try) as long
| as we were flexible with scheduling.
| comte7092 wrote:
| It's also important to note that a part of a politicians
| job is to meet with constituents, so getting a meeting is
| not _per se_ nefarious. The issue is about how much
| _more_ access you get if you are a big donor.
| lisper wrote:
| That's right. Also worth noting that if you want to
| influence policy (as opposed to getting personal favors)
| it is quite effective to call their office and speak to
| staffer, or write a letter. Every call and letter is
| assumed to represent the views of hundreds of people who
| couldn't be bothered to call or write. You don't have to
| be long-winded because the only result of your action
| will be that a staffer puts a tally mark on a sheet of
| paper, but the results of those tallies can occasionally
| move the needle on votes.
| datavirtue wrote:
| They will contact you.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| He donated almost 1bn - that is known of. The Democrats
| spent about 5bn in the whole election. Do you have a
| source for your numbers?
| BryantD wrote:
| I think that given SBF's assertion that he donated an
| equal amount of dark money to Republicans, it would be
| wise to mention the amount of money they spent as well.
| Otherwise you risk giving the impression that this
| problem is limited to a single party.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/30/ftx-
| billi...
|
| I also think the 1 billion figure is inaccurate. In May,
| SBF said that he _could_ spend a billion between now and
| 2024. However, he backed away from that quote in October:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/14/sam-bankman-fried-
| backtracks...
|
| Elon Musk later said that SBF "probably" donated over 1
| billion, without providing any supporting evidence. I
| can't prove that he's thinking of the May statement but
| it seems plausible if not certain. Either way, Elon
| Musk's guesses are not proof of anything.
|
| I'm glad you asked for sources. It's always important to
| provide them.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Are you counting PACs?
| comte7092 wrote:
| What's your source for the $1bn?
|
| Axios wrote that he spent $37 million on the midterms:
|
| https://www.axios.com/2022/11/15/ftz-crypto-bankman-
| fried-de...
| blueyes wrote:
| Can all the people who claimed SBF would never be
| arrested because of the corruption of media,
| establishment and Democrats please ask themselves how
| many other false things they believe because of their
| tribe's ideology?
| vkou wrote:
| No, because there's always another theory that you can
| jump to when your prior assumptions fail you.
|
| Here's an easy one: "He was only arrested because he was
| going to reveal damning truth in today's Congressional
| hearing."
|
| Even if the DOJ, Congress, and SBF all swear until they
| are black and blue that it wasn't the reason for the
| timing of the arrest, the theory can change to "Of course
| they would say that, they are all in on the deep state
| conspiracy."
|
| The beautiful thing about the world is that there is an
| unlimited number of unconfirmable and unrefutable
| possibilities and could-have-beens that can be used to
| support any idea - sensible, or silly.
| wereallterrrist wrote:
| Surely a meager bit of attention paid to fear/disgust-
| based politics [now don't project here folks ;)], would
| dissuade you from that notion. There's always a deeper
| conspiracy to double down with. Or outright lies. Gish
| galloping, etc.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| I almost called BS on your statistic, but a simple Google
| search shows that this year's midterm elections saw
| spending of up to $16.7 billion [1], so it appears to be
| true. As a non-US citizen, the amount of money in US
| politics shreds my mind...what are they even spending it
| on? Ads? Campaign outreaches? How much do these things
| cost?
|
| If it's how it is in my weird African country (Nigeria),
| I'll wager that most of the money is spent on
| advertisements and clueless campaign managers and staff
| enjoying the grift. But then, I understand; the U.S. is a
| really rich country with a high percentage of
| politically-active citizens, so they put their money
| where their mouth is.
|
| 1- https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/03/2022-midterm-election-
| spendi...
| comte7092 wrote:
| It's important to keep in mind how much more expensive it
| is to buy ads in major US media markets. It's not
| difficult to spend tens of millions of dollars just
| buying television ads for a few weeks during campaign
| season.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Single ads are actually pretty cheap. Full campaigns that
| are designed to reduce or eliminate opportunities for
| your competitors to also advertise on the same station
| are expensive.
| bragr wrote:
| Mostly ads, there's a lot of staff too, but the typical
| campaign salary is pretty paltry and reporting laws limit
| opportunities for grift.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Consumerism. If you don't roll out a full blown corporate
| propaganda machine you aren't going anywhere.
| tzs wrote:
| > We've gotten tot he point where we've gone way too far
| off the deep end when it comes to this narrative around
| political influence. the collective imagination seems to
| have risen to comic book level proportions.
|
| What's particularly stupid is most of the time that people
| are going off about how some company or person gave a bunch
| of money and that is obviously why Congress passed the bill
| that company or person supported, the companies or people
| that opposed the bill _also_ gave a ton of money to the
| same members of Congress that the first company or person
| did.
|
| Also, often those companies on both sides of the bill
| donated a lot to the members of Congress that supported the
| bill and those that opposed the bill.
| c22 wrote:
| So why do they donate all that money?
| jiscariot wrote:
| He was the #2 donor behind Soros to Democratic candidates.
| It's not every day that the number two gets indicted for a
| multi-billion dollar fraud. It is good to see questions
| around influence arise.
| BryantD wrote:
| This is accurate for non-dark money.
|
| Interestingly, if we take SBF at his word that he donated
| equally to Republicans in dark money, he would be the
| fifth largest donor to Republican candidates.
|
| https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/3720141-here-are-
| the...
| gweinberg wrote:
| Why on earth would you believe anything he says without
| evidence?
| comte7092 wrote:
| Questions around influence are good, but what I'm
| referring to is different.
|
| There were numerous posts on this forum who were adamant
| that nothing would happen to SBF because they were
| certain that he had the Democratic Party bought and paid
| for. It's the certainty that I'm calling out here ("comic
| book level), not the skepticism.
| pcwalton wrote:
| > It is good to see questions around influence arise.
|
| If he hadn't gotten indicted in, like, a couple of years,
| then sure. But people were _assuming_ he wouldn 't be
| indicted days after FTX collapsed.
| pcwalton wrote:
| > We've gotten tot he point where we've gone way too far
| off the deep end when it comes to this narrative around
| political influence. the collective imagination seems to
| have risen to comic book level proportions.
|
| Seriously. If I had a nickel for every time someone had
| posted on HN "SBF is immune because he donated a lot of
| money to Democrats" I'd have... well, a lot of nickels.
|
| Madoff donated a lot of money to Democrats too and it
| didn't help him one bit.
| 2devnull wrote:
| I think this is a bit far fetched. He was the scion of famous
| law professors. He grew up around the law. To think he didn't
| understand what the general public does about the law takes a
| special kind of ... assumption that directly contradicts the
| obvious facts. He very likely knows more about the law than
| anyone on here. How could he not?
| tptacek wrote:
| Has anybody seen any evidence whatsoever from SBF in any of
| his dealings at FTX or any of his dealings in the downfall
| of FTX that evinces any sort of legal savvy whatsoever? My
| parents are musicians. I'm not.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| My father sold cars most of his adult life, and certainly
| throughout all the time we shared together until his death.
| He was very good at it. And yet I know fuck all about
| selling cars or cars in general. Nada. Nothing. I didn't
| even learn to drive until I was in my thirties. "X's
| parents are in profession Y" hardly means anything.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Not even "here's how to negotiate and get a good deal on
| a used car"? Sorry to hear, that's the kind of stuff a
| parent should pass on if they know.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > He very likely knows more about the law than anyone on
| here. How could he not?
|
| The answer is simple, through a lack of knowledge.
| Knowledge of the law is not genetically inherited.
| LiquidSky wrote:
| Your theory of the genetic transmission of legal knowledge
| is an interesting one. We await your research for further
| study.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| I don't think the poster is proposing genetic
| transmission. Rather it's fairly common for parents to
| share "insider knowledge" they have with their kids to
| help them be successful. But this does not always happen.
| salawat wrote:
| Mind the old aphorism: >The Cobblers kids have no shoes.
|
| Not everyone brings work home with them, or forces their
| kids down that path.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| > How could he not?
|
| Well, he's not a lawyer, for one...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > He very likely knows more about the law than anyone on
| here. How could he not?
|
| There are actual lawyers on HN. I don't think proximity to
| lawyers makes one as knowledgeable as an actual one.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Lawyer up and shut up is the most basic advice. Ever.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I know a dev who is married to a lawyer. He knows enough
| not to offer an opinion.
| [deleted]
| estebank wrote:
| My father is a civil engineer. That doesn't qualify me to
| build a bridge.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Sure. But you probably know a few basics about bridges.
| That's the overarching point - a basic lawyer thing is if
| you are ever in trouble, don't talk to anyone: cops,
| media, etc. so it's curious why he decided to anyway.
| estebank wrote:
| TBH, a little knowledge is worse than no knowledge. Fewer
| chances to overestimate your own understanding in the
| later case.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| I think you meant to say "That's the overarching pont".
| tmtvl wrote:
| Now that pun is going too far.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| don't worry, we'll cross that off when we get to it.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| The easy answer is that he was zooted to the gills on
| ADHD meds. There might be others too.
| akgerber wrote:
| The work of a famous law professor is very different from
| the work of a defense lawyer, and generally involves very
| little interaction with the business end of the justice
| system.
| anotherman554 wrote:
| If he's committed crimes, he almost certainly doesn't
| listen to his parents, since lawyers by training are risk
| adverse, and tend to tell you not to do things that can
| land you in jail.
|
| So if you believe he's committed crimes, then it doesn't
| become far fetched to imagine that he'd continue to not
| listen to his parents on matters of criminal defense.
| kcplate wrote:
| > He very likely knows more about the law than anyone on
| here. How could he not?
|
| Lawyers and judges break the law, sometimes intentionally
| out of arrogance derived from how adeptly they believe they
| can skirt it because of their knowledge and position.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Oh, I believe he believed it. I just can't imagine an
| impartial observer from outside his lil universe believing
| it.
| isx726552 wrote:
| Probably also shouldn't go back and delete semi-incriminating
| tweets[0] and try to avoid bot detection by tweeting one letter
| at a time[1] to keep the overall count the same
| (supposedly)[2].
|
| [0] https://protos.com/sam-bankman-fried-caught-deleting-more-
| tw...
|
| [1] https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/11/14/sam-bankman-fried-
| cryp...
|
| [2]
| https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/ywz4j8/sam_...
| pacetherace wrote:
| Tldr: Being stupid and naive is not a good legal defense
| hef19898 wrote:
| Not a lawyer neither, but in the leaked testemony of his to
| congress, he states multiple times that he didn't want to file
| for Chaoter 11 and even ordered people not to. Sounds a little
| bit incriminating, postponing Chapter 11, insolvency
| proceedings and all that.
|
| Seems he really cannot shut up...
| nroets wrote:
| Or he didn't want to file for Chapter 11 because he is
| obsessed with being in the limelight. That would also explain
| why he can't shut up.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Either way, this whole story deserves a book, a film and a
| ton of popcorn.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Where do people who do these kind of crimes go when they're
| sent to jail? Like.. is there a jail for financial criminals? A
| place where you're not sharing a bunk with a serial killer but
| just a billion dollar fraudster?
|
| Or are they usually put into the same place?
| revicon wrote:
| Minimum security prison, at least in the United States.
|
| https://blog.globaltel.com/white-collar-prison/
| revscat wrote:
| Donald Trump did exactly the opposite of your advice at every
| turn, yet remains free and unindicted. SBF's main mistake seems
| to have been not cultivating political clout before committing
| fraud, not anything related to what he said or did.
| astrange wrote:
| Trump's corporations are indicted and he's banned from
| running charities in New York. He was also impeached twice,
| which is the same thing as being indicted (and convicted
| too).
| jcranmer wrote:
| > He was also impeached twice, which is the same thing as
| being indicted (and convicted too).
