[HN Gopher] Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
___________________________________________________________________
Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
Author : misiti3780
Score : 930 points
Date : 2024-03-28 15:48 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| tithe wrote:
| Seems low for what prosecutors consider "one of the biggest
| financial frauds in U.S. history."
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/sam-bankman-fried-be-sent...
| hluska wrote:
| It puts him in between Madoff and Holmes.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| 25 years is a long time. Not saying he doesn't deserve more but
| his parents will probably be dead by the time he gets out, and
| he wont have a family.
|
| Also, he was addicted to the internet (supposedly), he wont
| have access to that either.
| yellow_postit wrote:
| It seems unlikely he will serve that full time though I don't
| know the specific parole eligibility constraints for these
| charges.
| nemo44x wrote:
| You need to serve 85% of your sentence in federal prison.
| He will likely appeal for a reduction.
| werewrsdf wrote:
| There is no parole for federal crimes.
| https://www.justice.gov/doj/organization-mission-and-
| functio...
| yellow_postit wrote:
| Didn't realize that -- thanks!
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Possible that some future President would commute his
| sentence or grant a pardon. But unlikely.
| gizajob wrote:
| His parents who are professors of legal ethics? His mother is
| getting a long-term lesson in the theories of
| consequentialism that she is a supporter of.
| yokem55 wrote:
| If someone isn't a violent threat to society, there isn't much
| social benefit to keeping folks locked up longer then 20-ish
| years. 20-25 (assuming he gets the 15% off for good behavior
| the feds allow) is plenty.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| I think ruining thousands of lives through fraud without
| remorse constitutes a threat to society. He should never see
| the light of day again.
| swyx wrote:
| not to be too unsympathetic but if those people he
| defrauded (which yes is a very bad thing) were all crypto
| degens gambling on things they knew they shouldnt be
| gambling on, does that change the calculus at all
| COGlory wrote:
| No
| floor2 wrote:
| What lives did he ruin?
|
| The USA has an incredibly robust, tightly monitored and
| regulated financial market. The SEC, FDIC and associated
| regulators and auditors carefully control bank reserves,
| prosecute insider trading, prevent and insure against
| fraud.
|
| Some people decided to opt-out of that system and send
| their money to an unregulated entity in the Bahamas to buy
| imaginary money without government oversight.
|
| Honestly the government shouldn't have intervened here at
| all. The people who lost money should have been laughed at
| and told that's why you put your money in the regulated
| market. If you intentionally try to avoid taxes, anti-money
| laundering regulations, audits and securities law by buying
| crypto overseas, then taxpayer resources don't go bail you
| out.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| If you ask to borrow $500 and I give it to you, and you
| run off with the money with no intent to ever pay me
| back, did you commit fraud? Or was I just a rube who
| should have known better?
|
| You seem to wish to live in a zero trust world model
| where everyone is out to scam everyone at all times and
| "caveat emptor" if you do get scammed. We should do our
| best as a society to not turn into that.
| robin_reala wrote:
| Caveat emptor. Emptor is "buyer", caveat "beware".
| bee_rider wrote:
| Caveat emperor: I'm not worried about being defrauded
| because my legions will beat up anybody who does so.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Thanks, I got caught by auto-correct. :)
| schiem wrote:
| I'm reading their comment as the opposite - there are
| mechanisms for a high trust society in place (which is
| good), but if you go out of your way to opt out of it
| then you're on your own.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The difference is there is no such thing as "unregulated"
| in the concept of fraud. Doing fraud is illegal. Even if
| FTX had done all the paperwork to be compliant, it would
| still be illegal fraud.
|
| Same as there's no place where murder is allowed. You
| can't "opt out" of parts of society. It's not even "take
| it or leave it", society is "take it or get out of our
| reach"
| dvsfish wrote:
| I'm not sure I fully agree that we should just sit by and
| let them be robbed, but the point you make about the
| government doing nothing is an interesting one as it
| would be great marketing against a disruptive currency.
| brvsft wrote:
| I agree. However, I think there's something to be said
| about how people don't understand what kind of
| protections are afforded to them by regulation.
|
| A lot of these people were likely acting in some level of
| good faith, assuming that a company so big it could
| afford a Super Bowl commercial starring Larry David would
| _never_ scam them. I know, it 's stupid, but people don't
| understand where the guardrails are, what FDIC insurance
| really is, what sort of insurance exists on retail
| brokerage accounts, etc. And they didn't just lose money
| off of crypto losing value, they lost beyond that amount
| off of this business co-mingling funds when they were not
| supposed to.
|
| But I do not feel that badly for anyone whose life was
| 'ruined' over this for one big reason: they were trying
| to get rich quick. That's the fact that underpins so much
| investment in crypto. _BTC to the moon! SHTC to the moon!
| ETCC to the moon!_ These people were hoping for their
| 'investments' (speculative gamblings) to explode in
| value. And they weren't planning on sharing any of it
| with you or me, not beyond what they're legally required
| to through taxes (and sometimes, not even that, like you
| say as well).
| zone411 wrote:
| All creditors are expected to be repaid in full, though
| based on Nov 2022 crypto prices.
| browningstreet wrote:
| This keeps getting repeated... does anyone beside the
| defense attorney support this statement?
|
| The victim impact testimony of ruined lives doesn't align
| with it.
| scrlk wrote:
| FTX claims are being sold for 96 cents on the dollar, so
| there's high expectation that creditors will be paid in
| full.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| There's the loss of liquidity for years and loss of
| opportunity cost. It's not victimless by far.
| jnwatson wrote:
| The judge provided a good counterargument: if a thief
| burgles a bank, goes to Vegas and doubles his money and
| gives the original amount back to the bank, does that
| deserve punishment?
| solumunus wrote:
| You're not repaid in full unless all your assets are
| returned, which would be of significantly higher value
| now than when they were stolen.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Exactly this. If you gave FTX bitcoin, the only way to be
| repaid is in bitcoin. You did not give them dollars.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| So he stole stuff in 2022 at a low point, and now his
| victims are going to be paid 30% the cost of what it
| would take to rebuy it? That's "repaid in full" in your
| mind? Losing 70% of their BTC?
| arrowsmith wrote:
| > there isn't much social benefit to keeping folks locked up
|
| Deterrent
| yokem55 wrote:
| If 20+ years isn't enough of a deterrent, I seriously doubt
| even more would be.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| I didn't say he should get more. I think 25 years is
| totally reasonable.
| xvector wrote:
| I can't think of any cases where someone would be
| deterred by 25 years in prison, but not, say, 8 years in
| prison.
| digital_sawzall wrote:
| I would easily go to jail for 8 years for $50+ million.
| 25 years would not be worth it to me for any amount.
|
| I am from El Paso, which is on the border with Mexico and
| grew up with many kids whose parents were smugglers and
| cartel affiliated.
|
| I know several parents who went to jail for ~10 years
| while were were in elementary school, the kids never
| wanted for anything, and then when the parents got out
| and started capital intensive business.
|
| One parent did 12 years and got out to start a a series
| of high end mexican restaurants, one started a
| steakhouse, one bought a small hotel, one started a
| commercial construction company.
|
| It's all part of the game, just how startup founders
| grind for years for the money.
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| Honestly? I sincerely doubt you, or anyone would
| actually, really, for realsies, go to prison for eight
| years for $50M. Anyone would beg to be released after a
| few weeks.
| robswc wrote:
| I too think that people underestimate how much prison
| would absolutely suck. Especially if you lead a life that
| is otherwise crime-free.
| digital_sawzall wrote:
| That is a complete middle class mindset. Jail is cool in
| the hood. I've done a few months for stupid stuff when I
| was young and it's not that bad.
|
| People risk 10 years for robbing bands for a couple
| thousand. A guaranteed $10 million would have lines
| around the block for volunteers in the neighborhood I
| grew up in.
| FabHK wrote:
| You have little imagination. I was going to expand, but
| sibling comment expressed it well already.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Has never been shown to work when studying the impact of
| "harsh punishments".
| kemayo wrote:
| In terms of "ruins your life", anything past a few years
| does that.
|
| Speaking purely for myself, I don't feel much difference in
| the deterrent effect from the punishment being 5 years or
| 25 years. Either one would utterly wreck everything about
| my life, and although the latter is _worse_ it 's not
| enough so to change my decisions.
| rwmj wrote:
| If he gets out in 5 years he'll be doing the same thing.
| He showed no remorse or understanding that he did
| anything wrong. A 25 year sentence means we've got 20
| more years of public safety.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247350.pdf
|
| Prisons are good for punishing criminals and keeping them
| off the street, but prison sentences (particularly long
| sentences) are unlikely to deter future crime. Prisons
| actually may have the opposite effect: Inmates learn more
| effective crime strategies from each other, and time spent
| in prison may desensitize many to the threat of future
| imprisonment. See "Understanding the Relationship Between
| Sentencing and Deterrence" for additional discussion on
| prison as an ineffective deterrent.
|
| ------
|
| 5. There is no proof that the death penalty deters
| criminals. According to the National Academy of Sciences,
| "Research on the deterrent effect of capital punishment is
| uninformative about whether capital punishment increases,
| decreases, or has no effect on homicide rates."
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| That is certainly correct for "street crime" where
| premeditation and risk reward analysis aren't a part of
| the equation.
|
| I have some pretty serious doubts about it when it comes
| to large financial crimes where both those things are
| absolutely part of the process. A death sentence probably
| isn't going to stop someone from killing another person,
| they're already off the deep end of irrationality.
| However 25 years of prison is probably going to be a
| significant deterrent to someone choosing to commit
| billions worth of fraud, maybe the profit margin isn't
| that important.
| commakozzi wrote:
| We ALL know/knew who Bernie Madoff was and what happened
| to him. Are you sure your logic is sound here?
| riversflow wrote:
| Yeah, I really think comparing common street crime with
| high financial crime is Apples and Oranges. Common
| criminals don't have much to lose, yes going to prison
| sucks, but it means less when you live in low income
| housing with other people, can't afford basic shit and/or
| are in significant mental distress. On the other hand
| Financial criminals usually have a LOT to lose, and to
| get into the position to commit those crimes they likely
| have a degree of rationality that's less guaranteed than
| in street crime.
|
| Frankly, I think we need a lot more of this kind of
| punishment to get more trust back into our high-trust
| society. More rich people need to go to prison for crimes
| against society, because honestly it feels more like
| Madoff and SBF were one offs rather than business as
| usual.
| gizajob wrote:
| Yes but at the same time, anyone attempting to set up
| legitimate crypto exchanges and engage in the kinds of
| shenanigans SBF indulged in will know to check with their
| lawyers before moving now, because they'll have to think
| "Will doing this (possibly fraudulent activity) land me
| in jail for 25 years like SBF?" - that's a decent
| deterrent.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| I don't know if I disagree, because I have not thought
| seriously about the risk/reward.
|
| My point along with the grand parent is that at a certain
| point it is more costly than it is worth in deterrence.
| And the data backs that up, generally.
|
| But what that point is, I have no idea.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >5. There is no proof that the death penalty deters
| criminals. According to the National Academy of Sciences,
| "Research on the deterrent effect of capital punishment
| is uninformative about whether capital punishment
| increases, decreases, or has no effect on homicide
| rates."
|
| Capital punishment is cheap though. And more humane than
| life sentence. Actually I think that we should return
| some form of corporal punishment and shorten prison
| sentences for non violent crimes. Subject SBF to
| Singapore style caning every month and 2-3 years in
| prison, forbid him to ever work with other people's money
| and be done with him.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| > Capital punishment is cheap though.
|
| Getting capital punishment right is certainly not cheap,
| if you are worried about the finality of it.
| hmate9 wrote:
| It obviously deters crime. Look at it this way. If
| maximum prison sentence was 5 minutes, would you see more
| or less crime happening?
| koolba wrote:
| There had to be some scale or additive nature though.
|
| If an otherwise peaceful person is committing fraud on a
| scale 1000 times larger than the next guy, wouldn't it at
| least scale up logarithmically?
| skulk wrote:
| Actually, financial fraud sentencing guidelines add an
| extra number of years to the sentence that grows by the log
| of the money stolen:
| https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/guidelines-
| manu...
| koolba wrote:
| Wow that's really fascinating!
| nkozyra wrote:
| I have to ask: does 20 years provide more social benefit than
| 10? 5? Surely there's diminishing returns on imprisonment.
|
| As a deterrent and as a punitive, I get it, but even life
| sentences don't seem to deter crimes that can yield those
| punishments.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| What do you believe Sam would do if granted a shorter
| sentence, assuming they believe they've done nothing wrong?