|
| The Senate trial is the equivalent of conviction; the House
| impeachment trial is more the equivalent of a grand jury
| indictment (although a very politicized one). No US
| President has ever been convicted in the Senate trial,
| Trump included.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Trump was president. Not saying the POTUS is above the law,
| but it's a much more complicated & explosive situation for
| law enforcement. And his political clout & influence he used
| to commit said crimes in broad daylight is way more than some
| political donations.
| [deleted]
| belter wrote:
| Last interview. Some pressure applied here...
| https://unusualwhales.com/sbf-interview
| pseingatl wrote:
| In this last interview, he talks about how several customers
| had negative balances on the platform due to margin trading.
| According to the SEC's civil suit, the only customer that had
| a negative balance was Alameda.
| jwmoz wrote:
| They blatantly were doing all sorts of illegal stuff with
| Alameda-they had god-mode (no liqs) and probably could see
| and snipe other peoples stops.
| hackerlight wrote:
| Source?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I beg to differ. By all means, keep talking!
|
| I just don't follow my own advice I give to criminals like SBF.
| dokein wrote:
| I generally agree with you, but if I had to steelman SBF's
| actions:
|
| 1. Prosecutors don't operate independently of the court of
| public opinion. They can throw the book at you (e.g. the George
| Floyd officers) or let you off easy (e.g. other officers who
| historically did similar things but did not face the same
| charges).
|
| 2. The current perception is that he committed fraud (like
| Madoff), and if convicted for that would likely go to prison
| for the rest of his life.
|
| 3. He's clearly not _innocent_ of wrongdoing, and there 's too
| many people involved who are cooperating with authorities, so
| just being quiet doesn't help him as much (in contrast to being
| found at a crime scene with no witnesses).
|
| 4. If he can get a conviction only of criminal negligence then
| perhaps he can get out of prison faster.
|
| 5. Thus perhaps if he can loudly admit to being a bumbling
| idiot and super negligent, it might sway the public opinion to
| criminal negligence instead of outright fraud.
| danso wrote:
| FWIW it's possible that SBF's post-FTX-bankruptcy actions and
| words created such a spectacle that federal regulators and
| investigators were spurred to hit him hard and fast. But all
| the key evidence cited* comes from what he either tweeted
| before the collapse, or presented in private to investors.
|
| By comparison, Do Kwon has been relatively quiet but that
| didn't stop him from South Korea putting out an arrest warrant
| on him in September. But it seems he's still "free" b/c he
| spent his time hiding his whereabouts.
|
| * (at least in the SEC civil lawsuit)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| People keep saying this, but honestly, does anyone really think
| it makes one iota of difference?
|
| Fact is that there is a _huge_ paper trail of SBF 's
| malfeasance, nevermind the fact that his co-conspirators appear
| to be turning against him. If anything, his interviews seemed
| to be his attempt to argue for negligence over malice in his
| case.
|
| Yes, SBF is going to prison for a long time. No, I don't think
| anyone has made a viable argument that his interviews over the
| past few weeks are likely to make his sentence worse.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Hard to say how much difference it would make but why would
| you give your opponent a freebie?
| abakker wrote:
| It does. His tweets were in the SEC's complaints this
| morning. Tweets AFTER the collapse.
| cjensen wrote:
| Yes it has made a difference. In white-collar crimes,
| prosecutors have to prove intent. That means they have to
| somehow find evidence that the defendant meant to do various
| things improperly. SBF has literally given interviews where
| he has stated the required intent for some of the crimes.
|
| As an unrelated aside, note that this is also a way of
| punishing lower classes of people more severely. If you
| shoplift, prosecutors don't have to prove you meant to do
| that rather than just accidentally failing to pay. Generally
| laws for intent are for people that legislators can identify
| with, and there is no intent requirement for people
| legislators don't personally identify with.
| TearsInTheRain wrote:
| intent matter for a lot of crimes across the board
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > SBF has literally given interviews where he has stated
| the required intent for some of the crimes.
|
| Do you have examples of what you are referring to? As you
| say, intent matters here. The vast majority of quotes I've
| seen from his interviews are along the lines of "I suck at
| accounting", but that he didn't intend to steal funds.
|
| But again, the other reason I don't think it matters is
| that there were plenty of other recorded examples that _do_
| show intent, e.g. cases where SBF was lying on Twitter
| specifically to try to cover his tracks:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33632472
| throwaway742 wrote:
| At least under CA law they do have to prove intent for
| shoplifting.
|
| >Shoplifting is defined as entering a commercial
| establishment with an intent to commit larceny while it's
| open during regular business hours and the value of the
| property taken, or intended to be taken, is $950 or less.
| Any other entry into a commercial business with intent to
| commit larceny is burglary.
| tyingq wrote:
| I think it does make a difference. It's effectively taunting
| the prosecutors, who will find ways to retaliate. So prison
| time either way, but likely more than if he had shut up.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Yes - he easily could've spent a decade out of jail -
| possibly with quite a lavish life - and ended up serving much
| less jail time.
|
| So - on basically every account - he would've been _far, far_
| better off to STFU.
| himinlomax wrote:
| Point is, there might be enough dirt to convict him without
| him talking, but there can't be any less with him talking.
| fmajid wrote:
| White-collar crime prosecutions are notoriously time-consuming
| to prepare, by those standards this was remarkably swift.
| whatashammy wrote:
| obruchez wrote:
| Vegaphobia or not, I fail to see any link here.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The opening phrase is killing me. What can "From at least in or
| about 2019" mean? Does it mean not before 2019? Does it mean 2019
| at the latest?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| IANAL, but I did serve on a criminal jury once. Not that it
| means much. When we got instructions for how to render a
| verdict, every charge was explained in plain English, maybe one
| or two sentences, and definitely included the date. It seems to
| be a technicality that matters, and someone could walk if the
| date is wrong.
| outside1234 wrote:
| It means that they have identified acts back to 2019 but are
| not foreclosing on finding more acts earlier.
| hammock wrote:
| That's what "at least" means.
|
| The "in or about" is separate, and means they found things
| that may have been in 2019 but are not foreclosing that those
| particular things may have occurred at a different time
| mh- wrote:
| oops, I didn't see your reply when I posted mine. yours is
| a clearer explanation.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Things that happened earlier than 2019 have dates less than
| 2019, no?
| outside1234 wrote:
| The law is definitely not a formal grammar like we have in
| computer languages, yes. :)
| mh- wrote:
| _(not a lawyer)_
|
| there are two separate things here.
|
| "on or about" (s/on/in, in this case) is an expression[0]
| that indicates an approximation. hedging in case it
| actually happened in, say, 2018 or 2020.
|
| the "at least" is what you'd think, of course. combining
| the two in this way feels awkward, but it's common usage
| [1].
|
| [0] https://www.nolo.com/dictionary/on-or-about-term.html
|
| [1]
| https://www.google.com/search?q=%22at+least+on+or+about%22
| function_seven wrote:
| That kind of phrasing is boilerplate for indictments. It's used
| even in the most nailed-down circumstances. Here's a bit from
| Zacarias Moussaoui's indictment for 9/11 [0]:
|
| > _On or about September 11, 2001, Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-
| Nami, Ahmed al-Haznawi, and Ziad Jarrah hijacked United
| Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757, which had departed from
| Newark, New Jersey bound for San Francisco at approximately
| 8:00 a.m. After resistance by the passengers, Flight 93 crashed
| in Somerset County, Pennsylvania at approximately 10:10 a.m.,
| killing all on board._
|
| I mean, if they're being careful about the date of _that_ ,
| they'll do it for all dates. (Curiously, though, the very next
| paragraph in that indictment doesn't use the "on or about"
| qualifier.)
|
| [0] https://www.justice.gov/archives/ag/indictment-zacarias-
| mous...
| AndrewStephens wrote:
| It prevents the defense from using the precise language as a
| technicality.
|
| "You honor, my client is accused of crimes starting in 2019,
| but we intend to show that the fraud started in 2013. That is
| completely different crime which this case does not address.
| Motion to dismiss"
|
| That probably wouldn't work, but why take the risk?
| kipchak wrote:
| At minimum roughly in 2019, but possibly earlier?
| reisse wrote:
| I think it means "we have evidences about his crimes in 2019,
| but we suspect he also commited some crimes earlier, and if
| we'd find additional information in due course, we reserve the
| right to add it to the charges" in legalspeak.
| jpmattia wrote:
| > "did transmit and cause to be transmitted by wire, radio, and
| television communication"
|
| Note to self: Remember to use only free-space lightwave
| communications to avoid committing wire fraud.
|
| Edit: Removed "fiber" because it looks too much like a wire and
| avoid being busted by outside1234!
| Kab1r wrote:
| Aren't light waves and radio waves the same phenomenon at
| different wavelengths?
| officialjunk wrote:
| radio is a narrow range of frequencies of light; a subset of
| light. there's a technicality in there that could still work.
| jpmattia wrote:
| Of course, but the fact that they redundantly spell out
| "radio" and "television" (as though they aren't the same)
| makes me think we have a good chance of convincing a jury
| that "light" is something completely different.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| And the prosecution will spend an entire day trotting out
| some physicist in front of the jury saying why light and
| radio are the same thing. I'd love to hear the defense
| question the physicist about why they are wrong
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I think the defense would handle that pretty easily.
| Question the physicist until things are confusing, get
| him to repeatedly state that he is not an expert on the
| law or legal definitions (he is a physicist) and leave
| the jury thinking "Well, I didn't understand that guy,
| I'm sure it was some physics thing, but doesn't apply to
| the law."
| fein wrote:
| Carrier pigeons should still work.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Then you have to worry about falcons, or Blackadder. Smoke
| signs, maybe... but then you have to worry about the weather
| and wild fires... Seems they thought that one through!
| bigwavedave wrote:
| What about flag signaling? Asking for a friend.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| Ok as long as you don't use a halyard, since rope could
| be considered wire.
| [deleted]
| Kubuxu wrote:
| Pigeons would probably fall under `mail fraud`.
| egberts1 wrote:
| If the laws of USPS made during 1800s pigeon mail carrier
| are still on the book, then yeah, mail fraud.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _did transmit and cause to be transmitted_
|
| I often wonder why lawyers cling to this archaic form of
| verbiage, when they could just write 'transmitted, and had
| others others transmit [...]'.
| simplicio wrote:
| I assume if your trying to prove someone violated a law, it
| makes sense to use the exact phrasing in the law, rather then
| paraphrase and leave the defense some possible semantic
| wiggle room.
| politician wrote:
| "The device transmitted on its own, my client didn't cause
| the transmission."
| anigbrowl wrote:
| They could make that argument anyway. The semantic content
| is identical.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| The fact that they named the chat group channel for their
| executives (SBF, Caroline, others) "Wirefraud" is jawdropping.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Tell me they didn't...
| totalZero wrote:
| SBF denied it but the Guardian picked it up. No idea if
| it's true.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/13/sam-
| bankman...
|
| https://archive.ph/fUnp3
| CSMastermind wrote:
| They did, Caroline also made a Tumblr post that said
| something like, "When I add being feminine to my dating
| profile should I put it before or after the section on wire
| fraud?"
| xwdv wrote:
| I refuse to believe this. No one uses Tumblr.
| nashashmi wrote:
| it works better than twitter
| [deleted]
| outside1234 wrote:
| That's considered "a wire" by the law now :)
| jpmattia wrote:
| Curses! Foiled again!
|
| Does it help that I've now removed the fiber?
| salawat wrote:
| Odds are the legal system will converge on a non-technical,
| highly abstract meaning of "wire" to the effect of "any
| medium for conveyance of a signal over long distances
| (where long distances can reasonably be concluded to
| encompass multiple jurisdictions).
|
| This is why Legalese and English are truly seperate beasts
| linguistically.
| jpmattia wrote:
| Alas, it looks like I'll have to use my Maxwellian
| knowledge for good rather than evil after all.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| yabones wrote:
| RFC-1149 is the only safe way to commit fraud.
|
| https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1149
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Unless some stool pigeon testifies against you.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| That's when you call in some Goodfeathers [0] to make the
| problem go away
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZPwdGbxwNU
| p1necone wrote:
| Make sure you set the evil bit to true too.
|
| https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3514
| [deleted]
| soyiuz wrote:
| I've seen a bunch of his interviews now and his message is pretty
| controlled, actually. It all boils down to: (a) I don't know,
| wasn't aware, and (b) I messed up / lost focus. These appearances
| seem to play a therapeutic (instead of legal or financial) role
| for SBF (bad idea, obviously). Yesterday (12/12) he was still
| talking about returning in a "senior executive role" to help in
| the bankruptcy. He is also convinced FTX USA and FTX Japan were
| fully solvent and that they still have a future. Fascinating.
| smolder wrote:
| Every indication is that he's lying through his teeth about
| being unaware.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Sounds like a sociopath.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| "If you attract customers and investors by saying that you have
| good risk management, and then you lose their money, and then
| you say 'oh sorry we had bad risk management,' that is not a
| defense against fraud charges! That is a confession!"