| Who should carry the burden of re-offense without remorse?
|
| People make mistakes, to err is human, and forgiveness
| should be provided to those with the capacity to change (ie
| harm less). Compassion is important. But if you don't
| believe you've done anything wrong, can we not project
| future potential outcomes? Prison duration is a risk
| assessment of harm reduction.
|
| EDIT: Prison should still be about rehabilitation and
| treating humans humanely, to be clear.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > What do you believe Sam would do if granted a shorter
| sentence, assuming they believe they've done nothing
| wrong?
|
| Ostensibly the same thing as after a 22 year sentence,
| just later.
| sangnoir wrote:
| The difference is society gets 12 additional years of
| safety which it wouldn't get otherwise. Ostensibly.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > The difference is society gets 12 additional years of
| safety which it wouldn't get otherwise.
|
| Naturally, by this logic I have to ask: why not 32 years?
| 52? 102? Aren't we doing society a disservice by _ever_
| allowing criminals to leave prison?
|
| > Ostensibly
|
| I chose this word carefully, because I think a lot of our
| preconceived notions on criminal behavior have not been
| validated by the real world, including the deterrent
| effects of long-term imprisonments.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Naturally, by this logic I have to ask: why not 32
| years? 52? 102?
|
| Because the sentencing judge applied the guidelines
| provided by law as written by legislature, considered
| case-law, the specifics of this case and applied their
| professional judgement to come up with a 25-year sentence
| as an appropriate one for the _crimes committed._ If the
| defendant disagrees, they can appeal the sentence to get
| a second opinion.
|
| You're attempting to _reductio ad absurdum_ prison
| sentences - I 'll apply it to your argument in turn - why
| send guilty people to prison at all? What's the
| difference between 1 day imprisonment and 60, or 6000? A
| sense of proportion is the difference between a black-
| and-white world and the one we strive for in reality.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > Because the sentencing judge applied the guidelines
| provided by law as written
|
| We know the mechanics of why it was chosen. What I was
| asking was by your logic, 22 is _less protective_ of
| society than 102, which makes me question the validity of
| "it protects society" reasoning. Why protect less when we
| have a quantifiably greater level of protection?
|
| > You're attempting to reductio ad absurdum prison
| sentences
|
| This is incredibly dismissive. We have arbitrary
| sentencing guidelines. They are based on reasoning, but
| that doesn't mean they are correct. They are fluid,
| change from locale to locale, and have unpredictable
| efficacy.
|
| > why send people to prison at all? What's the difference
| between 1 day imprisonment and 60
|
| You see, I don't think that's reductio ad absurdum at
| all. It's a valid question. You can argue for it and
| against it, but it isn't absurd or contradictory on its
| face.
|
| > A sense of proportion is the difference between a
| black-and-white world
|
| All you're saying here is 6000 > 1. We know this. I'm
| asking why 6000 is right, 1 is wrong, and why we throw
| away the other 5998.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > What I was asking was by your logic, 22 is less
| protective of society than 102, which makes me question
| the validity of "it protects society" reasoning
|
| The answer to all variations of your underlying question
| in your post is because when handing down sentences,
| there are multiple, oft-conflicting considerations. We
| don't _only_ consider societal safety - if we did we 'd
| just jail everyone for life.
|
| 6000 is right because it is the right point of balance
| between keeping society safe and the rights of the
| imprisoned, while reflecting the seriousness of the crime
| without being cruel or unusual. Prison sentences
| inherently take away rights from the prisoner, and this
| is yet another thing that's thrown onto the pile of
| considerations for tradeoffs which individually lengthen
| or shorten the term of imprisonment. It's not a binary
| decision like you propose (imprisoned vs not imprisoned
| for any crime), but finding the right balance point
| (likely region or volume) on multidimensional axes.
|
| I'm not a trial judge, but I can think of the following
| factors off thr top of my head: nature of crime
| committed, remorse, amount of harm, restitution (if any),
| sentencing guidelines in the law, probability of
| recidivism, safety of society, safety of defendant,
| sentences issued on similar cases in the past, appeals on
| similar cases in the past, prosecutor sentencing
| recommendations, defense sentencing recommendations, time
| already served, culpability, the number of charges
| defendant is found guilty of and whether they can be
| served simultaneously or not, etc. You're ignoring all of
| these and projecting the sentence to a single dimension
| (societal safety).
|
| You haven't answered why you think we imprison people in
| the first place (or if we should). We cant have a
| fruitful discussion about which sentence durations are
| "better" without knowing what metrics we are measuring.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > We don't only consider societal safety - if we did we'd
| just jail everyone for life.
|
| This is why I asked why 22 was right and 32 is wrong.
| "Because the judge said so" is no more useful than my
| asking "why heads?" and you answering "because that's
| where it landed when I flipped it."
|
| There might not be a "right answer," and I'm ok with
| that. But it's odd to decide it's right simply because an
| authority decided it was.
|
| > You're ignoring all of these and projecting the
| sentence to a single dimension (societal safety).
|
| I'm not ignoring them, I'm simply responding to the
| reasoning you gave. By your metrics, 22 gives 12 more
| years of societal safety than does 10. This is what you
| responded to me, and I'm trying to point out that I
| believe it's flawed. If there are more factors included,
| it doesn't make this reasoning less flawed, it's just a
| smaller slice of the judgment's pie.
|
| > You haven't answered why you think we imprison people
| in the first place (or if we should). We cant have a
| fruitful discussion about which sentence durations are
| "better" without knowing what metrics we are measuring.
|
| Perhaps inadvertently, I think you hit the nail on the
| head. We don't have metrics that validate or invalidate
| any of this. We rely on a set of arbitrary guidelines
| mediated by emotions and feelings. In a great many cases,
| I don't think we're accomplishing anything but pushing a
| problem away and pretending we fixed it.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Forgive me for going meta: Your "Socratic method" falls
| short when you ignore obvious context. You assumed the
| liat of reasons I stated was exhaustive, I clarified in
| my reply that it wasn't and then after another back-and-
| forth you suggested I may have "inadvertently" stumbled
| upon the the real reason of your concerns: complexity,
| which I suppose you felt you were strongly hinting at,
| but I had _explicitly_ mentioned earlier.
|
| You will save yourself and others time by steelmanning
| and front-loading your priors - especially in written
| discussion forums like HN... Unless you're one of those
| people who enjoy debating more than learning other
| perspectives. This thread should _not_ have been this
| deep when I have been stating "there are other factors"
| in my second contribution to it, and it turns out you
| were agreeing all along.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > You will save yourself and others time by steelmanning
| and front-loading your priors
|
| This isn't what happened - my end of the conversation was
| a reaction to your replies and only your replies.
|
| > This thread should not have been this deep when I have
| been stating "there are other factors" in my second
| contribution to it, and it turns out you were agreeing
| all along.
|
| You did in the prior reply - at least explictly - only.
| Forgive me for not making assumptions of things you
| didn't say.
|
| But again, my point was that if "protection of society"
| is a factor in this complex system, there's not much
| argument against maximizing that.
|
| All that said ...
|
| > complexity, which I suppose you felt you were strongly
| hinting at, but I had explicitly mentioned earlier.
|
| This wasn't my conclusion, it was simply a reaction to
| getting more information in that reply than you had
| previously offered.
|
| > Unless you're one of those people who enjoy debating
| more than learning other perspectives.
|
| :(
|
| Getting a reductive comment like this doesn't help.
| bombcar wrote:
| What safety does society get with him in prison that it
| wouldn't get with him outside prison and restricted from
| any "financial" type job?
|
| I don't really see the harm in him working at McDonalds,
| for example, except maybe he'd embezzle from the till, so
| put him on fries.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If he's free, he could very well pretend he's someone
| else and skirt the restrictions, or convince someone else
| to act as his pawn.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > EDIT: Prison should still be about rehabilitation and
| treating humans humanely, to be clear.
|
| No. Prison should be about punishment combined with
| rehabilitation, neither at the expense of the other.
|
| It is perfectly OK to say that punishment, the infliction
| of pain, for a crime, is warranted even if it has no
| rehabilitative value, assuming that it is not demeaning
| or cruel.
|
| Why? Several reasons:
|
| 1. Punishment has it's own value for the sake of justice.
| A hypothetical: Imagine there was a drug, with a 10%
| fatality rate, that perfectly rendered the receiver
| incapable of murder without any other side effects. They
| just perfectly gain control of their emotions and reason,
| or something to that effect. If a person goes and murders
| 50 individuals, but takes the drug and lives; they've
| been theoretically perfectly rehabilitated and need to be
| let back into society, right?
|
| If you think, "of course not," you are now admitting that
| punishment has a value by itself.
|
| EDIT: Also, this hypothetical, actually exists. Imagine
| this case with SBF. Imagine if the only penalty for his
| actions, were that he could not run a banking
| organization ever again, or hold more than $1,000,000 in
| any account that he controls. Perfectly rehabilitated, my
| hypothetical with the drug, in one swoop. He will never
| be able to commit this crime again.
|
| I think I might very well run and do a financial fraud
| tomorrow. At least I'll enjoy the high life for several
| years. You are literally telling me, in that case, I
| could live for years, possibly decades (if I'm Madoff),
| and my only punishment will be that I can't do it again.
| After all, it's only about rehabilitation for myself; and
| to do otherwise would be punishment for punishment's
| sake.
|
| 2. If punishment is not given out fairly, and is only
| contingent upon rehabilitation; you are ignoring the
| rights and feelings of the victims and focusing too
| heavily on the rights and feelings of the criminal.
| Victims have feelings and rights, and considering they
| are the harmed, their feelings and rights ought to be
| first priority, and the criminal's second. Otherwise,
| victims feel the need to take things into their own
| hands. Always have, always will, as part of human nature.
| That's how you get societal meltdown, followed by
| vigilantism.
| jddj wrote:
| > If you think, "of course not"...
|
| And if you think it sounds reasonable?
|
| While there's some benefit (deterrence) to there being
| perceived costs to bad behaviour, it's arguable whether
| punishment for the sake of punishment stands up on its
| own merits.
|
| In your proposed world, where murderousness is recognised
| as a treatable illness, it doesn't really seem reasonable
| to punish to punish _or_ to imprison as a deterrent.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I'll kill your daughter, scatter her remains on the road,
| take the drug, and see if you think otherwise.
|
| Think about it. Under this hypothetical (which I think is
| OK, everybody does Trolly Problems all the time), you
| should be just fine with this result. The deterrence
| value is there (10% chance of death), I've been
| rehabilitated permanently so I can be let out a week
| after I did the murder, it's all good. I might as well
| add some torture to the mix as well, because the drug
| will perfectly rehabilitate that too, of course, so it
| doesn't really matter how I did it either.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > you should be just fine with this result.
|
| Some people are. Some people who have been victimized do
| forgive and ask for leniency.
|
| There is an emotional and personal aspect to that, but
| typically we don't set laws that way.
|
| I'd also argue that "it's all good" is not a fair measure
| for when we consider justice to be served. Practically,
| when there's nothing left to gain, the scale tips from
| justice to pure retribution.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > Some people are. Some people who have been victimized
| do forgive and ask for leniency.
|
| I think you're confusing _forgiveness_ with _punishment_.
| The two are not incompatible.
|
| If your son hits your daughter, you _forgive_ him
| immediately (you do not hold _hatred_ or _anger_ in your
| heart for that action); but you still _punish_ him to
| deter the future behavior. The two are not incompatible,
| or at odds with one another. Similarly, it is not
| incompatible that a man who committed mass murder might
| be forgiven by the families (in that they won 't hold
| hate in their hearts, or use his name as a curse), but
| the families may also simultaneously desire that the
| individual be removed from society.
|
| > Practically, when there's nothing left to gain, the
| scale tips from justice to pure retribution.
|
| Retribution is part of justice, and is not at odds with
| it. If I steal $500, I owe $500 as part of justice. If I
| steal $1,000; I owe $1,000 as part of justice. If I steal
| $10 billion dollars, a sum I shall never repay, I can
| only beg forgiveness and pay the most I reasonably can,
| for a reasonable amount of my life. For justice, at that
| point, recognizes that a society which allowed me to
| steal $10 billion in the first place, has some
| responsibility as well, reducing the required amount for
| retribution.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > I think you're confusing forgiveness with punishment.
| The two are not incompatible.
|
| Not at all. You said "you should be fine with it," which
| is really "acceptance" rather than forgiveness, although
| they go hand in hand.
|
| My point was simply that being fine with it or not being
| fine with it as an personal, emotional response typically
| does not guide modern societal rules.
|
| > Retribution is part of justice, and is not at odds with
| it.
|
| Inherently this is probably true, but we actually have
| laws that are intended to specifically exclude that as a
| factor, depending on jurisdiction.
| jddj wrote:
| In this case, the deterrent makes sense.
|
| The punishment so that the universe feels more fair to me
| isn't all that useful. Maybe as you suggest the mob
| lynchings in this case are unavoidable but I'm not
| convinced.
|
| Happily (both for those who want to subjectively See
| Justice Done, and for those who upon reflection find it
| all a little perverse), the two don't really seem to be
| separable beyond a certain point.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| It might work for you, but are you telling me that if you
| were the murderer in question, you wouldn't be afraid
| that the family wouldn't assassinate you at first
| opportunity if this happened to their daughter?
|
| A heavy sentence is safety for the criminal as well.
| jddj wrote:
| That seems completely orthogonal to the point I disagreed
| with, which was (loosely, sorry) that punishment purely
| for punishment's sake is a social good.
| latexr wrote:
| > People make mistakes, to err is human
|
| Hard to make that argument when discussing fraud, which
| by definition is _intentional_ deception.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I remember reading an article/study that said we think we
| punish for deterrence, but we mostly punish out of spite.
|
| edit: here's the
| article...https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-the-
| common-good-...
| dartos wrote:
| What's the difference?
| mlyle wrote:
| Deterrence makes someone not want to commit the crime
| because of fear of the consequences.
|
| Retribution ("spite") is about getting even.
|
| Rehabilitation is about making it so that the person is
| less likely to offend again when released and more likely
| to be of positive value to society.
|
| Removal is about locking someone up so they cannot do
| more crimes.
|
| A good prison system should balance all four.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder how the measure they measure the deterrence
| effect, it seems impossible to me. It would be a society-
| wide thing (hard to come up with an isolated experiment)
| and it seems like something where people would bring in a
| _ton_ of bias.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| Recidivism I think is a great one: direct experience of
| the traumas of imprisonment not only fail to address the
| root failures which lead to crime, it seems to exacerbate
| it! If direct experience fails to deter, I am unconfident
| proxy experience would see success either. It's a meme by
| now, but see Norway for something closer to the mark.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Recidivism was something I wondered about for a second,
| but I think it is not what we're looking for. I think the
| theory of deterrence is specifically that punishing
| crimes harshly will make _other_ members of society less
| willing to commit crimes. Recidivism is a failure of
| rehabilitation, not deterrence, right?
|
| It also seems like the population of ex-criminals
| couldn't be representative of the population as a whole,
| right?
|
| (FWIW I think the theory of deterrence is probably not
| correct, I can't prove a negative, but the burden of
| proof lies at the feet of people who suggesting it I
| think).
| mlyle wrote:
| > (FWIW I think the theory of deterrence is probably not
| correct, I can't prove a negative, but the burden of
| proof lies at the feet of people who suggesting it I
| think).
|
| There are absolutely times that I do not speed because I
| am concerned about the consequences of getting caught.
|
| There are absolutely students in the school where I teach
| who follow given rules not because they agree with them,
| but because they are deterred by consequences. They
| refrain from climbing the volleyball net not from moral
| agreement, but because it will get them in trouble.
|
| It's better for people to not commit crimes because they
| agree on the morals and principles involved... but if
| people don't agree or have a moment of weakness, the
| consequences are still influential.
| bee_rider wrote:
| These are just anecdotes, which are fine for informal
| conversations like this, but hopefully you'd be a little
| more rigorous if you were seriously proposing a course of
| action for the justice system.
|
| In the case of students, they seem to try and cheat
| sometimes, so the deterrence doesn't seem very effective.
| Anyway, the negative consequence is very disperse (it
| hurts the reputation of the school if they get through
| without learning anything). The main bad result falls on
| them (they waste thousands of dollars to intentionally
| avoid learning). They also might fail the final, not as a
| punishment, but as a natural result of not learning the
| material.
|
| In the case of speeding, everyone here speeds. The flow
| of traffic is always 5-10 over the speed limit here.
| People are intentionally breaking the posted speed limit
| to go the safer speed (going the speed limit here impedes
| the flow of traffic and makes a more dangerous situation
| for everyone). I think it is more of an informal decision
| making process--people just follow the herd--but it is a
| funny example!
| mlyle wrote:
| Are you saying you are never influenced by consequences
| in choosing what to do?
|
| I understand the _magnitude_ of deterrence effects may be
| in question, or that the _relative worth_ of different
| types of deterrence are open to debate. But I don 't
| really understand how something that is nearly a
| universal human experience can be in question. Almost
| everyone has chosen not to do something because of the
| consequences of outside rules.
|
| Indeed, we can easily try and see. If I fail to be
| visible during break duty (so that students think there
| are unlikely to be consequences), students will climb the
| volleyball net. :D
|
| > going the speed limit here impedes the flow of traffic
| and makes a more dangerous situation for everyone).
|
| This has been studied and is itself a silly (untrue)
| anecdote.
| bee_rider wrote:
| > Are you saying you are never influenced by consequences
| in choosing what to do?
|
| Nope.
|
| > I understand the magnitude of deterrence effects may be
| in question, or that the relative worth of different
| types of deterrence are open to debate.
|
| In the context of the thread
|
| > A good prison system should balance all four.
|
| I thought it would be clear that the magnitude and the
| relative worth were the topic. Sorry if that wasn't the
| case! I'm definitely not going to defend the idea that
| nobody has ever avoided doing something for fear of
| punishment (although I do think that in a well
| functioning society, most of the negative consequences
| should be natural, not artificially imposed as
| punishments).
|
| > If I fail to be visible during break duty (so that
| students think there are unlikely to be consequences),
| students will climb the volleyball net. :D
|
| I think if that's the sort of thing you are worried
| about, you must be working with kids. They probably need
| a stricter treatment, since their brains aren't done yet.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I really appreciate how you mapped out those four
| concepts and the language you used for them, I feel a lot
| more clear on it. Thank you.
| mlyle wrote:
| Thank you!
| Galacta7 wrote:
| Retribution shouldn't be the driving force, but I can
| understand it from a societal standpoint. Victims and the
| families of the victims will want to see a punishment
| applied for the harm they've suffered. It's in the
| state's interest to make sure that it's not excessively
| applied, but to degree there's a mix of correction and
| retribution that has to be taken into account at
| sentencing. One person's spite is another's justice.
|
| I think that if too many people see retribution as no
| longer being applied, some people will start to take
| matters into their own hands to seek vengeance.
|
| The state has an interest in preventing that and assuring
| retribution is applied as evenly as possible, and
| counterbalanced by other mitigating factors (e.g. the
| degree of offense, the circumstances under which it
| occurred, likelihood of reoffending, penitence of the
| guilty, etc.).
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I find your points quite interesting. If I'm
| understanding correctly, that if the victims, families of
| victims, or frankly, anyone who feels pain and wants to
| seek retribution, don't believe that the retribution is
| sufficient, then they may take action into their own
| hands. I witnessed this living in Tanzania, where if
| people didn't trust the police to arrest and punish
| someone who stole, sometimes the people would track down
| and seek mob justice (violence?) against the person who
| stole.
|
| So if the government would take a true rehabilitative
| approach, and maybe arrest people but treat them well,
| try to help them so they don't do the same behaviors in
| the future, a percentage of the population might see that
| as insufficient and take retribution into their own
| hands.
|
| You've helped me realize why I've actually shifted my
| professional focus from wanting to change politics to
| wanting to change culture. Seems a lot of being in
| government is doing what the people want, and if the
| people want retribution, then the government has to
| follow it.
|
| I hope for (and am working towards) a world in which we
| help people know our pain not by trying to cause the same
| pain to them, but by expressing our pain to them with
| more granularity, because the pain they'd feel as a
| result of retribution will never be the exact same pain
| we feel, as our contexts are way too complex to replicate
| exactly.
|
| I really appreciate your comment, thank you for helping
| me think more deeply about this.
| bombcar wrote:
| I once read something that part of the point of
| government "management of crime" whatever you want to
| call it is to suppress vigilantism.
|
| It may not be entirely descriptive, but it certainly is
| part of it. At some point Gary Plauche becomes common.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| This makes a lot of sense to me. And I appreciate you
| sharing the reference to Gary Plauche, I had never heard
| the story before.
| bombcar wrote:
| One of the most "unstabalizing" things in a society is a
| person or people with nothing to lose. You could make an
| argument for much of government being reducing the number
| of people with nothing to lose.
| bartread wrote:
| I think both of those are flawed views. Not necessarily
| mistaken, but incomplete. One of the key reasons we
| imprison people is to prevent them from doing further
| harm to society: i.e., we put them in prison for our
| benefit, not theirs. It's definitely good if they're
| rehabilitated along the way, but rehabilitation isn't
| necessary for their imprisonment to be a net benefit to
| society.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Any thoughts on victimless crimes?
| bombcar wrote:
| What is a victimless crime? Speeding? Even though
| excessive speed is strongly correlated with crash deaths?
|
| Fraud? The money comes from somewhere; someone is harmed
| by it (Pratchett's _Going Postal_ has a good line on it -
| "No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled,
| Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig.
| You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks
| Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have
| Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin
| With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths
| Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them
| Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore
| Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For
| Sport. For The Joy Of The Game."
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I think it depends on how we define victim, and
| especially how direct and tangible the harm needs to be
| to be considered a victim.
|
| But maybe it also has to do with whether people feel
| victimized. If no one felt victimized, would we punish?
|
| So I imagine it's probably a combination of who feels
| victimized and who society believes should feel
| victimized. Because as others may respond, white-collar
| crime has people who get harmed as a result of the
| actions, even if it's not as obvious as the person
| directly punching them in the face.
|
| One could argue that even the fact of breaking the law
| can harm those who went through great lengths to not
| break the law.
| bartread wrote:
| What SBF has done is not a victimless crime though: lots
| of fairly ordinary people lost money because of what he
| did, some of them lost everything.
|
| Yes, I know some of the people who lost money are rich,
| and much is being made of that by people who want to
| troll by saying that's the only reason he really got into
| trouble (e.g., on Reddit). But that's not true: there are
| plenty of victims from SBFs crimes, both rich and not
| rich.
|
| And in this kind of discussion I suggest it's helpful to
| avoid hypotheticals and to look at the real situations
| and outcomes relating to the case we're talking about.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Oh, I did not mean to say that what SBF has done was a
| victimless crime, I meant the question to be general,
| albeit off-topic. My bad!
| recursive wrote:
| If you do something for spite, does that mean it's not
| deterrent?
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I'll try to find the article, I think the point was that
| we think we are being violent to others with a conscious
| intention of trying to prevent future violence, but that
| most of the time we are doing it with the intention of
| them knowing our current pain that we think they caused
| to us, not really thinking much about the future.
|
| So if the spite causes people to feel sufficiently afraid
| to do the action in the future, maybe it deters people
| from acting that way?
|
| edit: here's the
| article...https://aeon.co/ideas/punishment-isnt-about-
| the-common-good-...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| IMO an important component of punishment is convincing
| society that justice has been served. Too light a
| punishment, and vigilantism will become prevalent.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Your comment and another above has me thinking that it's
| almost like vicarious punishment. "If you don't punch
| them, I will, so you better punch them hard enough."
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It makes sense. We empower the government to act on our
| behalf, including with violence. Arguably it is one of
| the fundamental reasons for government to exist.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| And I wonder if certain calculations, like preventing
| vigilantism, tend to act on the behalf of not the
| majority of a population but an extreme few. Or in other
| words, if 95% of the population support an idea but 5%
| violently opposes it, does the government cater more to
| the 95% or 5%? At what point are government officials
| afraid that the 5% will commit violent acts against
| society or them and their loved ones and therefore cater
| to their perspective more than the majority?
| paulcole wrote:
| Is it a deterrent? SBF knew Madoff got 150 years.
|
| The perceived benefit of getting rich and famous can make
| it easy to overlook the downsides of getting caught.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > SBF knew Madoff got 150 years.
|
| My perception of some of these financial crimes - Madoff
| included - is they start off with a small slip, rather
| than a full dive into fraud. A lot of times it snowballs
| while the person responsible keeps searching for a way
| out.
|
| I wonder at what point SBF would have even said what he
| was doing was immoral. If you're running a Ponzi scheme
| you think you can salvage, would you compare yourself to
| Madoff, or would you think "I'm trying to set things
| right"?
| skulk wrote:
| From what I read on Wikipedia, Madoff didn't make a
| single investment with the money given to his wealth
| management program. He deposited it all into a bank
| account and paid people out of the same bank account.
| This is notably different from SBF's case.