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-12-13/how-to...
| Panzer04 wrote:
| Levine, as always, trotting out the bangers :)
| crmd wrote:
| Let's see if his 'I'm baby' defense works in court.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Let's see if he goes full "My dad is Li Gang!"
| Melting_Harps wrote:
| > Let's see if his 'I'm baby' defense works in court.
|
| It was a foolish move to open his mouth at all on the matter,
| let alone go on every podcast that invited him and took every
| interview to spout his self-incriminating non-sense and riling
| up the Media and the public's ire in the process.
|
| If that was his goal, he has terribly failed to establish
| anything that suggests it will work
|
| Worst yet... is his choice for chief counsel:
|
| _In the U.S., Bankman-Fried has hired defense lawyer Mark
| Cohen, who is best known for representing Ghislaine Maxwell
| during her sex trafficking trial, as well as Mexican cartel
| boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman._
|
| This string of fails along with his lawyers high profile cases
| (that ended unfavourable for his clients) makes it seem like he
| is screwed. He will remain in prison until February at Fox Hill
| [0].
|
| Personally speaking, he and everyone affiliated with FTX and
| Alameda have face severe, costly and lengthy sentences; if
| they're going to go after influencers who lend their name and
| reputation to these scams then scrutiny has to be made for
| those politicians, media and VC insiders who also participated
| in this scam. This has to be the only inevitable outcome in
| this because without any oversight on that side of things this
| vanity given to businesses that operate with the false
| legitimacy of being _licensed or regulation_ will never be
| addressed if it doesn 't expose how those things are granted
| when you have resources to spend to buy your way into
| compliance.
|
| 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2022/12/13/sam-
| bankm...
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Is that the kind of high end lawyer you get when other high
| end lawyers say 'No'?
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| Yeah he went to Michael Avenatti first but he had a
| scheduling conflict.
| lscdlscd wrote:
| It's the kind of lawyer who will get you the best outcome
| when you know you'll be convicted of some very bad things.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Or maybe there's one set of lawyers who are good at
| defending innocent defendants and another set of lawyers
| good at defending guilty ones?
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| Not a lawyer, but two different high level policies for
| defense depending on whether your client is innocent or
| not makes sense to me. At the highest level, it may even
| come down to two classes of lawyers with expertise in
| each category.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Makes sense to me. One type of defense is focused on
| acquittal. The other is focused on getting the shortest
| sentence and/or smallest fines.
| tootie wrote:
| Speaking of which, I sincerely hope (though not holding my
| breath) that they take a good, hard look at the Sequoia
| partners who enabled this. Diligence is theoretically part of
| their job and they either committed an act of gross negligence
| by not doing any, or they committed an act of conspiracy by
| seeing what the game was and blessing it.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| You see your honor I simply didn't know I wasn't supposed to
| siphon customer funds from one of my businesses to another.
|
| Can I truly be charged for a crime if I pretend to be dumb
| after I get caught?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| His stupidity defense claims that he thought it was a loan,
| and he didn't know what Alameda Research was doing with the
| loan.
| roland35 wrote:
| Still, HE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO LOAN THE CUSTOMER MONEY!! If
| he didn't know that than why was it in the terms of service
| that his company wrote?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Because he's stupid and didn't read anything the
| company's lawyers wrote. _That 's the whole defense._
| Saying he loaned money to another company because he
| didn't know any better works better as a stupidity
| defense to get a more lenient sentence than what
| coffeebeqn wrote.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Assuming for sake of discussion he really is that dumb,
| then he was being used as a puppet by someone else. He'll
| need to identify that person or people and their stories
| and evidence supporting them will need to be compared
| with his.
| roland35 wrote:
| I mean, it's not like this was some super fine print
| detail here though... It (we hold your money/crypto for
| you 1:1 isolated and separated) was basically the entire
| point of the product.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| I thought the whole point of the product was easy access
| to margin trading. https://help.ftx.us/hc/en-
| us/articles/360046850054-Spot-Marg...
| Barrin92 wrote:
| does that even make sense? If it was a loan against his
| customer's assets then the assets would still be there, and
| the exchange would simply be broke. If the funds are gone
| then it doesn't matter what for. He had no business lending
| his customers money away, he ran an exchange.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| The SEC's complaint in its civil case provides more information
| about the details of the accusations against him:
| https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2022/comp-pr2022-2...
| greenyoda wrote:
| See also the HN discussion of the SEC charges:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33967386
| rkagerer wrote:
| Does this strike anyone else as way too dramatic a narrative
| for a court document? Like it's written with a deep personal
| beef rather than sticking to the facts. Is that normal for
| civil complaints of this type?
|
| To be clear I'm not defending the guy, I just feel after
| reading the first few pages like I'm flipping through a cheap
| tabloid.
| totalZero wrote:
| I noticed that too, and interpreted it as a sign of
| confidence. I can't imagine a regulatory group writing
| something so dramatic without them being sure it's a home-run
| case.
| otterley wrote:
| Most well-drafted civil complaints are written this way. It's
| hardly confined to complaints drafted by the Government.
|
| Legal process is driven as much by narrative as it is by
| facts and allegations.
| cokeandpepsi wrote:
| [deleted]
| VectorLock wrote:
| I'm curious what kind of plea deal Caroline Elison got.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| When she gets 18 months to his 20 years, I think the two of
| them will be used in Goofus & Gallant-style comics in law
| school to demonstrate the importance of _shutting up_ and
| letting your lawyer do the talking.
| trident5000 wrote:
| The charges against SBF add up to over 100 years.
| treis wrote:
| More like why it's better to be a small fish than a big fish
| when the legal proceedings start.
| andirk wrote:
| Right. Never be the top top guy. Don't be the fastest car
| on the road. And shut the f up Friday [0]. I think he
| thought he could do a media blitz but stealing a bunch of
| other people's money for ones gambling addiction is
| generally frowned upon.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgWHrkDX35o
| makestuff wrote:
| I'm guessing a, you're still going to prison, but it will be
| for a few years instead of potentially your entire life.
| tjmc wrote:
| Wasn't Alameda the entity responsible for losing most of the
| money? Seems wrong that you could get less than a double
| digit sentance for that - even if you roll over for the
| prosecution.
| MrPatan wrote:
| Losing money is legal. Stealing money is not. I have a hard
| time believing she didn't know where the money she was
| losing came from, though.
| trillic wrote:
| Interesting wording. I am not a Lawyer but have had a lot of
| interest in this case and others like it.
|
| "SAMUEL BANKMAN-FRIED" a/k/a "SBF," the defendant, and others
| known and unknown did combine, conspire, confederate, and agree
| together and with each other to commit wire fraud".
|
| Does this indicate that they intend to charge more people in the
| organization under RICO laws? Or is that just standard legalese
| for any wire fraud case.
| favflam wrote:
| The line after that contains "conspirators known and unknown".
| So, the US SDNY has already decided to charge some people. And
| the US SDNY is going to charge some other people, but they are
| not aware of their identity.
|
| RICO is for using underlings to charge the boss. In this case,
| the boss is being charged. Conspiracy charges here imply co-
| conspirators.
| advisedwang wrote:
| No.
|
| RICO is for charging the boss if you don't have direct evidence
| against them. In this case they do, so they don't need it.
|
| Also the phrasing here is just wire fraud (18 USC 1343) and
| conspiracy (18 ISC 371). If they were going towards RICO, you'd
| expect to see them talking about "patterns of activity",
| "operating a criminal enterprise" or other phrasing from RICO
| statues (18 USC 1962).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Does this indicate that they intend to charge more people in
| the organization under RICO laws?
|
| No, there are no RICO charges here, and if SBF isn't getting
| RICO, I doubt underlings are.
|
| These are just regular conspiracy charges. It is possible
| sonenir all of the other alleged conspirators will be charged
| with conspitacy, though.
| danielfoster wrote:
| There may already be sealed charges against others but yes,
| there will likely be charges against others. Some conspirators
| may receive or may have already received immunity in exchange
| for testimony, though. It will take time to determine who else
| was involved and to what extent, though my guess is the focus
| will be on SBF.
|
| This is also great language for encouraging other conspirators
| to make a deal to testify even if the JD has little evidence
| against them. It's almost like the police lying and saying, "We
| have a video of you doing xyz."
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Count 1 is "conspiricy to commit wire fraud on customers".
|
| A nessasary component of that charge is the participation of
| others.
|
| In count two, "wire fraud on customers" there is no mention of
| consipiretors.
|
| I expect that we will see more charges, but this wording
| doesn't particularly indicated it.
| [deleted]
| ivraatiems wrote:
| IANAL either, however: RICO's pretty uncommon and it's probably
| not RICO. See for example [0]. But absolutely possible they
| charge many others.
|
| [0] https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-
| rico-...
| bragr wrote:
| Pretty standard legalese from where I'm sitting but I'd expect
| more people to be charged. He didn't do this all by himself.
| RICO wouldn't really apply here, they've already got the top
| guy, and usually RICO is about charging the top guy with the
| little guys' crimes.
| buggythebug wrote:
| Y_Y wrote:
| This isn't Reddit.
| buggythebug wrote:
| iosjunkie wrote:
| Suggesting that one should not trust someone based on their
| looks is based af. Any other sage wisdom to bestow upon the
| people of Hacker News?
| buggythebug wrote:
| They look like gremlins. And from her interview
| especially she talks about how life is better on drugs.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| One thing to note about the charges: a number of these charges
| are "conspiracy" charges, meaning that there will be more people
| indicted. Most likely, his ex, who has probably already been
| talking to the feds in exchange for leniency, and possibly also
| including his one or both of his parents (see Count 7).
|
| Also interesting to note that Count 8 relates to campaign finance
| violations (for exceeding contribution thresholds and fraud
| related to making or reporting contributions). PACs don't have
| donation thresholds, so this appears to be related to the alleged
| "dark money" contributions he claimed to make in the summer
| (rather than the donations to the Democratic PACs in the
| primaries). It's not clear if this charge is based solely on his
| claims or if there is actual evidence of improper contributions.
| Aleksdev wrote:
| The fact that SFB was still giving live interviews during the
| whole FTX collapse where he contradicted himself was beyond dumb.
| They are going to have a field day with him.
| standardly wrote:
| [deleted]
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| One certainly hopes that the thousands of customers whose funds
| he stole will also see him face charges for what he did to them.
| frgtpsswrdlame wrote:
| So 4 counts on wire fraud and then also commodities fraud,
| securities fraud, money laundering and campaign finance laws. For
| the moment, if we set aside whether these will be proven, how bad
| does a stack of charges like this look for him if they _are_
| proven?