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| So what are you saying? That prison isn't a deterrent for
| financial crimes?
| nkozyra wrote:
| I absolutely did not say that.
|
| Rather, I'm suggesting that in the eye of the beholder, a
| very clear case of fraud might be self-perceived as a
| bump on the road to lawful, legitimate financial
| dealings.
|
| So the question is if SBF didn't see himself as
| committing the same crimes as Madoff (even if he was),
| would Madoff's sentencing and fate even register as a
| potential deterrent?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| We don't know to what extent prison is a deterrent. It's
| classic survivor bias - we only get to see the cases
| where the deterrent failed, not where it succeeded.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I've always been in favor of the Norway sentencing model
| [0]. 21 years is the max prison sentence, with 5 year
| extensions possible. Punishment must always carry the
| possibility of rehabilitation and return to society, even
| in the most extreme cases. A small amount of people will
| show no remorse or willingness to improve and will remain
| in prison for life.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment_in_Norway
| mlyle wrote:
| I think that might be the best normal path, but I think
| there's a (relatively small) population of offenders who
| we can know have no real prospect of rehabilitation.
|
| Perhaps the more important distinction: if we're going to
| let people out of prison eventually, we should make sure
| that prison is a place that is set up in the best way to
| make that eventual return to society successful. Right
| now, it feels like we do the opposite.
| mrkeen wrote:
| > with 5 year extensions possible.
|
| Ouch! I hadn't heard of this before, and I gotta say I'm
| not a fan.
|
| I agree with it only in principle; it seems ripe for
| injustice in all practical details.
|
| If you maintain your innocence, is that a lack of
| remorse? Can you be any kind of 'model citizen' in prison
| - engaging in charity or volunteer work? Who brings the
| +5 year charge or provides evidence for it? The prison
| staff who don't find your personable, or the shrink who
| doesn't think you're taking the sessions seriously (if
| shrink visits in prison exist)?
| professoretc wrote:
| > I agree with it only in principle; it seems ripe for
| injustice in all practical details.
|
| Yep, instead of "you definitely get out of prison after X
| years have passed" you instead get "you get out of prison
| in 21 years! (or never, depending on how we feel)".
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Per the wiki page, the five year extensions are for the
| indeterminate penalty, not for any prison sentence. The
| alternate to this sentence is "We will kill you in
| prison" or "You will die in prison".
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Imo 5 means 3 and that is too low for most serious crimes,
| it feels almost like an incentive to just not get caught,
| more than an incentive to not do it all.
|
| Losing 20 years of your life though will have a drastic
| effect on the rest of your life. As it should for some
| crimes.
|
| Or is your argument we should skip from 10 to death, I'm
| honestly not sure.
| hintymad wrote:
| I guess the nuance is that SBF can get paroles if he
| behaved well. That is, this 25 years can be punitive, but
| he will also has a chance to earn some trust and reduce the
| punishment.
| anamexis wrote:
| Federal prisons do not have parole.
| volkl48 wrote:
| There is a possible "good behavior" reduction, but the
| maximum of that works out to around 15% off the sentence.
| He'll serve at least 21 of those years or so.
| harambae wrote:
| He can't get parole, but can get RDAP, halfway house,
| first step act, good behavior (15%), in theory a rule 35b
| (not sure what he knows), and whatever else gets invented
| in the future. Maybe a commuted sentence but probably not
| for a while.
|
| Probably out in 17 years which is still a long time.
|
| I was most surprised by the recommendation of medium
| security. Not sure how well Sam will do in a medium.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| The problem is, criminals think they will not be caught.
| There is a deterrent, but the difference between 10, 20 and
| 30 years is abstract for someone who thinks they are not
| caught.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| At some point its not about deterrent or social benefit but
| justice. People can say its not fair or productive for
| people like him to be locked up forever. Well, what about
| their victims? How many people's financial futures were
| destroyed by SBF? Is it fair to all those people that he
| will get to live a normal life? And likely a comfortable
| well off one at that. He already had a privileged family
| and I have no doubt it will be easy for him to profit off
| his story once he gets out. The hardly seems right.
| batch12 wrote:
| Does his jail time do anything that helps his victims
| other than make them feel good? Are there other ways he
| could make reparations?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It protects potential future victims - both from SBF and
| from those who might want to emulate him.
|
| Which is why I think the sentence is too low.
|
| There are other ways he could make reparations. One would
| be to have one-to-one meetings with his victims, where
| they tell him in person how his actions affected them.
|
| There's a fair chance it would bounce right off SBF,
| because he clearly has serious personality issues.
|
| Then again, maybe not.
| bawolff wrote:
| > Well, what about their victims? How many people's
| financial futures were destroyed by SBF? Is it fair to
| all those people that he will get to live a normal life?
|
| That sounds more like retribution than justice. I.E.
| wanting to cause him pain because he caused pain in
| others.
|
| Of course, i don't have a better answer by any means.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It is deterrence: it sends the message of don't do the
| same thing or you'll wind up in prison for a long time.
| It really isn't retribution, this kind of enforcement is
| meant to scare other potential white collar criminals
| into not breaking the law as well.
| mnau wrote:
| Retribution is one of justifications for punishment:
| retribution; incapacitation; deterrence; rehabilitation
| and reparation.
|
| Retribution is part of the justice.
| ziddoap wrote:
| A prison sentence is punishment, not justice.
|
| Justice would be making the victims whole.
| cccybernetic wrote:
| This presumes a theory of justice where "social benefit" is
| relevant at all -- not everyone accepts this.
| bawolff wrote:
| > I have to ask: does 20 years provide more social benefit
| than 10? 5? Surely there's diminishing returns on
| imprisonment.
|
| Arguably, the social benefit is to deter more major crimes.
|
| If all crimes were X year sentences, then once you comitted
| one crime you may as well continue, since the punishment is
| the same either way.
| FabHK wrote:
| So, legal theory provides three reasons for punishment:
|
| 1) revenge ("an eye for an eye") - that's not considered a
| factor anymore today except as an upside-limit on the
| punishment, ie, the punishment should not exceed the damage
| caused. Here, the damage caused was immense, so don't think
| that'll be a limiting factor.
|
| 2) specific prevention - keep that particular perpetrator
| off the streets, so they can't commit crimes again. There's
| some argument that old people commit fewer crimes, so when
| the perpetrator is old enough, one can let them go. Maybe
| one shouldn't let SBF out until he's older than Madoff
| was...
|
| 3) general prevention, aka deterrence - make sure that the
| punishment (in conjunction with the probability of being
| caught) is sufficient to discourage others from committing
| the crime. This is problematic as apparently most
| perpetrators seem to think that they won't be caught (which
| is why capital punishment doesn't necessarily reduce crime
| rates). I think in this case it's good that the many, many
| crypto "operators" see that there is some downside in
| scamming people.
| tithe wrote:
| In this case, could he be considered a violent economic
| threat to society? His defense did try to argue that he was
| not a "ruthless financial serial killer".
| vitiral wrote:
| Lying is a form of violence and so is stealing. Not physical
| violence mind you, but violence nonetheless.
| stonogo wrote:
| "Violence" is physical. Without a physical component, there
| is no violence. It's the entire point of the word.
| vitiral wrote:
| So screaming at someone is not violence?
|
| Definitions vary depending on context. I think of
| violence as a spectrum. Talking peacefully and
| negotiating is extremely low violence. Threats etc are
| more. All our war and atomics are about the limit.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence?wprov=sfla1
|
| > Some definitions are somewhat broader, such as the
| World Health Organization's definition of violence as
| "the intentional use of physical force or power,
| threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or
| against a group or community, which either results in or
| has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death,
| psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation."
|
| Violence IMO is anything which causes harm or can be used
| to force a condition.
| floor2 wrote:
| I was psychologically harmed reading this comment. Please
| do not post on HN again. To continue to do so is to do
| violence against me.
| vitiral wrote:
| Glad we can find agreement, but sorry this is justified
| violence :D
| stonogo wrote:
| No, screaming at someone is not violence. The WHO
| definition you cite also restricts its definition to
| physical force. If screaming were violence, we'd have
| prisons full of sports fans after every football game.
|
| "Harming someone" is anything which causes harm. We have
| different words to describe different things. In this
| way, we can tell them apart when communicating with each
| other.
| vitiral wrote:
| Not all violence is wrong or illegal, and not all
| screaming is violence.
|
| Words are defined by people. By seeing violence as a
| spectrum you can see the spectrum of possible responses
| to violence. We can then distinguish the different forms
| of violence with other words, like "physical"
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Not all definitions of violence are limited to physical
| force. Some are, including any form of power which allows
| abuse.
| stonogo wrote:
| All definitions of violence which extend past physical
| force are incorrect.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| And you are the one deciding for everyone?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| counterpoint - no it's not.
|
| At least if you are making statements going against the
| general understanding of the society you're in then make a
| reference to the ideas or theories that prompt you to make
| these statements.
|
| Note: many forms of theft obviously involve violence.
| _flux wrote:
| Extending words in one's public vocabulary to include
| things one doesn't like is a form of misleading, and thus
| lying, and thus violence.
| vitiral wrote:
| Most deep discussions require some amount of discussing
| your terms. A surprising amount of insight can be
| gathered by playing with and altering previous
| assumptions of a word's meaning.
|
| For instance, by seeing violence as a spectrum you can
| see that while lying to the Nazi about the Jewish person
| in your attic is "committing violence" against said Nazi,
| you can also recognize that the lie is quite obviously
| justified violence -- and there is a spectrum of
| justified violence in that case.
|
| When you lie to someone you damage their ability to see
| reality as it is, especially the reality of yourself
| (your thoughts, motivations, etc). Its not as severe as a
| punch to the face (in most cases at least) but it still
| causes harm.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Is a silent threat so much better? I mean, how high is the
| chance for him to repeat the same shit again after some
| years?
| pie420 wrote:
| The main purpose of imprisoning white-collar crime is to act
| as a deterrent. If the upside for a financial crime is
| billions of dollars, and the potential risk is 25 years in
| prison, lots of people will be willing to take that risk,
| especially if 25 years actually means 17ish with good
| behavior.
|
| If the punishment is life in prison with no chance of parole,
| it'll act as more of a deterrent.
|
| Punishment lengths don't act as a deterrent to petty and
| violent crime, because the people commiting those crimes are
| not intelligent or are crimes of passion. Systematic fraud
| like this is slow, calculated and methodical.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Feels low to me too. I think the distinction between
| "violent" is completely irrelevant. I think taking money from
| people does just as much harm as physically injuring them --
| many people would rather have several bones broken than lose
| their pension.
|
| The benefit is the deterrent. It's especially important for
| wealthy people who we may wonder if they greased wheels
| behind the scenes.
|
| If you want somebody to cry about, cry about a man doing a
| life sentence for marijuana possession, not sbf. [1]
|
| 1 - https://eji.org/news/life-sentence-for-marijuana-
| possession-...
| tshaddox wrote:
| I think it's generally appropriate to group violence,
| coercion, and fraud together in these discussions.
| batch12 wrote:
| I think it's okay to consider both to be too long.
| dijit wrote:
| FWIW people have a viceral reaction to extremes of violence
| that they can comprehend.
|
| When you consider that a 1% unemployment rate increase
| generally correlates to ~5,000 deaths then you can consider
| gross financial negligence to have an actual tangible human
| mortality cost.
|
| We just don't, because it's too indirect and your laywer
| would argue confounding factors until you are all dead; but
| don't be mistaken: financial crimes _do_ cost lives.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| >> The benefit is the deterrent
|
| That's utterly useless. There is simply no way any
| sociopath gives one iota about it.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| On the contrary, sociopaths typically _only_ care about
| the deterrent.
| FabHK wrote:
| > I think the distinction between "violent" is completely
| irrelevant.
|
| In particular since several people with crypto losses
| committed suicide, or worse, murder-suicide (killing their
| family and kids first).
| renegade-otter wrote:
| "But financial cons are VICTIMLESS CRIMES! Give the guy a
| slap on the wrist and let him clean someone else's life's
| savings again! They may or may not kill themselves.
| VICTIMLESS!"
| hiddencost wrote:
| Every $10 million in financial crime should be punished as
| severely as murder. It is equivalent in terms of the harms
| caused.
| abvdasker wrote:
| > If someone isn't a violent threat to society, there isn't
| much social benefit to keeping folks locked up longer then
| 20-ish years.
|
| This unfortunately widely held belief is measurably wrong and
| reeks of all kinds of biases. White collar criminals are one
| of the categories most likely to reoffend. Recidivism is much
| higher in white collar criminals precisely due to the
| leniency they often experience and the powerful financial
| motives associated with these types of crimes.
|
| For violent crime 38.9% of convicts were arrested for new
| crime within 3 years of release. White collar crime on the
| other hand had a 58.8% 3-year recidivism rate.
|
| White collar crime poses systemic risks which violent crime
| doesn't to the same extent. It undermines confidence in
| institutions by creating corruption and waste, enriching few
| at the expense of many. When it becomes normalized and
| widespread this kind of crime can destroy a country's
| economic and political systems.
|
| https://medcraveonline.com/FRCIJ/FRCIJ-02-00039.pdf
| bombcar wrote:
| > In analyzing recidivism of violent criminals, the
| criteria used were any prisoner with two or fewer prior
| arrests, who had been convicted of rape, homicide, assault,
| other sexual abuse, or other violent crime.
|
| > In examining at white collar criminals, the criteria used
| were any prisoner with two or fewer prior arrests, who had
| been convicted of larceny, theft, motor vehicle theft, or
| other property crime (which included types of fraud,
| embezzlement, etc.).
|
| I wonder if you removed the "two or fewer" if you'd get a
| different result.
| Teever wrote:
| I very much agree with your last paragraph. I would go so
| far as to say that white collar crime is worse than violent
| crimes because it is the pernicious ability of white collar
| crime to perpetuate the environment that it flourishes that
| can lead to the social decay that you're talking about
| which ultimately causes violent crime.
|
| Another aspect of white collar crime vs violent crime is
| that there's no real legal concept of self defense against
| white collar criminals while in most places there's varying
| degrees of force you can use in response to a violent crime
| being committed against you or a stranger. With white
| collar crime a psychopath wearing a corporation can act
| with impunity and ruin your livelihood in all kinds of ways
| and there's nothing you can do about it.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It is ridiculous that finance owns such an outsized position
| in our economy, with the wizards of finance hailed for their
| key role in the efficient performance of the economy rewarded
| to the tune of megabillionaires...
|
| and people will say with a straight face that defrauding
| large numbers of people of their money might not have
| numerous health / fatal consequences: anxiety, stress,
| divorce, loss of benefits, working longer past retirement.
|
| It's like saying Mafia bosses or Hitler or Stalin weren't
| violent and dangerous because they ordered the deaths of
| millions with a stroke of a pen.
| Vicinity9635 wrote:
| Not all threats are violent.
| chongli wrote:
| Low? That's high! He didn't kill anyone. A sentence of 25 years
| completely destroys his life. He's been made an example of.
| malermeister wrote:
| He's completely destroyed thousands of lives through his
| actions.
| n2d4 wrote:
| Maybe he didn't kill anyone directly, but I can assure you
| that plenty of people committed suicide solely as a
| consequence of his actions
| kosievdmerwe wrote:
| One of the victims at the sentencing mentioned that there
| were at least 3 suicides.
| floor2 wrote:
| Maybe don't send your money to an unregulated startup in
| the Bahamas to gamble on cryptocurrencies if losing that
| money is going to cause you to commit suicide?
|
| The "victims" knew they were intentionally avoiding
| government oversight of securities law, banking regulators,
| etc. When they lost money we should have collectively
| shrugged our shoulders and said that's the risk they chose
| to take.
| infamouscow wrote:
| Is there any limiting principle to your remarkably
| stupid* rationale where everyone assumes all risk of
| their decisions implicitly and explicitly?
|
| *: yes stupid, not an ad hominem
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww47bR86wSc
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Also, don't run such a startup if you want to avoid 25
| years in prison.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Maybe that girl shouldn't have worn that skirt, maybe
| that black guy shouldn't have been in that town after
| sunset, maybe that guy shouldn't have had a boyfriend.
|
| There was a trial and now a sentencing, your argument
| according to law is wrong.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| It sounds callous, but if accept the suggestion that he's
| responsible for their deaths, how can we then excuse
| people working in the casinos or other gambling ventures
| that surely lead to the deaths of many.
|
| Or would folks here suggest the numerous HN contributors
| who have worked in gambling tech are deserving of life in
| prison as well?
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Prosecuting individual contributors to gambling is too
| far, but prosecuting C-level execs of gambling companies
| is correct to me.
| n2d4 wrote:
| Gambling, like finance, has rules. If I start a casino,
| and tell everyone that the roulette is fair, and then go
| ahead and rig it so no one ever wins, then yea, I should
| be sent straight to prison.
|
| If SBF told everyone loud and clear "hey guys you can
| give me money and I will use it to gamble on my favorite
| crypto tokens and play board games with Caroline" then I
| don't think he would deserve a prison sentence (but he
| also wouldn't get any customers). It's the deception that
| makes it a crime.
| Arthur_ODC wrote:
| This is the most reasonable take I've seen about this.
| thefaux wrote:
| For me, SBF's fraud is a comorbidity but not likely the
| underlying cause of the suicides. By similar logic, should
| we imprison all tobacco executives?
|
| Personally, I'm glad SBF is being held accountable but this
| sentence seems very harsh, especially given that I expect
| all of his coconspirators will mostly be let off the hook.
| q3k wrote:
| > By similar logic, should we imprison all tobacco
| executives?
|
| If it was for me to decide - yes, absolutely.
| n2d4 wrote:
| > By similar logic, should we imprison all tobacco
| executives?
|
| If they committed crimes to sell tobacco (which, to my
| knowledge, is true for at least some of them),
| absolutely, yes.
| davidwritesbugs wrote:
| Yes. He's been made an example of. That's kind of the point:
| "Tempted to commit fraud on a huge scale and wreck thousands
| of lives? Consider what we did to this guy."
| antonchekhov wrote:
| On a much more severe scale, this is clearly the message
| that the Kremlin lavishly displayed of the initial
| treatment of the suspects involved in the Moscow Crocus
| Hall shootings/bombing - the results of severe torture send
| an unmistakable message of "Do not be tempted to try this
| (terrorism/attempted revolution" to the citizenry, with the
| implicit message that their very-short remaining lifespan
| will be very painful.
| chongli wrote:
| _" Do not be tempted to try this (terrorism/attempted
| revolution" to the citizenry_
|
| And the citizenry are the only ones left who can be
| deterred by this message. Islamic State will switch to
| using suicide bombers who have no fear of torture.
|
| My personal theory is that Prigozhin's aborted mutiny
| last year and Ukraine's sustained drone campaign against
| Russian oil infrastructure paved the way to the Crocus
| Hall attack. Now the doors have been opened and Russia's
| internal security has been revealed for the paper tiger
| that it is. Every single paramilitary group with a bone
| to pick with Russia has now been forcefully made aware of
| Putin's weakness and now they'll be lining up to copy
| these attacks. All the while, he continues to try to
| blame Ukraine for this despite all evidence to the
| contrary. Scary times to be living in Russia right now!
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > A sentence of 25 years completely destroys his life.
|
| No, it does not "destroy his life". He will be in his
| early/mid-50's when gets out. Someone with his privilege,
| education and resources should have known better. It's hard
| to feel sympathy. I expect that sufficient punishment in
| cases like this will serve as a deterrent for others like SBF
| who would do the same.
|
| Hopefully he is ALSO restricted, for life, from ever working
| in finance again.
| tyingq wrote:
| >Hopefully he is ALSO restricted, for life, from ever
| working in finance again.
|
| A felony conviction is pretty effective for heavily
| restricting any type of employment. The universal and cheap
| access to background checks means work is either places
| that deliberately have "hire a felon" programs or some type
| of self-employment, or connections with people very high up
| in a company. Though all those angles are also complicated
| if any sort of state licensing is involved.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That doesn't actually seem to be the case for white
| collar criminals though. That guy from Wolf of Wall
| street is conning people to this very day, including
| being a hype guy for crypto scams!
| tyingq wrote:
| I don't know for sure, but "hype guy" probably means
| self-employed and companies pay his company for that sort
| of thing. That is available for blue-collar felons also.
| gorbachev wrote:
| Is it everywhere though?
|
| He's already proven he's perfectly fine running his
| empires from countries with a more relaxed attitude to
| financial regulations.
| hereonout2 wrote:
| I didn't read any sympathy in that comment, they just seem
| to be pointing out that 25 years is not a "low" sentence.
|
| I would also agree that spending a 3rd of your life in
| prison is in effect destroying it.
| commakozzi wrote:
| It'll serve as a deterrent in the same way that Bernie
| Madoff's case did?
| crispyambulance wrote:
| Maybe it speaks as a deterrent to some people and not
| others. That's OK.
| fckgw wrote:
| Go read the victim impact statements sometime. He destroyed
| lots of people's lives.
| mnau wrote:
| As far as I am concerned, when you steal from me, you robbed
| me of piece of my life. The time I spend earning that money,
| instead of being with friends or just pursuing a hobby or
| just wasting it on HN.
|
| How many lifetimes worth of time were destroyed by his fraud.
|
| It's definitely not high punishment.
| anon291 wrote:
| I mean... At the end of the day everyone 'invested' their
| money here. The risks of high interest Bitcoin accounts
| were well known and elucidated by all reputable sources. If
| you lost money in this, I'm truly sorry, but realistically
| what did you expect. It wasn't even a bank (and remember if
| your bank loses money, no one's going to jail as long as
| they followed regulations).
| mnau wrote:
| I haven't lost any money, I avoid crypto.
|
| The difference is consent and malicious behavior.
|
| When I invest into stock market, it can always go down.
|
| When you move your customers money to save your other
| failing company, it's fraud. There is no consent and
| there is malicious behavior.
|
| Crypto repeats all failings of old-fashioned banking
| system we have learned over 2 centuries, except it's
| "with blockchain" now.
| j-krieger wrote:
| Retribution is a part of the justice system
| klodolph wrote:
| 25 years is a damn long time. I don't know how that can "seem
| low".
| objektif wrote:
| How much Bernie madoff got?
| aeyes wrote:
| 150 years
| wut42 wrote:
| 150 years.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| 150 years - of which he served 12 years before dying in
| prison.
| zarzavat wrote:
| He was already old so he was going to die in prison
| whatever happened.
| kosievdmerwe wrote:
| Madoff spent ~12 years in prison before he died at 82.
|
| They gave him a 150 year sentence for a crime on par-ish
| with SBF's crimes, because at 70 there is little difference
| between 20 years and 100 years, so you may as well go for
| the shock value.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Part of it is that he took it to trial. He likely could have
| negotiated a deal for single-digit years if he had admitted
| guilt and cooperated.
| axus wrote:
| I don't think we should pressure people into admitting
| guilt, but cooperating could be important. What more should
| he have done to help the people affected by his fraud?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I agree we should not pressure it but if you _are_ guilty
| and caught with your hand in the cookie jar, it could be
| your best option. A good attorney will advise you if your
| best course is to minimize the damage by accepting a plea
| deal.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I think it seems low because of the magnitude of the crime.
| Also because we punish more violent crimes with very harsh
| sentences including charging non-violent perpetrators with
| violent crimes(Felony Murder).
|
| Add in the desire to be seen as doing something with
| sentencing inflation and your get multiple hundred year
| sentences.
|
| At first I felt that 25 years was short but thinking about
| it, he will be ~60 when he gets out... so maybe not too
| short.
| tempsy wrote:
| if he does 85% and after accounting for the year and a half
| he's already been in prison he'll probably get out by 50
| coldpie wrote:
| I don't know. The appropriateness of the sentence is not
| something I feel super strongly about one way or the other, but
| 25 years is objectively a very long time. Think about what a
| typical person does in their first 25 years. That's long enough
| for a person to be born, go through early childhood, go through
| all of their basic schooling, attend college, get a job and
| work for 5 years, and have a kid of their own. Or, think about
| a 25 year old person, and put them next to a 50 year old
| person. Or a 50 year old person next to a 75 year old person.
| It's just a very long amount of time, no matter how you slice
| it.
| hammock wrote:
| Shall I pull up some comps? It's not going to be pretty
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Shocked he's going at all, was starting to feel like he'd get
| away with a slap on the wrist considering his contacts.
| mikeryan wrote:
| Best teacher I had in high school taught economics. First day
| of class his lesson was "If you're going to become a criminal
| follow these 10 rules".
|
| I can't remember all the rules but the two I do: 1. Don't do
| anything for less than $1M. Risk isn't worth the reward. 2.
| Don't use a weapon. It adds years to your sentence.
|
| It was mostly about how white-collar crime has a much safer
| risk/reward ratio.