| DaftDank wrote:
| In legal parlance, he will be "fu*ed."
| makestuff wrote:
| From a quick google search (not promising this is 100%
| accurate, but I searched for sentencing minimums)
|
| 1) Wire fraud: 121-151 months
|
| 2) Securities fraud: 6-36 months base (there are multipliers
| apparently)
|
| 3) money laundering: 70 month average is all I could find
|
| 4) Campaign finance: seems to be more monetary based
|
| Not sure how a plea deal/severity of charges would change this
| though. Ex: when you are committing billions in fraud that
| probably has different guidelines than the average securities
| fraud of a few million or whatever.
| tptacek wrote:
| Fraud is a 2b1.1 crime, so the sentence scales with the
| "losses" to the victims; you can get +30 levels off that
| alone, which catapults the sentence into double digits.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It strikes me as a weakness in our system that this is
| keyed to the $ amount. You can defraud a person of modest
| means of $50,000 and wipe them out financially; you could
| defraud some rich people of $2 billion without it impacting
| them in the slightest. This strongly incentivizes preying
| on the weak.
| tptacek wrote:
| I agree, it's a weakness (maybe not for the same reasons
| you give, but who cares).
|
| Anyways, my prediction is that if SBF is convicted, he is
| going away for all time.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| It is considered . The levels take into account financial
| hardship caused to any victim.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| jbverschoor wrote:
| [deleted]
| thereddaikon wrote:
| Nothing. I'm surprised they actually stuck him with that one.
| theCrowing wrote:
| thiscatis wrote:
| Nothing because the last one also didn't face issues. And the
| one before... You catch my drift.
| kemotep wrote:
| Are you implying if I buy ads to promote your candidacy using
| illegal funds that the election you won is illegitimate?
|
| How would we go about enforcing that?
| jbverschoor wrote:
| That's what banks do with normal people or small
| businesses. Source of capital, AML etc
| kemotep wrote:
| Do you have evidence of banks stealing money from
| depositors and not being prosecuted?
|
| We are in a comment section of an announcement of charges
| against a CEO of a "bank" that did such and will face a
| lifetime in prison if convicted. Every example of a bank
| stealing from depositors I can find has people facing
| consequences. I guess that we would not hear about
| instances of people getting away with their crimes but
| that would make it not wide spread and rare or your claim
| unprovable due to a lack of evidence.
| batmenace wrote:
| It's quite possible that as part of the bankruptcy
| proceedings, some/ all of the donations could be clawed back
| schnable wrote:
| Opponents of politicians who took the money opponents will
| use it against them in future elections. Maybe some will
| return the money to attempt to defect that attack.
| outside1234 wrote:
| The Republican donations might be worse - since he tried to
| do them illegally it sounds like - and someone might have
| knowingly accepted them.
|
| The solution is to have very low maximum donation to a
| campaign ($50?) and no corporate donations.
| masterof0 wrote:
| Knowing how connected the guy is, I'm guessing he'll only serve
| a few years at most. I sincerely hope I'm mistaken.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Connections purchased with money only last as long as the
| money does.
| likpok wrote:
| Being extraordinarily connected did not help Madoff much: he
| was sentenced to 150 years in prison and died there last
| year.
| Loughla wrote:
| The cynic in me says that it really does matter who you
| defraud. Where Madoff went wrong was ripping off other rich
| people. So, if SBF defrauded more upper- than middle- or
| working-class folks, then he's screwed.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| This is silly. You think the career DOJ prosecutors are
| looking at the list of victims and only deciding to
| prosecute if there is a rich person on the list?
| whatshisface wrote:
| A lot of the things that defraud non-wealthy people
| (multi-level marketing, all of those "supplements" you
| can buy in the medicine isle, false advertising) aren't
| illegal or practical to sue over.
|
| Let's look at one particular example, the stop the steal
| scam. Thousands of people were tricked in to donating to
| the ringleaders of an impossible political cause based on
| false claims, and none of them are going to jail for that
| in particular. You could find dozens of similar examples
| just by keeping an eye on the news, but nobody thinks
| about it because a certain type of con with victims that
| professionals can't empathize with has become normalized.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Didn't Bannon et al. get indicted for a very similar
| scheme for some impossible border wall project? Seems
| like these things require patience
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Or BLM leaders taking millions in donations and using it
| to buy houses.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| astrange wrote:
| They're not "even bigger", they're structured and
| regulated very differently now.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| In the US, we can't just convict people because they lost
| people money. You need to prove criminal intent. Are you
| aware of any evidence demonstrating intent to commit
| fraud?
|
| Not sure what the size of banks has to do with anything.
| akoncius wrote:
| I dont have detailed knowledge, but rating agencies
| clearly violated their duties by providing AAA rating to
| junk
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Any evidence that specific executives at these rating
| agencies had the intent to defraud people by over-rating
| mortgage-backed securities? Simply being inept at your
| job is not necessarily criminal.
| svnt wrote:
| You don't think Sequoia is among those pushing for
| prosecution?
| coolspot wrote:
| Being extraordinarily connected did help Epstein though: he
| only spent one month in jail.
| rurp wrote:
| Only when the deal flew under the radar. The prosecutors
| even kept his victims in the dark in order to get away
| with such a soft deal.
|
| Once Epstein and his crimes were splashed all over the
| news he was looking at a much worse outcome.
| gammarator wrote:
| GP was making a dark joke.
| batmenace wrote:
| Eh, it feels like he may have donated a lot, but he wasn't
| crazy popular. Plus, not like he's had a long track record of
| donations over many years. I am not sure anyone with much
| influence will stick their neck out for someone like him
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yep, once they realize more money won't be coming, past
| donations aren't worth much in the way of future favors.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I agree; politicians have a singular goal -- reelection.
| Supporting SBF at this point can only hurt. They will not
| be extending him any favors.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| What do you expect politicians to do with respect to
| prosecution by the DOJ? Genuinely curious
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| How does political corruption work? We would need to
| visit a party in Washington DC to be able to describe it
| precisely, but it probably can be summarized as "one hand
| washes the other."
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| Very imaginative, but a little short on evidence.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| You think there is no evidence that corruption exists? Or
| maybe you think it's just "a few bad apples" problem?
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| I think you haven't provided any evidence that
| politically connected people routinely avoid prosecution.
| TrickyRick wrote:
| And also the money's gone (Probably). It's not like he has
| tonnes of money hidden away like other rich people on
| trial, so even if he gets bailed out by being buddies with
| the right people, it's not like he will make billions in
| campaign donations again any time soon.
| [deleted]
| ladeagaytf wrote:
| likpok wrote:
| It depends on how much the court thinks he stole (of the
| billions). The US Sentencing Guidelines tops out at around $550
| million dollars, which adds 30 levels. Plus some adjustments: 2
| for using mass marketing or 4-6 for causing financial hardship
| (only one of these), 4 for being the leader of the
| organization.
|
| The base for larceny is 6.
|
| That gives 36 just based on the money, and up to 46. That's 15
| years on the low end, and runs off the end of the table
| ("life") on the high.
|
| In the federal system there is 15% time off for good behavior,
| so 15 years means 12.75 actually served.
|
| I'm assuming here the counts run concurrently or group (which I
| think is more typical than sequential, and also gives lower
| numbers). The judge can depart from the guidelines and give a
| lower sentence but SBF is not in a good place right now.
|
| https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2021-guidelines-manual-annot...
| pseingatl wrote:
| Can we discus recovery? The Madoff trustee was able to recover
| something like 90% of the Madoff Ponzi. Alameda and FTX's real
| estate purchases have value, as do their VC investments,
| purchases of bank stock, etc. In other words, it's not all gone.
| My understanding is that even some of the political contributions
| can be clawed back.
|
| FTX's purchases of IOU's (i.e., crypto) that declined in value
| are not likely to be recoverable. But Bitcoin still has
| substantial value. There's at least a billion in loans to
| insiders that can be clawed back.
|
| How much really was lost?
| chollida1 wrote:
| Well the Madoff trustee's were able to see who received payouts
| from Madoff due to KYC rules. This allowed the trustee to go to
| people, most of whom were completely innocent, to ask the to
| give back some of the money they redeemed from Madoff.
|
| FTX on the other hand has very few KYC docs so the trustees are
| left with wallet addresses.
|
| Not sure how you contact a wallet address to ask for money
| back.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| Wouldn't FTX-US be required to KYC all of their customers? I
| assumed that was the (part of) the reason why these exchanges
| had us and non us versions.
|
| (edit links) https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/360027668192-Individu...
|
| https://help.ftx.us/hc/en-
| us/articles/360048666713-Account-T...
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| There was also a lot of paper wealth. You can get back your
| FTT tokens but they're completely worthless
| panarky wrote:
| This is a distraction.
|
| Billions of dollars and euros went into a black box.
|
| Then some magic beans invented out of thin air came out of
| the black box.
|
| Now when we open the black box, the billions of dollars and
| euros are gone.
|
| FTT tokens doesn't explain where the fiat went.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Yes the real dollars went somewhere. I would guess the
| majority of them were lost from poor trades by Alameda.
| Combine that with the fact that a lot of those real
| dollars were converted in to Crypto schemes which are now
| down 90%. And their insane spend on houses and politics
| and who knows what else. I'm waiting anxiously to see
| what the truth is once we get some real data
| Eduard wrote:
| > FTX on the other hand has very few KYC docs so the trustees
| are left with wallet addresses.
|
| FTX (US? International? Both?) required KYC during sign-up.
| Or what do you mean?
| chollida1 wrote:
| I was referring to FTX, not FTX.US
| from wrote:
| FTX had KYC as does any exchange with bank accounts. But
| that doesn't prevent people from paying nominees for
| register accounts for them either.
| kragen wrote:
| madoff operated from 01960 to 02008
|
| kyc is from 02002
| LastTrain wrote:
| His Ponzi scheme started in 1991. Ponzi schemes are
| exponential, so more than 90% of the volume was after 2002.
| What's with the leading zeros?
| sam345 wrote:
| I understand Madoff's scheme started in 1960's/1970's.
| The feeders to the fund date way back. The SEC
| enforcement action in the early 90's wasn't directly
| related to the ponzi scheme, more aimed at the feeders.
| The wiki pedia article has this "Federal investigators
| believe the fraud in the investment management division
| and advisory division may have begun in the
| 1970s.[27][failed verification] However, Madoff himself
| stated his fraudulent activities began in the 1990s.[28]
| ". I would trust the Feds.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal
| Yahivin wrote:
| Probably preparing for the year 9999 issue early.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Most systems don't _have_ a Y10k issue: year numbers are
| variable-width already. Forcing a fixed-width 5-digit
| representation is _creating_ a Y100k issue.
| andirk wrote:
| Never made sense how any software would consider the year
| value as _two characters_ when an integer works far
| better. There's even a 0 epoch date for crying out loud.
| bawolff wrote:
| I was under the impression it was a quirk in cobol.
| kragen wrote:
| no
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I think this is a generational divide when computers were
| significantly more limited. If you look at older data
| formats, they are nearly all fixed width. Either due to
| punch cards, memory constraints, performance
| considerations, or just band wagoning, prematurely
| optimizing for date representation seems silly.
| skissane wrote:
| Possibly, the origins of the practice predates computers
| entirely, and goes back to their predecessors in business
| data processing, unit record equipment. As such, it may
| be like many other traditions - made complete sense when
| it was invented, yet people still clung to it long after
| it ceased to do so.
|
| Unit record equipment generally didn't use binary
| integers, instead using BCD; and most early business-
| oriented computers followed their example. Binary
| integers were mainly found on scientific machines (along
| with floating point), until the mid-1960s, when the hard
| division between business computing and scientific
| computing faded away, and general purpose architectures,
| equally capable of commerce and science, began to
| flourish.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Early mainframes read data on punch cards or tape files
| which were character-based (or possibly, binary-coded
| decimal). Two digits were used for the year to save
| memory.
| antonvs wrote:
| Because when the Y2K problem was created, computers had
| only recently been invented, every byte counted, and
| there was no history of software best practices.
|
| Even by 1980, which was 5 years before any recorded
| mention of the Y2K problem, an IBM mainframe, of the kind
| a university might have, had only e.g. 4 MB of main
| memory, which had to support many concurrent users.
|
| Such computers would have been unable to load even a
| single typical binary produced by a modern language like
| Go or Rust into its memory - yet they supported dozens of
| concurrent users and processes, doing everything from
| running accounting batch jobs, compiling and running
| programs in Assembler, COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/I, or APL, and
| running interactive sessions in languages like LISP or
| BASIC. Part of how they achieved all that was not wasting
| any bytes they didn't absolutely have to.
| dragontamer wrote:
| His Ponzi provably started in 1991. It may have been
| going on for longer than that.
| volkadav wrote:
| the leading zeros are a sign that the poster is unusually
| short-sighted and only concerned about the next 98,000
| years or so in their fixed-size date representations.
|
| before i get tarred and feathered, i'm just going for a
| cheap ironic laugh here, no offense intended! :) more
| seriously, i sorta doubt humanity is going to be around
| long enough to care, and if we are, the odds of some
| apocalypse resetting our calendars aren't zero.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| During my first week in my first programming job I
| remember overhearing a senior engineer saying "don't
| worry, there's not another leap year for 2 years". I was
| still working there on February 29, he wasn't. It was a
| stressful day. My condolences go out to the engineers who
| will be working on January 1st 100000.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Surely by then we'll have had a powerful enough pope to
| rename the months at least once.
| skissane wrote:
| You can rename the months any time you feel like. The
| problem is getting other people to go along with your
| renaming.
|
| Once upon a time, enough people cared what the Pope had
| to say, he could actually succeed in changing the
| calendar for everybody. But, it would be a rather
| interesting future history for the Catholic Church to
| regain power to the point that became true once again.
| smeej wrote:
| Not sure renaming the months is gonna help with the
| numbering of the years...
| legulere wrote:
| My hope is that some programmer dictator will instate a
| form of the discordian calender:
|
| - All 5 seasons are the same length - The days of the
| year always fall on the same week day, as the week is 5
| days long - the year always starts with the first day of
| the week. - the leap day is not assigned a day
|
| Things I would change though: - start the year at winter
| solstice. - put the leap day at the end of the year.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian_calendar
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Finally, we can get rid of Wednesday... Wendsday?
| Woesnday?.... that day in the middle of the week that no
| one can spell =P
| andirk wrote:
| SEPTember = 7
|
| OCTOber = 8
|
| NOVember = 9
|
| DECember = 10
|
| Fixed it!
|
| And do we need the name "JASON" (July to November) first
| letters? Seems unnecessary.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Easier to make the year begin in March.
| JTbane wrote:
| I wonder how bad 2038 will be. Real talk, I expect a lot
| of servers to go down.
| notch656a wrote:
| I've learned to identify a kragen post from the preceding
| zero.
| chollida1 wrote:
| You are right about the year KYC came into effect, so good
| job!!
|
| But that makes my point. As of 2002 Madoff had to have
| clear records of f who he redeemed money to.
|
| When the bankruptcy trustee went after people who redeemed
| they only went back a few years and were able to use those
| KYC docs they had since 2002 to get the money back.
| roland35 wrote:
| Even if it started before KYC was a law, it's not too hard
| to imagine that Madoff had better records than FTX which by
| all accounts was a s$&tshow
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > How much really was lost?
|
| How much was really "lost"?
|
| Now that SBF is charged on six counts of conspiracy, it's safe
| to say it's safe to _not_ believe anything that person says. I
| don 't believe the "leveraged trades gone wrong" angle.
|
| I do believe there's a conspiracy. That's what several,
| including @Bitfinex'ed (a Twitter user exposing the tether
| fraud) and Marc Cohodes, said years and months before SBF was
| exposed for the ponzi boy he was.
|
| They don't believe the fraud only stops at SBF / Caroline
| Ellison.
|
| How much is going to be found depends on how far they
| investigate on the conspiracy.
|
| A good place to start looking for a conspiracy to defraud is
| this: FTX's top lawyer, Dan Friedberg, happened to be colleague
| with Bitfinex's top lawyer. Indeed, they both worked at a
| company which defrauded online poker players by cheating on
| them (using a "god mode" on the server software they were
| offering).
|
| I'd say that's a good start for the "conspiracy" angle: go look
| at Dan Friedberg's implication in the scheme. And at its
| relation with his former colleague now at Bitfinex. And seen
| that the Panamera papers exposed that
| Bitfinex/iFinex/tether/Deltec were all one and the same gang of
| criminals, and seen that it's a fact that Moonstone bank, which
| SBF bought in the US from Deltec's owner (at least partially)
| maybe, just maybe...
|
| That it's time to look into the tether fraud to find the
| billions?
| SentientAtom wrote:
| They need to freeze the crypto holdings until the next bull
| run.
| ETH_start wrote:
| A lot was lost to traders whose profits came out of FTX's
| losses from market making.
| mewse-hn wrote:
| > FTX's purchases of IOU's (i.e., crypto) that declined in
| value are not likely to be recoverable. But Bitcoin still has
| substantial value.
|
| This was kind of what Matt Levine focused on in his coverage of
| FTX - where did the money go? It wasn't just that they invested
| in crypto assets, they created their own crypto asset, assigned
| it a huge value, and put it on the balance sheet at an
| imaginary price. Used those "assets" as collateral to borrow
| real money. Then they spent real money on Bahamian property,
| political contributions, charitable contributions, naming an
| arena, and the KILLER - bailed out Alameda repeatedly using
| real money.
| leprechaun1066 wrote:
| The guy in charge of this for FTX is the same guy in charge of
| handling getting money back from the Enron collapse. He's
| currently testifying to congress about the state of things. It
| doesn't look good.
| timcavel wrote:
| smcl wrote:
| Have they not just spunked it into cryptocurrencies?
| phphphphp wrote:
| I'd be absolutely shocked if more than 25% can be recovered.
| They spent multi-billions on venture investments that were not
| just high-risk due to their early stage nature but also
| inextricably linked to ftx by way of the cryptocurrency market
| as a whole and thus about as undiversified as humanly possible.
| There's a few of their investments that have value and value
| could be recovered through sales but almost all of them are
| illiquid and have seen valuations collapse.
|
| Also consider that a lot of the players involved are overseas
| and anonymous* which makes it much more difficult to clawback
| relative to people onshore (like in the case of madoff).
| nullc wrote:
| If we limit ourselves to depositor funds -- who morally ought
| to be superior creditors to investors-- I wouldn't be shocked
| if the recovery percentage was quite a bit larger than that.
|
| One thing that made 90% recoveries of Madoff possible were
| that they first backed out all the fake gains that the
| customers thought they had but never actually had. This will
| be harder to do with FTX, but I expect that once all the
| bogus margin trading on fake assets is backed out we'll find
| that the losses were far less substantial than the numbers
| being thrown around.
| phphphphp wrote:
| I think that might have been true a year ago but at the
| time of FTX's collapse, _most_ market participants were
| underwater, especially the laypeople. The amount of money
| in the crypto market is definitely not anywhere near the
| supposed market cap, but if we look at USDC's 50bn we can
| say with reasonable confidence that there's at least 50bn
| of USD in the crypto market. If FTX was 10% of the market
| then 5 billion seems very plausible as a lower bound for
| the amount of real money value on the exchange (before
| backing out paper gains). That's 5bn after people have lost
| >50% in the last year.
|
| There was something like 6bn withdrawn in the days before
| the collapse and if clawbacks could get most of it, we
| would at least see 0.40 on the dollar recovered... but I am
| very very skeptical about that happening, given FTX
| international was for people outside of US jurisdiction --
| not impossible to recover but much more difficult.
|
| I hope you're right that it turns out that there's only,
| say, 2bn of real money missing, and most people can be made
| mostly whole... but given the bloodbath of the last year, I
| fear that there's probably more real money gone now, rather
| than less. A lot of people would be absolutely gleeful if
| you could somehow rollback the last year of trades on FTX.
| nullc wrote:
| My wild ass guesstimate before learning about the
| mobilecoin (the signal integrated crypto) apparent fraud
| would have been 1-2 billion lost, so I guess I should
| update that to 3 billion lost-- though there is probably
| reasonable odds on recovering the mobilecoin funds since
| there were probably only a few people who could have had
| access to enough mobilecoin to hit a billion worth even
| at $67/coin.
|
| It's quite possible that I'm just being bubbled/hopeful.
| I don't personally know anyone who lost money in FTX even
| though I know a lot of cryptocurrency people and I
| thought it was obviously sketchy from when I first heard
| of it, so these are probably influencing my perspective
| on how big it actually was.
|
| > If FTX was 10% of the market
|
| I'm dubious about 10%. We know in hindsight that FTX was
| faking their size in multiple respects (including e.g.
| faking their valuation by MTMing illiquid coins that they
| created and never circulated) -- probably every claim
| we've seen about their size based on their own figures
| was just lies.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| I'd imagine there's a huge problem in that FTX did not
| declare bankruptcy until the vast majority of their liquid
| assets had been removed by the bank run. If they had declared
| bankruptcy before the run, most people might have gotten out
| with a 50% haircut.
|
| Instead, after the run, those left over will get nothing and
| those who got out will got 100%.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Those who got out will be told they need to give back 50%
| (assuming you are right that that is how much was left).
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Even non-US customers? How?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The US has an excellent record of recovering stolen money
| from most places you would want to live (and reciprocally
| of helping other countries)
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Maybe I wouldn't, but at least a billion people live
| somewhere happily out of US extra-jurisdiction.
| oblio wrote:
| Do you have a list with those places? Google isn't
| helping much.
| Cass wrote:
| I assume they're referring to the over a billion people
| living in China. Whether China is a place you'd want to
| live depends entirely on your personal cirumstances, of
| course.
| dcow wrote:
| How?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Bankruptcy law allows for the clawback of preferential
| transfers. Any transfers within 90 days of bankruptcy are
| assumed to be preferential. Or transfers for a longer
| time to insiders. And that's without fraud. With fraud
| they can go back farther. Like, Madoff's investors who
| got out in time had to turn over a lot of cash.
| dcow wrote:
| But this is nothing like the Madoff situation. So you're
| saying if I withdraw my rightful funds 80 days before a
| company goes bankrupt, and I use those funds to pay for
| consumable goods, and consume those goods, that those
| funds can be clawed back and I am now in debt? That
| doesn't sound right at all.
|
| I also just looked and a preferential transfer would be
| when the company that goes bankrupt deliberately pays off
| some debs but not others, hence giving some creditors
| preference. The notion does not seem to extend to
| individuals otherwise regularly conducting business with
| the company. That can't be resolved the way you
| suggested. Customers who ran FTX will not be required to
| return their funds so that someone can distribute some of
| their money to FTX's creditors, or even so that things
| can be "fairly" distributed across all customers...
| [deleted]
| this_user wrote:
| People have already looked into this, and the claims on FTX'
| debt were valued at 5c on the dollar. Alameda has burned
| through billions, and most of what was left were illiquid
| shitcoins and other worthless junk. Madoff, at least, was
| dealing with real assets.
| panarky wrote:
| _> burned through billions_
|
| If Alameda lost the billions, then who won the billions?
| Who was on the other side of those trades?