| colechristensen wrote:
| How you commit crime is make it complicated enough that a
| prosecutor will think twice about their ability to teach a
| jury about how what you did worked and that any of the steps
| were even wrong in the first place. This is why so much
| financial crime goes unpunished.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| He was playing fast and loose with clients' money (and
| ultimately made profitable investments). Elizabeth Holmes
| played fast and loose with medical testing and people's very
| lives. She got less than half this sentence.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I think intent matters. I don't like what he did but I am
| convinced he didn't think he was doing something deceitful.
| Whereas Madoff had a guilty conscience and precisely crafted
| something intended to deceive.
| santoshalper wrote:
| SBF is 32 years old. If (and it's a big if) he serves the
| entire 25 years, he will be 57 when he is free again. They are
| taking the best years of his life, and one day when he dies,
| having been imprisoned will be the defining event of his life -
| not being rich or being a CEO.
|
| He may never marry, never have children, and will experience a
| very different (and far worse) life than most of the
| population. I have very little sympathy for the man, and I know
| draconian punishment is fashionable and cathartic, but I
| personally think this is a very suitable punishment for the
| very severe crime he committed.
| dandanua wrote:
| It seems "the victimless crime" [1] became a normal line of
| defense when billionaires commit financial fraud. Insanity.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/EDMinX6t1Zk?t=420
| misiti3780 wrote:
| A year ago, HN didnt think he was going to jail:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33908850
| swader999 wrote:
| Yes, I was one of those doubters.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| I had my doubts, but I'm glad to see they were unfounded.
| He's getting what he deserves.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Why, as a matter of interest? These _really_ big, blatant
| frauds usually do; see Madoff, Holmes, et al. Like, it's hard
| to see how he'd avoid prison, certainly in the US.
|
| Other noted fraud-y bitcoin exchange guy Mark Karpeles
| avoided prison after conviction, but the evidence was much
| weaker there and they only found him guilty on fraudulently
| inflating MtGox's holdings (a la Donald Trump); also, that
| was Japan.
|
| (Fun fact; after the collapse of MtGox, Karpeles went into
| business with Andrew Lee, the guy who broke freenode and
| claims to be the Crown Prince of Korea. The world of weird
| internet grifters is small and incestuous.)
| swader999 wrote:
| He was well connected, especially his parents. Huge
| political donor. He likely would have recieved a small
| sentence and somewhat validated my doubt had he not
| purgured and witness tampered during the trial.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Sure, but, like, so were Madoff and Holmes. Henry
| Kissinger, _Henry Kissinger_, was on Theranos's board.
| Rupert Murdoch invested. I don't think SBF really had
| anyone on that level?
|
| There is a certain point where it no longer matters; such
| connections would only really matter if they could get
| the investigation stopped. Once it goes to court,
| assuming it's a proper court, those sort of connections
| kind of cease to matter.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yeah, it's been a bit funny to watch the goalposts move. He
| won't be arrested, he won't be charged, he won't go to trial,
| he won't be convicted, he'll get a light sentence, his
| political donations will get him off, etc.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| And I'm wondering now, who else will join him?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Several others have already pled guilty; most notably Wang,
| Ellison, and Salame.
| user90131313 wrote:
| everyone except Sam Trabucco of alameda , very litte
| mention of him
| lawgimenez wrote:
| That dude from Binance should be next.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Plenty of us did think he'd go to jail. There are even examples
| in the linked thread.
| chongli wrote:
| One person was cynical. Everyone else chimed in to correct that
| person: SBF was "new money" which carries no social status to
| protect against jail time.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There were dozens if not hundreds of SBF threads; the above
| link is just one subthread of one of those threads. In each
| of them, quite a few people would argue he'd never see
| consequences; his political donations were extensively
| pointed to as evidence of this.
|
| (Including, notably, Elon Musk:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1591822387267665921)
| lesuorac wrote:
| Honestly, downvoted.
|
| The top voted comment in that topic is saying he's going to
| jail. Just because in a forum with a gazillion people some
| people have a different one doesn't make it representative of
| the median/mean/etc.
|
| Also, it's not bad to have a counter-opinion to a group; it is
| bad to claim a singular opinion is that of the group without
| any actual justification.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33908577
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The top voted comment in that topic is also saying "For
| everyone on this thread making broad proclamations about how
| SBF won't go to jail", yes? Implying quite a few people held
| that opinion here?
| lesuorac wrote:
| Sure, at least a few people held that opinion. However,
| that isn't what the post I'm replying to said.
|
| The post I replied to used the literally lowest voted top
| level comment as their basis of "HN didnt think he was
| going to jail". They skipped over all of the higher top
| level comments when making their post (you have to go to
| the bottom of page 2 to see the one they picked).
|
| Their post is classic bad faith argument and I think it
| should receive a penalty (downvote).
| gjvc wrote:
| Dishonestly, you mean.
| latexr wrote:
| Your argument that HN didn't think he was going to jail is a
| heavily downvoted post whose top reply says he's going to jail?
| zippothrowaway wrote:
| I remember the wise people on here repeatedly commenting that he
| would never even be prosecuted because he donated to the
| Democrats.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33908850
| hluska wrote:
| What's with the sudden turn to "haha everyone was wrong in the
| past" on here?
|
| There's nothing wrong with being wrong. What's the point?
| segasaturn wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with being wrong, but its important to
| remember the times that we were and remind ourselves that we
| are not infallible :)
| winwang wrote:
| I'd say it depends on how confident/aggressive someone was.
| Perhaps OP didn't word it the best way, but it's also good to
| pause and reflect?
| jeffbee wrote:
| It is absolutely worth remembering that much of the
| commentary on this site is written by some of the most
| gullible people on the planet. Aside from SBF-Biden
| conspiracy fans you also have your anti-vax guys, your
| climate denial guys, suckers for the latest superconductor
| scam, people who are still falling for a giant astroturf
| campaign by the fission industry, blockchain believers, and
| much much more.
| spencerflem wrote:
| the point is that the older comments were confidently
| accusing the democrats of being corrupt, in a way that they
| weren't. its political
| zippothrowaway wrote:
| The point is not that people were wrong but they were wrong
| because they had knee-jerk, lazy takes that should be
| disparaged.
|
| I also know that the some of the people making these kind of
| takes have already pivoted to another knee-jerk, lazy take
| along the lines of "well, he ripped off rich people".
|
| I'd actually appreciate it if anybody who made the original
| statements about Democrats not prosecuting SBF would come on
| and admit they were wrong.
| acdha wrote:
| A lot of people confuse cynicism with wisdom, and that sets
| people up to be susceptible to bigger problems. For example,
| if you believe the legal system is corrupt and dysfunctional,
| it's very easy to passively tune out and not support reform
| efforts because you think they're pointless.
|
| We see this a lot in politics where accusations of corruption
| are used to conflate people who are orders of magnitude apart
| - a good example of that are the recent classified documents
| investigations where some faux-sophisticates tried the "both
| sides do it!" excuse without recognizing the difference
| between immediate compliance and protracted resistance on
| contrived grounds.
| pixxel wrote:
| He's 'new money'. Useful to 'old money'; nothing more.
| malermeister wrote:
| There is no "old money" in the US. The country is young
| enough for all of it to be "new money".
| hammock wrote:
| You realize with this comment you are supporting the
| conspiracy theories about real old money bloodlines from
| Europe controlling the US, right?
| John_Cena wrote:
| conspiracy theory is not a bad word. Do you realize you
| are supporting the farce that says anything labeled
| conspiracy theory is not worth examining?
| malermeister wrote:
| wat?
| hnthrow9009 wrote:
| They dropped the campaign finance violations case with zero
| reasoning
| stronglikedan wrote:
| People say things all the time. That's not relevant to this
| story, and is kind of flamebaity.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Is he going to keep donating? Very likely not, so no reason to
| keep him out...
| w0z_ wrote:
| The US prison sentence lengths are insane.
| swader999 wrote:
| Three suicides related to the theft.
| zarzavat wrote:
| People also commit suicide if the bank repossesses their
| home, their spouse has an affair, their surgeon makes an
| error, etc.
|
| I'm not saying that SBF has no culpability, but I don't think
| you should get prison time for causing someone's suicide, or
| at least society doesn't act as if it's in any way equivalent
| to murder.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| The scale of SBF's fraud was so enormous that the money
| could have been used to save hundreds of lives that have
| now perished. So if we use a little bit of EA napkin math,
| we can conclude SBF's crimes were on par to hundreds of
| murders.
| deeviant wrote:
| How so. Do you think it's too long, too short, too ...?
| arrowsmith wrote:
| You think so? 25 years seems quite reasonable to me. He stole
| billions of dollars.
| w0z_ wrote:
| Not to undermine what he did. The US prison system just seems
| very unproductive, put him in a factory for 20 of those
| years.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| And then we will have people complaining about
| slavery...they already say that prison jobs pay below
| minimum wage so they are slavery.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I don't like the incentives that creates. Private prisons
| and the existing prison labor system are bad enough.
| emanuele232 wrote:
| forced work for who breaks the law? you risk to fall in the
| "slavery with extra steps" situation
| stonogo wrote:
| Slavery as a punishment for crime is explicitly
| authorized in the United States Constitution.
| lesuorac wrote:
| To piggy-back on this, not only is it explicitly
| authorized it's often expected.
|
| Failure to voluntarily participate in a work-program is
| grounds for solitary confinement (which entails more
| penalties than just being by yourself).
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| federal prisons already require prisoners to work. We DO
| have slavery with extra steps
| user90131313 wrote:
| no, private prisons are productive?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Private prisons account for 8% of the total prison
| population.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| The victims are going to get paid back (in 2022 crypto
| prices) due to the appreciation of FTX's assets (crypto and
| Anthropic shares). So if someone lost a bitcoin when FTX
| collapsed (BTC was at $18k at the time) they will get more
| than $18k but not $70k which is today's price.
| aeyes wrote:
| If I had 1 Bitcoin in an FTX wallet, I'd like to have 1
| Bitcoin back. Not whatever the value of Bitcoins is in
| Dollars.
| jedberg wrote:
| If you wanted those kinds of banking protections, then
| you should have used a currency system that has those
| protections. Bitcoin is "easy" because it is unregulated,
| but the flip side of that is that you the consumer get no
| protection, and you shouldn't expect any.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| This is pretty twisted. FTX can claim it made customers
| whole by benefiting from exactly the speculative gains
| that it prevented its customers from getting.
| jedberg wrote:
| It's certainly immoral but it's the risk you take
| investing in an unregulated market. There are regulations
| to prevent exactly this when you invest in stocks or put
| your US dollars into a bank account.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| That has zero to do with SBF's intention and should not be
| in any way a defense against the wrong perpetrated against
| them.
|
| It could easily have crashed.
|
| That it went in a direction that helps make his victims
| more whole is entirely happenstance and SBF should get ZERO
| credit or recognition for this aspect of restitution.
| nixgeek wrote:
| Insanely low? Insanely high?
|
| SBF hasn't really accepted responsibility or apologized through
| the trial, and didn't at sentencing either.
|
| Judge Kaplan seems to have taken a balanced view -- far from
| the statutory maximum, less than the U.S. wanted, more than the
| defense wanted.
|
| There will of course be appeals -- SBF has already indicated he
| will file one.
|
| There's good coverage of what took place at sentencing today
| here --
| https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/177334004374401064...
|
| Also of note is since this is a federal conviction there is no
| parole in that system, and so unless SBF is successful in his
| appeal, he will spend at least 255 months in prison, that's a
| 15% reduction versus the total sentence in return for good
| behavior while serving his sentence.
| klodolph wrote:
| High, generally. The US has the highest incarceration rate in
| the world, and US sentences are an outlier in terms of how
| long they are (they're not the longest, but the whole picture
| is kind of shocking).
| arrowsmith wrote:
| > The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world
|
| It's actually the 6th:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/262962/countries-with-
| th...
| yau8edq12i wrote:
| I get your point, the claim was incorrect. But if you're
| only beaten by Salvador, Cuba, Rwanda, Turkmenistan, and
| American Samoa... Well, maybe the overall point stands:
| "Highest in the world" is hyperbole, that much is true,
| but the USA has an insanely high rate of incarceration,
| higher than most countries, and definitely higher than
| all "developed" countries. As a point of comparison, the
| next OECD member on that list is Turkey, which has about
| 34% fewer prisoners per 100k people than the USA.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Assuming the accuracy of that source on the numbers, its
| actually the 5th.
|
| Yes, the United States is the sixth listed, but the 5th
| listed is _part of the United States_ , not a separate
| country. (So are several others, but I don't think Guam
| or the US Virgin Islands are big enough that they move
| the US overall rating down far enough to matter.)
| lesuorac wrote:
| When you can't solve crimes you have to make the sentences
| really long as a deterrent.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| A difference in philosophy on prison sentence length. The
| higher incarceration rate is almost 100% explained by
| sentences that are on average roughly twice what the UK
| imposes (as one example).
| BizarreByte wrote:
| They've never made any sense to me, but neither do my country's
| sentence lengths. Ours seem too light, whereas the US's seem
| extreme.
|
| I guess I'm really not sure what value there is to locking up
| someone like this for 25 years when in a sane system/society
| there should be far better options.
| sabana wrote:
| Quite a short sentence for the magnitude of the crime. Financial
| crimes like these do kill people and destroy countless lives.
| They deserve maximum pentalties.
| ak_111 wrote:
| It is long enough to destroy his life. What matters if he gets
| out at 70 or 80 if he gets out at 60?
| objektif wrote:
| That is a big difference. You can live a pretty good 15 or so
| years if you get out at 60. Considering that his parents are
| well off he will inherit some.
| yokem55 wrote:
| He's got 11B in restitution to pay. Any inheritance he gets
| will be forfeited to that.
| ak_111 wrote:
| Almost anyone who is deterred from committing the crime if
| they get 50 years will also be deterred from committing the
| crime if they get 25 years.
| AustinDev wrote:
| He gets out at 51. Somewhere around there with 25 year
| sentence at 31 with credit for time served.
| ak_111 wrote:
| how, he is 32?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I think its probably taking the approximately 21 years
| you get with the sentence with maximum good conduct time
| reduction, and also assuming credit for time served after
| his bail was revoked.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| 32 years old + 25 year sentence +/- 15% good behavior /
| time served / whatever = 57 years old at the oldest
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _It is long enough to destroy his life._
|
| Hardly. Milken was sentenced to 10 and served 2. SBF will
| serve 7, at which point he'll still be under 40.
| vkou wrote:
| The federal system doesn't have parole, and gives a maximum
| of 15% off for good behaviour.
|
| He won't be out for ~two decades.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| and its not even a true 15%, its less than that
| Analemma_ wrote:
| This is not correct. Federal sentences do not have parole
| and can be reduced by a maximum of only 15%, meaning (if
| that happens) SBF will serve at least 21 years and be 53
| when released.
|
| Milken was released because Trump pardoned him, which I
| don't think says anything about how sentencing guidelines
| do or should work.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Milken was released because Trump pardoned him,
|
| He was released after a sentence reduction for
| cooperation with prosecutors against others decades
| before the pardon. Both the release and pardon occurred,
| but the latter was not the reason for the former.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Federal sentences do not have parole..._
|
| TIL, thank you! That makes me feel much better at what
| initially seemed like a slap on the wrist.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Milken got a sentence reduction for cooperation with
| prosecutors against others. The other big fish in FTX
| already cooperated against SBF, who do you expect him to
| roll over on?
| melenaboija wrote:
| What is the goal of the punishment?
|
| If it is to harm him and make the rest of the world satisfied
| with it 25 years behind bars seems enough to me, I don't care
| if it is 25, 35 or 155. In five years I will have forgotten
| about this.
|
| If it is stopping others, same thing, I don't think that if
| someone is determined to do something similar would care about
| 25 or more years.
| foogazi wrote:
| It's to stop him first - he won't be running financial fraud
| schemes for 20-25 years
|
| Then it's to stop other bright minds from attempting anything
| like this - they'll remember SBF. His crime has a price now:
| 20-25 years
| sangnoir wrote:
| It will also give the enablers of criminality pause. If the
| mastermind gets 20-25, they'll realize they are risking 2-5
| year sentences with zero upside just for "following orders"
| or negligently turning a blind eye to malfeasance.
| stephenitis wrote:
| 25 is a steep deterrance. Hard to know its effect since it'd
| hopefully deter some of the more heinous future financial
| crimes.
| lb4r wrote:
| I think of it like this: Many people would "happily" spend 5
| years in prison for a more than probable chance to get filthy
| rich. That's a superset with, I imagine, significantly
| greater cardinality than the set of those willing to spend
| 25.
|
| Obviously there is a sweet spot. For example, if you're okay
| with 60 years, than you're probably okay with 80. I'd imagine
| 20, give or take 5 years or so, is near that sweet spot, but
| that's just my gut feeling. Obviously statistics is key here,
| if there is any.
| gls2ro wrote:
| I think many people _say_ they will happily spend 5 years
| in prison but that is different than actually being faced
| with the actual possibility.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| So just slap his wrist and say no no?
| taminka wrote:
| prison should fundamentally be abt rehabilitation, not whatever
| retribution random ppl think is "proportional"
| mrguyorama wrote:
| How long do you think it takes to rehabilitate someone so
| disconnected from reality and empathy as SBF?
|
| Honestly I think that would take LONGER than 50 years...
|
| I think 25 is on the high end of a reasonable sentence. White
| collar crime in the US has been a slap on the wrist (if
| anything!) since Enron. It's time we fix that. People need to
| see personal consequences for such anti-social and
| destructive behavior. If you are a CEO, you should be afraid
| of profiting from the suffering of others.
| azemetre wrote:
| Some crimes simply need to be punished as a warning to
| others.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _prison should fundamentally be abt rehabilitation_
|
| You can't ignore retribution and incapacitation. Focus solely
| on rehabilitation and people will take the law into their own
| hands while raging against the system when it comes to
| recividism.
|
| We need to focus more on rehabilitation and restoration. But
| those can't be exclusive of the other components of justice.
| exe34 wrote:
| They could just fit him with a GPS bracelet and ban him from
| any banking other than a basic cash card.
| nemo44x wrote:
| He will have to serve 21 years before early release. There is no
| parole in federal prison. I heard 5 years are concurrent making
| it 20 actual years. If that's the case he can get out in 17
| years.
|
| He wasted a good part of his life.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| I don't get it, what's the difference between parole and early
| release? Also how do you get to 21 and 17 from 25 and 20?
| kosievdmerwe wrote:
| Parole means you're still serving your time and have a bunch
| of restrictions on movement and other things.
|
| Early release means your sentence is concluded and the only
| lasting impacts on your life is that of having been convicted
| of a felony.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Is this fedral? I thought it was Manhattan DA?
| nemo44x wrote:
| Nope, it's Federal. He has appeals coming up though. I have
| no idea what the outcome could be but there's an opportunity
| for the sentence to be reduced on appeal. Honestly, this
| sentence doesn't appear egregious or "being made an example
| of" so IMO he doesn't get a reduction. But, sometimes you get
| a sympathetic judge?
| serjester wrote:
| If the same court put Ross Ulbricht (a way more sympathetic
| case) for 40 years, no way they're lenient on SBF.
| Al0neStar wrote:
| Ross Ulbricht got two life sentences plus 40 years
| without parole.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Its a federal case tried by the US Attorney's office for, and
| in the US District Court for, the Southern District of New
| York.
|
| Media will sometimes (because this are in Manhattan) label
| these as a Manhattan/New York prosecutors or a Manhattan
| court, but it is federal, not state, prosecutors and court
| _in_ New York, not New York prosecutors or court.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| No, it was 20 years + 5 years, to be served consecutively, so
| the total term is 25 years.
| nabla9 wrote:
| The article says different. Tell me why it's wrong.
| nightowl_games wrote:
| Honestly 25 years seems like way too long to me.
| jimberlage wrote:
| If he's eligible for parole at 1/3 of a 25 year sentence, he will
| spend anywhere from between 8 years, 4 months in prison or 25
| years. That would make him somewhere between 40 and 57 when he
| gets out.
| jherskovic wrote:
| No parole in the Federal system. There's (some) time off for
| good behavior.
| jimberlage wrote:
| Sourced from https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-
| library/abstracts/united-s....
| dragonwriter wrote:
| That's from 1984, federal parole was abolished in 1987
| (though people sentenced before 1987, IIRC, remain eligible
| according to the rules in place at the time.)
|
| SBF was sentenced somewhat after 1987, so those rules don't
| apply to him.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| This is a federal sentence, so there is no parole. The most
| time off you can get in the federal system for good behavior is
| 54 days per year of sentence, so less than 4 years off for
| SBF's 25-year sentence.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If he's eligible for parole at 1/3 of a 25 year sentence
|
| He is not; there is no federal parole (for people sentenced ib
| the last ~37 years.) There is "good conduct time" that can
| reduce time served to not less than ~85% of the time sentenced,
| so around 21 years minimum.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Well, its a little more complicated, and depending on the
| degree of release you are interested in. He could be "out"
| either a year earlier than I said in the above, or in half of
| his total sentence:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39855552
| Minor49er wrote:
| Why does the title on Hacker News have "SBF" while the article
| title has his full name?
| misiti3780 wrote:
| If I could edit it, I would fix it.
| vitiral wrote:
| Because we all know who SBF is by now
| gizajob wrote:
| Hacker handles for hacker fraudsters.
| dang wrote:
| Maybe the submitter was typing it out?
|
| We've fixed it now.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Scam. Bankrupt. Fraud.
| gjvc wrote:
| should have been hanged or given the chair
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do this here.
| segasaturn wrote:
| For those wondering, prosecutors asked for 50 years in prison,
| defense asked for 5 years. So this sentence is right down the
| middle. 50 years in prison would have been way too long IMO.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Well, 27.5 would be right down the middle.
|
| As others have suggested, likely he won't even serve the 25
| though.
| winwang wrote:
| If you use the made up averaging scheme of
| ((5^p+50^p)/2^p)^(1/p), 25 is the limit as p -> inf (i
| think).
|
| ...Because it just simplifies to 50/2 lol.
| loeg wrote:
| > As others have suggested, likely he won't even serve the 25
| though.
|
| Because instead he'll serve 21.25?
| sgt wrote:
| Maybe serve 15 then the rest with a foot tracker thingie at
| home?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Not with a Federal sentence.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| No, he can be released after 12.5 years due to time credits
| for good behavior. Time credits used to be capped at 15% of
| the sentence, but due to the relatively recent "First Step"
| Act it's now 50%.
| n2d4 wrote:
| You should use a geometric mean for this sort of stuff. The
| difference between a one- and two-year sentence is much
| bigger than 25 and 26.
|
| So that would be 16 years, though obviously, it's foolish to
| use "right down the middle" as a heuristic for something like
| this. (The more severe a crime, the more incentive the
| defense has to pretend like it didn't happen at all.)
| orwin wrote:
| I did not know about geometric mean (and i do have a math
| bachelor, granted it wasn't in statistics but still). Thank
| you, this is a great tool.
| bluishgreen wrote:
| One more to blow your mind.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_mean
| rovolo wrote:
| I found it a lot easier to understand the harmonic and
| geometric averages when I learned about the "generalized
| f-mean". Many averages are arithmetic averages of a
| transformation of the value. "f" refers to the function
| which transforms your values.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-arithmetic_mean
|
| - The geometric average is the arithmetic average of the
| logarithm. It places emphasis on the ratio between
| numbers, rather than the absolute difference.
|
| - The harmonic average is the arithmetic average of the
| multiplicative inverse. It averages values by a constant
| numerator rather than denominator. For example, the
| average fuel economy of multiple vehicles makes more
| sense per-distance, so miles/gallon should be rewritten
| as gallons/mile.
|
| - The (RMS) root-mean-square is the arithmetic average of
| the square. Electrical power is proportional to the
| square of the amperage or voltage, so AC current and
| voltage uses the RMS average to make the power
| calculations correct.
| gwill wrote:
| the bullet points at the top of the article say they asked for
| 40-50 years and that his defense said 6.5 years.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Stole 1% from the pension fund for Ontario's teachers.
|
| Stole unknown amounts of peoples retirement.
|
| Ruined many peoples lives.
|
| How is 50 years too long? The literal largest fraud case in
| history doesn't even have a life sentence...
|
| We are sending a clear message, grift and steal your way to the
| top and then get out just in time to retire with all your
| stolen goods.
|
| You know when he gets out he is gonna go unlock a dead wallet
| with 100BTC (or some other coin) in it and become an expat.
| segasaturn wrote:
| 25 years is a long, long time. He's going to spend the best
| years of his life in federal prison and come out the other
| side in a world that's moved on without him. 25 years ago the
| World Trade Center buildings were still standing.
|
| IMO, if we're thinking of sentencing someone to 50 years or
| life in prison, we should cut to the chase and execute them
| instead. It's faster and cheaper for the taxpayers, and
| arguably less cruel.
| EasyMark wrote:
| we don't execute for financial fraud and white collar
| crimes. I do think prisoners should be given an option for
| assisted suicide in cases where they get 50+ year
| sentences, however. Obviously there would be more
| complexities to that like wait times and mental
| evaluations.