| gitfan86 wrote:
| There was never "billions" of deposits in the first
| place. Someone mints a coin and pays FTX 5 million to
| list it. Then that person pays influencers and invests
| themselves to get the price of the coin to go up. Now on
| paper that coin is worth "100 million". But in reality
| only 8 million dollars has been spent.
| rvba wrote:
| This is often very ignored in analysis, most (if not all)
| those coins have prizes based on inflated valuations.
| tananaev wrote:
| A lot of it is probably stolen. A lot went into thousands
| of worthless altcoins and their devs got rich. Another
| big portion is probably advertising. They spent big on
| YouTube influencers. Basically a lot of people got rich
| and a lot more people got screwed.
| heartbeats wrote:
| Altcoin devs are not paid well; Bitcoin devs make
| entirely normal SWE salaries according to public
| information, and I can't imagine DogeCoin or whatever is
| any better. All the big money is in marketing, since
| that's what creates the value.
| oblio wrote:
| By devs he probably doesn't mean software devs, but coin
| creators.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Matt Levine has speculated that a bunch of the money was
| lost via market-making with insufficient controls (margin
| enforcement etc.). For example, as reported by the
| Financial Times (via Levine's Dec. 5 newsletter, "Crypto
| had a Credit Bubble"):
|
| [begin quote]
|
| In April 2021, a crypto token called MobileCoin -- used
| for payments in the privacy-focused messaging app Signal
| -- suddenly spiked in price from about $6 to almost $70,
| before crashing back down again almost as quickly.
|
| The wild moves came after a trader on FTX had built an
| unusually large position in the little-known token. Two
| people familiar with the matter said that when the price
| rose, the trader used the position to borrow against it
| on FTX, potentially a scheme to extract dollars from the
| exchange.
|
| Alameda was forced to step in and assume the trader's
| position to protect FTX. The trading company's loss on
| this deal was at least in the hundreds of millions of
| dollars, the people said, and as high as $1bn, according
| to one of the people, wiping out a large share of
| Alameda's 2021 trading profits.
|
| [end quote]
|
| ...So whomever was on the other side of positions like
| that. Savvy outsider or well-informed insider? Who knows!
| Maybe it can be reclaimed, or maybe it's long dispersed
| down a chain of dozens of crypto exchanges, tumblers,
| offshore fiat accounts, and so forth. I expect we'll
| learn a lot more over the next few weeks as the federal
| case ramps up and the bankruptcy executor delivers more
| findings.
| oblio wrote:
| Seeing this:
|
| > The wild moves came after a trader on FTX had built an
| unusually large position in the little-known token. Two
| people familiar with the matter said that when the price
| rose, the trader used the position to borrow against it
| on FTX, potentially a scheme to extract dollars from the
| exchange.
|
| Makes calling regular currency "fiat" super ironic:
|
| > offshore fiat accounts
|
| It looks like at the end of the day, cryptocurrency is
| something people "fiat" out of thin air, "fair"
| algorithms and computers and systems be damned.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| The crypto market? You can't just unwind the markets by a
| few months to fix things
| lmm wrote:
| Ever wondered where the money to make crypto go up was
| coming from?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I'm surprised bitcoin is holding up as well as it is
| kkielhofner wrote:
| I don't pretend to fully understand markets but movement
| on BTC, etc with all of these developments is just
| further proof to me there is no connection between any of
| these coins and reality.
|
| As another example, when Ethereum successfully moved to
| proof of stake without a hitch (an ultimately impressive
| and challenging development) the price actually went
| down.
|
| I don't understand anything in this space.
| panarky wrote:
| It's not clear to me that the collapse of corrupt crypto
| exchanges should make the price of bitcoin drop.
|
| What is the mechanism exactly? It's not like FTX holds a
| shitload of bitcoin and now suddenly they have to sell it
| all, driving down the price.
|
| Is the mechanism just some kind of psychological thing,
| where a centralized criminal enterprise is associated
| with "crypto", even though it was mostly esoteric shit
| like FTT and MobileCoin and not bitcoin, but since
| bitcoin is also "crypto" then people who hold it would
| sell it because FTX folded?
|
| It's like saying the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman
| Brothers should somehow make US dollars worth less.
| lmm wrote:
| The collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers _did_
| make US dollars worth less, quite rightly.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| 1) I would expect a fairly large portion of people are
| selling their cryptocurrencies on exchanges and wiring
| out in fiat instead of undertaking the relatively
| technically challenging process of moving them on chain
| to somewhere/something else. While we can see on chain
| activity acknowledged numbers citing "withdrawals" from
| exchanges don't provide specifics. I personally know
| several people who have just said "Yeah turns out the
| entire thing is a scam, I don't trust anything and I'll
| just cut my losses and be done with it all".
|
| 2) Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were not a total loss
| that resulted in the founder being arrested and charged
| with multiple counts of fraud within weeks with multiple
| reports from the guy who handled the failure of Enron
| (John J Ray) expressing public incredulity on just how
| crazy the whole thing was. Failed crypto institutions
| aren't receiving TARP loans or being absorbed by other
| institutions. I'm not saying what caused the 2008
| financial crisis wasn't criminal but as we all know no
| one went to jail over it, which if nothing else
| highlights the differences in terms of public opinion and
| treatment by regulators.
|
| 3) Any comparison between crypto (individual coin or the
| entire ecosystem) and the world's reserve currency backed
| by the world's largest economy is dubious at best. The
| complete collapse of a couple of even the largest banks
| barely puts a dent in USD in terms of circulating supply,
| activity, etc. USD has this status because it's backed by
| what is considered to be the most financially stable
| institution in the world - the United States. In the
| minds of many if crypto is "backed" by anything it's
| people like SBF, the VCs this kid was able to hoodwink,
| etc.
|
| 4) The collapse of FTX has had an incredible ripple
| effect that has caused at least a dozen other entities
| (that I've tracked) within crypto to fail.
|
| 5) Over the past few weeks there has been increased focus
| and media attention on the shadiness of Binance, Tether,
| and virtually every other crypto exchange/institution up
| to and including Coinbase.
|
| This is all reflected in a survey from a couple of weeks
| ago that indicates just 8% of Americans have a positive
| view of cryptocurrencies[0]. I'm sure if they ran that
| survey again now that number would be even lower.
|
| So yeah, I would expect crypto prices to move downward
| significantly.
|
| [0] - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/07/just-8percent-of-
| americans-h...
| panarky wrote:
| Okay, then to summarize, you're saying there's lots of
| shady stuff with centralized exchanges, and more of them
| could go bankrupt, and people with fiat and shitcoins and
| bitcoin on deposit there could lose it.
|
| There's a run on the bank, people want out, and the
| easiest way to get out is to sell your shitcoins and your
| bitcoin, and wire transfer dollars to your bank account.
|
| With all the selling of bitcoin to raise cash, the price
| of bitcoin must drop.
|
| And yet the bitcoin price is _up_ six percent in the last
| seven days, so there must be some _other_ mechanism at
| work.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| More or less - exactly but like I said in my original
| post, almost nothing in this space makes sense to me. I'm
| trying to decide if there's something I'm missing
| (happens a lot) or like Theranos, mortgages and real
| estate in 2006, WeWork, etc (which I always knew were
| off) it's all being propped up by who/what knows what and
| it's just a matter of time before it crashes and burns.
|
| I moved to Florida in 2006 and have distinct memories of
| meeting sleazy and disgusting mortgage brokers from
| Countrywide, real estate agents, etc flaunting their fast
| cash while thinking all along "this doesn't seem right".
| I basically watched "The Big Short" in realtime... Same
| goes for Theranos (it's been 10 years, where is your
| product?) and WeWork (wait aren't you just leasing out
| office space?).
|
| Crypto is 14 years in and absent a few extremely rare use
| cases like fleeing a dictatorship, dealing with currency
| destabilization in developing nations, etc no one uses it
| for anything other than trading on exchanges, which at
| this point seems like Russian roulette.
|
| It's as though the last remaining "widespread" use case
| for crypto has now almost been effectively wiped out.
| mthoms wrote:
| Lots of events are already "priced in" before they
| happen. That is, investors have anticipated the upcoming
| event (eg Ethereum upgrade) and the stock/token price has
| _already_ moved accordingly.
|
| https://obliviousinvestor.com/what-does-it-mean-for-
| somethin...
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Even with that how does this[0] chart make any sense?
|
| [0] - https://www.coindesk.com/embedded-
| chart/tcPpzTgN6bBC9
| ShredKazoo wrote:
| One blogger's estimate of their losses:
|
| >Voyager/BlockFi acquisition: 1.5b
|
| >LUNA exposure: 1b
|
| >KCG-style algo crash: 1b
|
| >FTT/SRM collateral maintenance: 2b
|
| >Venture capital: 2b
|
| >Real estate, branding, other frivolous spending: 2b
|
| >FTT drop from $22 to $4: 4b
|
| >Discretionary longs going bad: 2b
|
| >Total: 15.5 billion
|
| https://milkyeggs.com/?p=175
| sam345 wrote:
| I'd be surprised if you could claw back actual trades on
| an open arms-length market assuming that's what the FTX
| exchange was. In Madoff's case, there were no trades at
| all. Madoff collected the money from his investors,
| generated fake statements showing inflated fake balances
| and profitable trades (that never actually occurred) and
| then selectively doled out limited cash redemptions until
| everyone demanded their money back at once and the whole
| thing came crashing down. In SBF's case, it looks like
| SBF took money from his customers, and then bought or
| sold crypto in arms-length transactions on an open
| exchange. If that's the case it's hard to see how they
| can get the money back from the other side of the trades
| where his counterparties were buying or selling on the
| market in good faith. I think the only hope is that if
| they can somehow get the assets from his affiliated
| entities and/or reclaim assets that SBF and/or his
| companies still have control over whether on the block
| chain or elsewhere.
| vkou wrote:
| > Who was on the other side of those trades?
|
| Unrelated funds, and random morons from crypto's
| equivalent of r/wallstreetbets.
|
| It's very easy to lose a lot of money, really quickly in
| the markets.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > FTX's purchases of IOU's (i.e., crypto)
|
| Crypto is mostly not IOUs since it doesn't tie to an obligation
| by anyone to do anything. (Explicitly redeemable tokens are
| IOUs, though.)
| [deleted]
| massysett wrote:
| The problem is opportunity cost. People invested in Madoff to
| grow their money. So if I invest $100 in Madoff and ten years
| later they say "we recovered $90, congrats," yeah that's better
| than nothing. But if I had put that into a legitimate
| investment, maybe I'd have $180.
|
| Other folks got money out of Madoff during his scam years, and
| the trustee says "I'm taking that money back to pay back
| others."
|
| So much of crypto went to things that now have little economic
| value. Burnt out computer hardware, enormous electricity, Tom
| Brady's endorsement deal. At least with the housing bubble we
| got some buildings (I live in a bubble neighborhood.) Crypto is
| like lighting money on fire. The sooner this scam is over, the
| better.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| > Other folks got money out of Madoff during his scam years,
| and the trustee says "I'm taking that money back to pay back
| others."
|
| What's the limit on that? Dollars or time? I would be beyond
| furious if I was expected to help make someone else whole.
| nlh wrote:
| It's infuriating for sure, but unfortunately it's the
| reality. If you gained from a Ponzi scheme that means you
| literally were given other peoples' money (directly).
|
| I fully empathize with the absolutely epic degree it must
| SUCK to get a call and be told "yeah that 10% you've been
| earning for the past 20 years was actually someone else's
| money, you need to give it back."
| factsarelolz wrote:
| Assuming you cashed out, wouldn't it be something like
| "that 10% you earned 10 years ago" because if you never
| cashed out then you're not liable.
|
| My reply would be along the lines of: "Sorry lost it all
| in MtGox/FTX/Crypto/Vegas/Horses"
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The court would argue you didn't complete due diligence
| and are liable for your mistake due to a crime taking
| place.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I mean, if the courts say you owe the money, you owe the
| money. If you lost it, looks like you got some debt to
| repay somehow.
| sjy wrote:
| The trustee has to prove that the transferee lacked good
| faith, which includes "when the information the transferee
| learned would have caused a reasonable person in the
| transferee's position to investigate the matter further."
| The companies which were required to repay Madoff money had
| "uncovered facts suggesting that [Madoff] was engaged in
| fraudulent activity" as part of their due diligence.
| https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-
| ca2-20-01333/pd...
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| > I would be beyond furious if I was expected to help make
| someone else whole.
|
| Such are the wages of being a beneficiary of a ponzi
| scheme. It would be a good incentive to do better research.
| ericd wrote:
| How are you supposed to get enough insight from any
| working fund manager to determine whether something is a
| ponzi? It's not like they give you access to the books.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Mutual fund and ETF holdings are public information.
| Random fund manager? Good luck.
| JTbane wrote:
| Pretty sure even private hedge funds have to disclose to
| their clients exactly what they hold, not Madoff's "just
| trust me bro" promise.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Madoff operated for close to twenty years before being
| exposed. He was regularly lauded for being the best by
| well informed people. What is an amateur supposed to do?
|
| If the argument is, "Nobody is that good, you should know
| better", does that mean Buffet's scheme will start
| crumbling any day now?
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| > What is an amateur supposed to do?
|
| You have two options.
|
| 1. Don't be unlucky. [1]
|
| 2. Or, you can make sure your society has socialized old
| age pensions, and that it puts in the work necessary to
| keep them solvent, and its citizens taken care of once
| they are past their working years.
|
| [1] The easiest way to not be unlucky is to buy into a
| boring, diversified index fund. Berkshire may be a fraud,
| but it's unlikely the entirety of the SP500 is.
| twixfel wrote:
| Well yeah that's why Ponzi schemes suck. Why should it be
| acceptable to profit from a Ponzi scheme? It's not your
| money at that point, whether you realise it or not.
| hattmall wrote:
| I don't think there's a limit when it's part of a criminal
| scheme.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>I would be beyond furious if I was expected to help make
| someone else whole.
|
| I mean, if you unknowingly buy stolen property, it will be
| just taken from you if the police finds out. I don't see
| how that's different.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| On this note I am curious if political organisations will be
| required to give back the donations he made. It seems the
| right thing if they were stolen funds. But being politicians
| I'm curious if it will be rules for thee and not for me.
| mikesabat wrote:
| On the All In podcast Chamath used a term 'Fraudulent
| Conveyance'. The idea is that if someone receives money
| from a fraudulent actor, the entity that received the money
| has to give it back. Madoff was mentioned somewhere in the
| comments and the story is that people that got funds out of
| the Madoff situation before it fell apart had to give the
| money back.
|
| We will see how it goes this time, but I suspect a lot of
| the donations will need to come back to the entity.
| zeusk wrote:
| Chamath is probably just as sly as SBF; Shy of committing
| fraud, he dumped horrid businesses on public via SPACs.
| kweingar wrote:
| I wonder if the charities will have to give back their
| funding.
| bhouston wrote:
| Yes they will have to. It is stolen money.
| pibechorro wrote:
| Your bubble neighborhood likely cut down acres of wild land
| and trees unecessarily. We are all worst of for it.
| totalZero wrote:
| Shkreli got hard time even though investors didn't lose money
| due to his fraud.
|
| There isn't a performance threshold beyond which fraud ceases
| to be criminal.
| woodpanel wrote:
| Shkreli is a good example of how well oiled justice runs if
| the defendant is politically indefensible. In the same vein
| the treatment that SBF got so far (eg getting invited as
| speaker on a NYT event that featured people such as
| Selenskyy) makes me fear it will be a much softer
| prosecution.
| nayroclade wrote:
| A couple of days ago there was a consensus group of
| Republican commentators confidently asserting SBF's
| Democratic donations and connections meant there would no
| investigation/prosecution at all. Perhaps now this have
| pivoted to saying they'll go easy on him?
|
| It seems to me, all these assertions say nothing about
| the process of justice for SBF, and instead only
| illustrate that the people making them can't conceive
| that there is a section of the political class who
| believe the law should apply equally to rich people as
| well as poor people.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Didn't he and his close associates donate to the
| Republican party members as well?
| totalZero wrote:
| SBF said so but there is no public evidence of it, so far
| as I can tell. The federal government brought a charge
| against SBF due to his campaign contributions, so it can
| perhaps be expected that we will learn more about those
| contributions as this saga plays out.
| areoform wrote:
| > But Ryan Salame, another executive, gave almost $24
| million to Republican and conservative causes, somewhat
| counterbalancing the giving to the left. Overall,
| according to Open Secrets, FTX donations to candidates
| were very slightly GOP-leaning, although contributions to
| individual politicians were only a small slice of the $70
| million.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/sam-
| bankma...
|
| As Jon Stewart pointed out, they went with the classic
| formula of having "a guy for each camp."
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| themitigating wrote:
| Elizabeth Holmes?
| ciphol wrote:
| NYT is not the government. It's a private business that
| looks at profit first, politics second, and impartial
| justice last if at all. The financial lure of a panel
| with SBF post-scandal must have been too much to resist.
| It's not even clear the panel (did it happen in the end?
| I'm not sure) would do SBF any good, given his tendency
| to self-incriminate. On the other hand I'm sure it was
| incredible for NYT ratings.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| I don't think we'll ever see another defendant in these
| kinds of cases as universally hated by the public as
| Martin Shkreli. The transcripts from his jury selection
| made the news[0]. Some highlights:
|
| "he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan" (big problem in NYC,
| of course)
|
| "he kind of looks like a dick"
|
| "I would honestly, like, seriously like to go over there
| -"
|
| [0] - https://www.spin.com/2017/08/martin-shkreli-jury-
| selection-t...
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| crispyambulance wrote:
| Shkreli did not get "hard time", he got a basic, well-
| deserved prison sentence.
|
| I find it distressing that folks keep pointing out that the
| investors did not lose money. Are they deliberately
| ignoring the fact that Shkreli had no right to take
| criminal risks with investor money?
| buzzdenver wrote:
| I don't think GP is implying that it is OK to take risks
| with investor money. However it sounds right that you
| should get a longer prison term if you gamble and lose
| $8B than if you gamble and make some money on it.
| 3327 wrote:
| aliswe wrote:
| Was that trial a bit politicized yu think? serious question
| racingmars wrote:
| Not particularly. He had gained notoriety due to _other_
| behavior (raising drug prices to fund other drug
| research, his attitude during his Congressional testimony
| and media appearances, etc.), but it sounds like his
| fraud [or whatever he was specifically found guilty of]
| was very cut-and-dry against SEC and other relevant
| rules.
| ratsmack wrote:
| "On December 17, 2015, Shkreli was arrested by the FBI
| after a federal indictment in the U.S. District Court for
| the Eastern District of New York was filed, charging him
| with securities fraud. The charges were filed after an
| investigation into his tenure at MSMB Capital Management
| and Retrophin. U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said, "Shkreli
| essentially ran his company like a Ponzi scheme where he
| used each subsequent company to pay off defrauded
| investors from the prior company."
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| I think that is a misleading quote. He made actual
| profits, albeit by unscrupulous (but legal and very
| common) methods. There was nothing like a ponzi scheme,
| the prosecution just wanted to say a crime that was well
| known at the time. Along the way he made false statements
| to investors, and he was so gross and unpopular they were
| able to get a conviction the "victims" were not even
| interested in, but only on two securities technicalities
| and only because the jury wanted to get him on something.
| He was acquitted of 5 other more serious charges.
|
| This is a great example of a public show trial, where
| they basically make an example of someone while allowing
| companies to engage in the same disgusting behavior
| without any attempt to discourage it.
| from wrote:
| Justice Department press releases are incredibly biased.
| His hedge fund failed (legal), he lied to his investors
| and said everything was fine (this is the fraud part),
| then he started a drug company called Retrophin (now
| NASDAQ: TVTX) which ended up being worth a billion
| dollars and he was able to repay investors in shares of
| Retrophin or proceeds from selling shares in Retrophin.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| He certainly committed fraud, but it's certainly unusual
| that he was prosecuted for it when nobody lost money. In
| fact, investors did well.
|
| It's hard not to feel like this is not a thing that would
| have been investigated had he not been a totally raging
| asshole.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > But if I had put that into a legitimate investment, maybe
| I'd have $180.
|
| Or maybe zero. Investing is a casino unless you are _very_
| closely supervising your investments and have a thorough
| understanding of the underlying market dynamics. So better do
| your homework if you want to see some or all of your money
| back, preferably with a premium.
| dlkf wrote:
| Yeah, you have to be a real genius to make money buying the
| sp500.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think it was obvious that we weren't talking about
| index investing.
| pryelluw wrote:
| Naive question here:
|
| Wouldn't you have to take into account due diligence when
| talking opportunity cost?
|
| As in, someone who did not do their due diligence and had a
| higher risk tolerance would be expected to have a lower
| opportunity cost. In simple words, likely to lose money on
| this deal but willing due to the high return chance.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Relative to the amounts of money lost here the DD costs
| would have been a pittance.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| While Tom Brady's endorsement has little economic value, it
| was money paid to him. I believe a bankruptcy court can undo
| past transactions, so that cash might be recoverable.
| l33t233372 wrote:
| They can't give Tom Brady his time back.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Of the people stolen from, Tom Brady losing a day filming
| commercials is pretty low on the list of things I care
| about.
|
| Like he got paid $X for his endorsement. I would prefer
| that money go to the people whose life savings were
| stolen.
| chezelenkoooo wrote:
| Is it really Tom Brady's responsibility to vet each and
| every one of his commercial offers? That seems
| unsustainable. He would have needed some pretty intimate
| knowledge of the crypto world along with the inner
| workings of FTX to know that it was a fraud. To me it
| seems like placing too much responsibility on people who
| shouldn't bear that responsibility.
| themitigating wrote:
| I'm sure he has a PR person, agent, manager, etc.
|
| So yes it is their responsibility.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| This has nothing to do with knowing it was fraud or
| impending bankruptcy which has nothing to do with having
| a bankruptcy court claw back money given to you in
| preference of others. This is like Brady getting a bad
| check. So he doesn't get paid for acting. A lot of other
| people didn't get paid what they were owed.
| oblio wrote:
| Your sibling comment says this:
|
| > Didn't exactly that happen, didn't Tom Brady put his
| life savings in FTX? :/
|
| Which makes your comment seem funny or sad, depending on
| how you look at things.
| l33tman wrote:
| Didn't exactly that happen, didn't Tom Brady put his life
| savings in FTX? :/
| topkai22 wrote:
| That's a tough one as Brady wasn't an investor or executive
| but a supplier. Will the media companies that FTX bought
| ads with also need to give back their fees?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Quite possibly. Even without fraud, transactions within
| 90 days to a year of filing can be reversed by a
| bankruptcy court. Brady's transactions are more likely to
| be reversed because of his ongoing relationship with FTX
| than the media companies's transactions.
|
| With fraud, they timeline gets a lot longer.
| tchaffee wrote:
| > lighting money on fire
|
| It's almost as if money is just paper and has little economic
| value. The same criticism you made of crypto.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| If this was purposefully orchestrated as the indictment
| suggests, it's very likely that 100% of every deposit made to
| FTX could be lost for good. Minus the real estate purchases of
| course.
|
| Crypto transactions are irreversible.
|
| All of the money that Alameda Research lost (which they
| borrowed from FTX investors) to bad bets could have easily been
| won by SBF et al on the other side of the trade... withdrawn to
| safety and put in a cold wallet for whenever they all see the
| light of day again.
|
| The majority of the money that Alameda lost to bad bets was
| propping up shitcoins.
|
| SBF could have created an account on FTX under a pseudonym and
| taken the short side of all of those shitcoin trades, knowing
| exactly how much financial support they had and how to break
| them.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "How much was really lost?"
|
| With respect to culpability for the wire fraud charges,
| arguably it does not matter. The crime is a devising scheme to
| defraud. The execution of the scheme does not have to be
| successful.
|
| Even if every FTX customer gets a 100% refund of their
| deposits, SBF is still going to face prosecution. This is what
| makes his recent behaviour so childish, immature, juvenile and
| foolish. The transcript of his proposed testimony before
| Congress shows that SBF is anything but a "whiz kid". He is
| clueless. A pawn.1
|
| 1.
| https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rbgv1U_v...
|
| "How much was really lost?"
|
| How much what? Fiat money? According to the self-proclaimed
| crypto experts, the fiat monetary system is to be avoided.2 Why
| would crypto believers want fiat money.
|
| According to a Google "engineer", the highly regulated,
| democratically-elected government that issues and guarantees
| fiat currency may seize it in the near future, referring the
| reader to "snopes.com" as an authoritative source. Not only
| that, according to the Google stooge, using fiat currency poses
| a risk of "total surveillance" and is undermining peoples'
| privacy.2 You cannot make this up. Employee of almost totally
| unregulated "tech" company, hoovering up the personal data and
| invading the privacy of hundreds of millions of people for
| profit, a company with nearly 140,000 employees and billions in
| the bank that does not even have a basic customer service line,
| is giving unsolicited advice about privacy.
|
| 2. https://apxhard.substack.com/p/why-bitcoin-is-different-
| from...
| dwheeler wrote:
| How much was really lost won't matter _much_ in terms of
| prosecuting those who committed any crimes. And while it
| looks like a huge crime to me, they are still innocent until
| proven guilty.
|
| It _does_ matter to those who appear to have been defrauded.
| They won 't be made whole. There will be opportunity costs,
| and I can't imagine it all being recovered. But if a
| significant portion is recovered, it would provide some help
| to the victims.
| readonthegoapp wrote:
| after reading about his parents' high level of involvement, i
| think they knew there were all sorts of illegal things going on,
| and decided to not ask too many questions to allow for plausible
| deniability.
|
| but they gladly kept spending that money and spreading that
| influence.
|
| and, to seemingly throw away your kid's future because you're so
| enthralled with finally being one of the true bigwigs around
| Stanford... smh.
|
| he needed parents.
|
| and the myriad people surrounding him for years during the theft
| and fraud -- who are now all Pikachu-faced that he could have
| been doing these dastardly things.
|
| and maybe sbf will get his little brother sent to jail, too.
|
| SBF wasn't paying attention to the SPAC people -- you gotta take
| yours off the top, like a politician (quoting dead prez) -- not
| just steal everyone's money, and _def_ don't steal from the rich
| -- i thought we all collectively learned these lessons.
|
| if we killed SPACs _and_ crypto, where are all the scammers gonna
| go?
|
| conspiracy. wire fraud. commodities fraud. securities fraud.
| money laundering. the Federales even threw in a campaign finance
| charge just for giggles.
| [deleted]
| bmitc wrote:
| Is there a reason why they did this before and not after he
| appeared in the previously upcoming congressional hearing?
| [deleted]
| anigbrowl wrote:
| A good question. Rep Ocasio-Cortez, questioning the current CEO
| of FTX in committee, seemed to suggest that there was more
| going on behind the scenes than was admitted to in the firm's
| legal filings of yesterday. I haven't been following the case
| closely so I'm not sure what her line of inquiry was aimed at.
| joeblubaugh wrote:
| Is there going to be any reckoning for the VCs who poured money
| into this ridiculous business? I don't see how you respect
| Sequoia's judgement after this.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The same reckoning a VC always gets for making a bad call: the
| money's gone.
| humanizersequel wrote:
| >I don't see how you respect Sequoia's judgement after this.
|
| Me neither, sounds like that's the reckoning.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Helpfully, sequoia list who they are investing in, e.g.
|
| https://www.sequoiacap.com/our-
| companies/?_categories=fintec...
|
| or
|
| https://www.sequoiacap.com/our-companies/?_categories=crypto
|
| And of course you should all enjoy this while you can:
|
| https://www.sequoiacap.com/companies/ftx/
| nradov wrote:
| It's _hilarious_ how they describe the problem at FTX as a
| "liquidity crunch". Liquidity was the least of their
| issues. What a bunch of clowns.
| eternalban wrote:
| Not fair. They ran a "rigorous diligence process" at the
| time of their investment.
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhKq6zQUoAIUJ1W
|
| These two sources claim Ramnik Arora played a "crucial
| role":
|
| https://diyatvusa.com/2022/11/24/meet-ftx-insider-ramnik-
| aro...
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-is-ramnik-
| arora-th...
|
| There is that Moonstone Bank thingie again: Ramnik was
| there too:
|
| https://www.crunchbase.com/person/ramnik-arora
|
| https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/moonstone-bank
|
| Fluent Finance & Moonstone Bank issue "US+ Stable Coin":
|
| https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-
| release/2022/10/24/254...
|
| "Fluent Federation of Member Banks":
|
| https://www.fluent.finance/
|
| https://www.fluent.finance/team [includes the "inventor
| of CBDC" ..]
|
| There are so many rabbit holes here. FTX is the tip of
| something bigger imo.
| paulpauper wrote:
| that is why VCs are diversified
| joeblubaugh wrote:
| I don't mean a financial reckoning, I mean a reputational
| one. Why would you want to do business with such foolish
| people?
| ipaddr wrote:
| It is an advantage because taking money from stupid people
| is preferred
| nkozyra wrote:
| > Why would you want to do business with such foolish
| people?
|
| On the other hand, I kind of want to pitch something to
| them now.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| The reckoning perhaps is that as rates rise, investors will not
| need to resort to investing in "tech" companies.
|
| The over-availablility of cheap capital was one factor leading
| to the rise of VC and BS "tech" companies, but the other factor
| was that rates were so ridiculously low for so long investors
| were essentially forced to invest in this speculative nonsense.
| justinzollars wrote:
| There was. They marked their entire investments to zero. A
| total loss.
| melony wrote:
| What about the funds that FTX invested back into Sequoia?
| majormajor wrote:
| Are people going to trust them with their money to let them
| raise future funds?
|
| If so: why?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| People will still trust them with their money because
| social accountability mechanisms are not that great, PR is
| a thing and people are even more prone to FOMO and skipping
| due diligence than even VC investors have been here.
| flylib wrote:
| SBF invested 200 million back into Sequoia funds as an LP,
| wasn't that big of a loss as they invested 214 million into
| FTX
| MrPatan wrote:
| Wasn't it 500 million?
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Their money is gone. Their reputation is tarnished among
| founders and LPs alike for the next 2-3 years. The
| partners/analysts who were in awe of SBF have become a laughing
| stock. I'd say VCs have greatly suffered. But then they will
| brush it under the carpet in the pretext of "that's the risk we
| are willing to take while chasing 1000x returns" and I guess
| that's fair. They voted with their money and reputation and
| lost both.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Other than the reputational hit unless they knew about the
| embezzlement, what would it be? They probably didn't know what
| was going on, either. They had their ill-timed puff piece a few
| months back, and they make money on exits. No way FTX would
| have made it to the public markets once auditors saw it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > I don't see how you respect Sequoia's judgement after this.
|
| Same for a16z, Softbank and all the others that jumped on the
| crypto bandwagon without doing their jobs as board members and
| during the run-up to the deal and after investing.
|
| Ironically, the VCs will position themselves as the victims.
| austenallred wrote:
| A16Z didn't invest in FTX
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, but they've been all over crypto:
|
| https://a16zcrypto.com/
| austenallred wrote:
| Yes, but crypto didn't steal billions of dollars.
| Individual companies did.
|
| A lot of people are still reasonably very excited about
| Bitcoin and crypto.
| jacquesm wrote:
| A lot of people are un-reasonably excited about Bitcoin
| and crypto, in large part because VC backed companies are
| pushing the story that there is money to be made there.
|
| A lot of those people will lose their savings and/or
| their shirts because they are not made aware of the fact
| that those companies are on the sell side. You can do
| your utmost best to try to separate that from 'Bitcoin
| and crypto' but to your average victim that doesn't
| really mean much.
|
| I've used crypto, I think I understand the main
| limitations, have mined a single bitcoin back in the day
| when this was still possible on a GPU, received donations
| and made donations using bitcoin, in the end I see it is
| of limited usefulness, mostly related to when people are
| unbankable for a variety of reasons, but I do not buy the
| hype.
| deschutes wrote:
| Let's not forget this gem https://archive.nytimes.com/dea
| lbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/...
| jacquesm wrote:
| The juxtaposition of the headline with the items above it
| from the present is interesting.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Did anyone respect SoftBank even before this? Their claim to
| fame was the botched WeWork money hole and a few other
| insanely overpriced rounds on unscalable/unprofitable(even in
| theory) businesses.
| totalZero wrote:
| Yes. SoftBank has been extremely effective in the mobile
| telecommunications investment space. Look up Vodafone KK
| and their investment in Sprint.
|
| SoftBank was SoftBank before its unprofitable/weird
| investments in businesses like WeWork and Boston Dynamics.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's a mark of something, but not of excellence.
| sam345 wrote:
| I'm just enjoying their humiliation and reputation hit.
| Enjoying only so much as it is the correct free market result
| of betting big without [edited] due diligence. Some of it is
| result of fed priming the economy with free money. With so much
| money being dropped from the helicopter there's no time for due
| diligence. You win some you lose some so in that sense it was a
| rational bet I guess but not an intelligent one.
| bogwog wrote:
| On the one hand, sure, but on the other hand, this was
| literally a case of fraud. A fraudulent business is going to
| go out of its way to hide the fact that it's committing
| fraud.
| juiiiced wrote:
| Serious question: If Binance knew something was up why
| didn't Sequoia?
| hervature wrote:
| You do know that due diligence involves going over
| financial records correct? I imagine they didn't look at
| anything given the sheet SBF was shopping during the
| collapse.
| sam345 wrote:
| I agree that fraud trumps due diligence. You can do your
| diligence all you want but a fraudster can thing of a
| million ways to hide the truth, offer up forged/faked
| documents, etc. But due diligence is just that - you check
| out at least what is properly due - do they keep books, are
| they properly audited, do they have a proper board of
| directors, etc. It's evident Sequoia did none of that.
| SBF's balance sheet at the time this all thing went down
| was a spreadsheet that looked like it was made by a kid
| with no financial training which it was. Their corporate
| and financial controls were so lacking its insane that
| anyone gave them money. But Sequoia did and did so with
| what appears to be no substantive due diligence, other than
| being swept up by SBF saying exactly what they wanted to
| hear.
| lmm wrote:
| There's a level of wilful ignorance here. If you "invest"
| in a business because line goes up and you don't ask why or
| how, and it turns out the why and how was crime, well,
| maybe you were just a rube, but maybe you figured out that
| it wasn't in your interest to ask too many questions. When
| we're talking about a sophisticated top VC fund...
| timack wrote:
| The Sequoia profile of SPF is quite the read:
| https://archive.ph/qFJJN
| buildbot wrote:
| The podcast Behind the Bastards did an episode on SBF, it
| referenced this article! And made fun if it extensively
| bitL wrote:
| Sequoia's main driving factor was paranoia of missing the next
| big thing. Why would that change with one of their assets
| tanking? They went through similar (albeit at a smaller scale)
| many times. Most investments flop, this one very publicly.
| Still, just one of many investments they have, some of them
| equally foolish. Many "foolish" investments made them rich
| before.
| [deleted]
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