| Zaskoda wrote:
| He'll serve for less than 15 years, which is a blink of an
| eye given the devastation he caused.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Unless he dies, gets a pardon, commutation, or sentence
| reduction first, the minimum he can serve under existing
| law is ~21 years based on a 25 year sentence and maximum
| good conduct time.
| nkurz wrote:
| You're usually a very accurate poster on legal matters,
| but this contradicts the linked article:
|
| _SBF may serve as little as 12.5 years, if he gets all
| of the jailhouse credit available to him, " Mitchell
| Epner, a former federal prosecutor, told CNN._
|
| _Federal prisoners generally can earn up to 54 days of
| time credit a year for good behavior, which could result
| in an approximately 15% reduction._
|
| _Since 2018, however, nonviolent federal inmates can
| reduce their sentence by as much as 50% under prison
| reform legislation known as the First Step Act._
|
| Are you saying the article is wrong, or did you maybe not
| consider this possibility?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| So, yes, I forgot to account for FSA earned time, of
| which up to 12 months can be applied to early supervised
| release (essentially, parole, though its not called that)
| and the remainder for pre-release custody (home
| confinement or residential re-entry center insteas of
| prison.) so, by completing the right activities, SBF
| could be on a parole-like status in ~20 instead of ~21
| years, and in custody but not in actual prison in ~12.5
| years.
|
| That's not an automatic reduction (or even as close to it
| as good conduct time), as it requires successful
| participation in specified activities, but it is
| generally available except for a defined list of mostly
| violent offenses.
| imacomputer wrote:
| IIRC he must serve 85% of his sentence
| EasyMark wrote:
| I think like all these white collar crime cases it's as much
| about emotion and appearance as actual damage. SBF wasn't a
| career criminal with multiple past grifts, and he didn't have
| any violent acts associated with the grift. So he got a
| lighter sentence. If he had been a part of a crime family, it
| would have been much longer. I'm not sure that the
| prosecutors are allowed to bring in tangential loss of life
| like multiple suicides (bankruptcy, financial destruction)
| that were no doubt triggered by SBF's efforts to defraud
| people.
| dboreham wrote:
| Wait...why did a public pension fund invest in crypto-related
| <something>? (I still don't know what FTXes product was, but
| clearly it wasn't bare BTC or ETH, implying it was a risky
| derivative of a risky underlying asset).
| n2d4 wrote:
| FTX was just an exchange. If you invest money into Bitcoin,
| you will have to do it on some (centralized or
| decentralized) exchange. You'd expect that FTX would keep
| your Bitcoins safe in a digital vault somewhere, but SBF
| did not and instead used customer assets to gamble with
| Alameda Research.
|
| There are totally good reasons for a pension fund to invest
| minority assets into BTC, mostly diversification (check out
| Modern Portfolio Theory [1]). You may calculate the risk
| that BTC goes up or down, but most people probably didn't
| expect the _exchange_ to lose the money.
|
| It's not the first time it happened (see Mt Gox), but FTX
| prided itself on being the most risk-averse. Yet it turned
| out all of that was based on fraud and fake numbers,
| fraudulent enough to even fool pension funds.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_portfolio_theory
| mondrian wrote:
| Btw is that money irretrievably gone? Are those people
| getting their money back based on the recovered price of
| crypto? Or did those assets get liquidated long ago into
| actualized losses?
| tim333 wrote:
| >FTX Says It Expects to Repay Customers in Full. Some Are
| Suing for More https://www.wired.com/story/ftx-bankruptcy-
| bitcoin-value/
| cbg0 wrote:
| > You know when he gets out he is gonna go unlock a dead
| wallet with 100BTC (or some other coin) in it and become an
| expat.
|
| This assumes both that he has such a wallet and that BTC will
| still be worth something when he gets out.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I feel like going right down the middle between what the
| prosecution wants (50 years) and what the defense wants (put
| the king's robes and crown on him, then parade him on the
| king's horse in the city square and announce before him, 'So
| shall be done to the man whom the king wishes to honor!') is
| maybe not the right way to pick.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Considering the multitude of charges, this is actually pretty
| low. It appears he was sentenced to a less-than-full term for
| each of the charges, to be served sequentially (since if the
| sentences were served simultaneously, the total actual term would
| be much less than 25 years).
|
| We'll know more in about an hour.
|
| EDIT: Actually, the Verge has already reported:"The judge applied
| a 240-month sentence and a 60-month sentence to be served
| consecutively."
| vkou wrote:
| Given that all the crimes originated from pretty much the same
| offense, it would be highly surprising if the sentences weren't
| served simultaneously.
| chihuahua wrote:
| I am puzzled by the concept of simultaneous sentences. Is
| "simultaneous" just a complicated way of saying "you get the
| max of the two numbers"? Because it's not like you're in a
| prison cell inside another prison cell. If I'm carrying 2
| suitcases simultaneously, that's harder than carrying one at a
| time. But 2 prison sentences simultaneously is not harder than
| one sentence.
| ak_111 wrote:
| Is it possible he gets a pardon from Biden? Apparently Ross
| Ulbrecht who is arguably much more serious crime, was close to
| getting a pardon from Trump (he seriously discusses it with his
| advisors at least and expressed sympathy)
| jakeinspace wrote:
| No chance, it would be a very politically expensive pardon for
| no real benefit
| dralley wrote:
| No.
| thr0waway001 wrote:
| He shoulda watched the end of the Boiler Room.
| bambax wrote:
| I think that's about fair and reasonable. It's been said in
| Europe he would not have gotten more than years and it's probably
| true. 25 years is a really long time and even if he does only 20,
| still super long.
|
| Here's a live tweeting of the sentencing hearing; some of Judge
| Kaplan's remarks are really interesting.
|
| https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/177334004374401064...
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Tbh, a bunch of American (high profile) lawyers had estimated
| that he'd only get a couple of years, max, as he had no prior
| convictions - and the nature of the case.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I think they must be unfamiliar with the federal judicial
| system which is almost always on the conservative side of
| sentencing unless there were some extremely extenuating
| circumstances. There were none here, this was straight up
| greed and grift on Sam's part.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Those slap-on-the-wrist punishments are reserved for members
| of the already-wealthy elite.
|
| SBF was an outsider who stole from these people.
| tombert wrote:
| If I broke into a person's house and stole $1000, even if I
| didn't directly hurt that person, I could expect to get several
| years in prison, basically regardless of the state. Lets say
| three years to be conservative on this?
|
| Sam Bankman Fried stole _billions_ of dollars [1], probably
| often around $1000 at a time from tens of thousands of people.
| If going with my logic, he should be getting a _lot_ longer
| than 25 years, upwards of hundreds or thousands of years.
| Obviously, it 's not a linear relationship, the crime was non-
| violent, first-time-offender, etc. I'm just saying that 25
| years seems pretty fair to me considering the magnitude of the
| crime.
|
| I _am_ one of the victims (well, of Gemini Earn anyway), and I
| think if I were given the choice, I 'd probably sentence him to
| 20-25 years.
|
| [1] Or at least so grossly mismanaged that there's no real
| purpose in drawing a distinction.
| shuckles wrote:
| > If I broke into a person's house and stole $1000, even if I
| didn't directly hurt that person, I could expect to get
| several years in prison
|
| Almost definitely not, especially if it was your first crime.
| It's pretty unlikely you'd even be caught.
|
| Severity of the punishment has extremely diminishing returns
| on discouraging future crimes. The only other impetus for a
| longer sentence is if you think the defendant is likely to
| commit more crimes when released. Besides that, longer
| sentences are hard to justify.
| tombert wrote:
| I _do_ think that Sam Bankman Fried will commit more fraud
| the second he is able to. He hasn 't shown any remorse, and
| he just blames everyone else for this mess even when
| there's dead-to-rights evidence.
| lijok wrote:
| Why do you think SBF requires 20-25 years to rehabilitate?
| throwup238 wrote:
| We don't rehabilitate in this country.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| "Won't someone please think of the poor criminals" is
| definitely a tough sell in the US.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Compassion for criminals _who get what they deserve_ is
| false compassion. The victim is the proper object of
| compassion.
|
| The three purposes of punishment are retribution,
| rehabilitation, and deterrence. Him getting 25 years
| isn't undeserved.
| golergka wrote:
| Why do you think he will ever rehabilitate?
|
| Prison is not and shouldn't be about rehabilitation. It's
| society that requires to be less exposed to SBF, by 20-25
| years.
| lijok wrote:
| He's a first-time non-violent offender. If that wasn't
| the case, I'd agree with you.
| tonightstoast wrote:
| First-time sentenced for crimes against 1000s of people.
| tombert wrote:
| Everyone keeps repeating "first time offender", but I
| think that term is kind of misleading.
|
| If I stole exactly one empty car exactly one time, then
| yes, I'd be a first time offender in the sense everyone
| thinks it. If I stole a thousand empty cars, and only got
| caught after the 999th, then sure, legally I'd be a
| "first time offender", but I would have still committed
| the crime a thousand times.
|
| This wasn't a one-time clerical error that he failed to
| report. This was an intentional bit of theft that kept
| going for years. It's really not a "first time offense",
| and I don't think it's fair to categorize it as such.
| khazhoux wrote:
| _My client has never stolen billions before. Mercy, your
| honor!_
| anon291 wrote:
| If you commit ten robberies before you're caught are you
| a first time offender? What vapid logic
| lijok wrote:
| Vapid logic and yet you were stimulated enough to reply.
|
| "Habitual offender" has an actual legal definition in
| most countries that does not align with your views.
| pzo wrote:
| Punishment should be good enough deterrent for others.
| Otherwise it would be worth for someone to consider to
| commit a first time non-violent crime to steal e.g. $10m
| and get 5 years sentence, suck it up (or even commit such
| crime in country that has good prisons like nordic
| countries) and then enjoy retirement after still being
| young (after hiding your cash loot). Most people will
| never earn such money during 5 years and many will never
| earn during lifetime.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _Punishment should be good enough deterrent for
| others._
|
| On that subject: The Russians seem to have leaked videos
| of the accused ISIS terrorists being tortured: "Though
| the goriest clips were not shown on state television, the
| brutal treatment of the defendants was made clear. And
| the decision by the Russian authorities to showcase it so
| publicly in court, in a way they had almost never done
| before, was intended as a sign of revenge and a warning
| to potential terrorists, analysts said." [0]
|
| Will it work? Doubtful, because:
|
| 1. We should never underestimate the human susceptibility
| to overconfidence -- and to rationalizing away warnings
| from past experience: "Well, when _I_ do it, I won 't
| make their mistakes." (Cf. the first chapter of _The
| Right Stuff_ , describing several episodes in which a
| military test pilot gets killed in a crash; with each
| fatal crash, the dead pilot's colleagues think, _How
| could he have been so stupid? I 'd have never done [fill
| in action]_. Yeah, right ....)
|
| 2. Plus: That sort of thing just motivates the real
| fanatics to escalate the cycle of revenge and punishment.
| (I'm rereading Barbara Tuchman's _The Guns of August_ ;
| she describes how WWI started out in somewhat the same
| way.)
|
| [0]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/26/world/europe/russia-
| terro...
| tombert wrote:
| I don't even normally believe in "punishment" because I
| don't actually think it works. I think SBF will spend 20-25
| years in prison, continuously blaming every human on earth
| except himself the entire time. If he thought what he was
| doing was wrong, he wouldn't have continued to do it for so
| long.
|
| That said, I also have no reason to think that if he's not
| locked away, he won't just do the same or similar scam
| again. He hasn't shown any remorse, and he just pretends to
| be ignorant of all the crimes. If not put into jail, I
| suspect he'd just go to a country with difficult
| extradition laws and do some other cryptocurrency scam from
| there. Putting him in jail for 20 years at least avoids it
| for 20 years.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Punishment does work. What do you imagine instead?
| Nothing? Quoting [0]: First, that
| punishment has three purposes - retribution,
| rehabilitation, and deterrence - does not entail that
| each of these purposes must be realized in a given act of
| punishment in order for that act to be morally
| legitimate. For example, we may justly imprison a
| recidivist thief even if we know from experience that he
| is extremely unlikely to change his ways as a result of
| his imprisonment and even if circumstances make it
| unlikely that his particular imprisonment will deter
| other thieves. Similarly, the fact that a given act of
| capital punishment may not fulfill all of the ends of
| punishment does not by itself suffice to make that act
| morally illegitimate. Second, while there is
| obviously a sense in which capital punishment can prevent
| rehabilitation, there is also a sense in which it
| actually facilitates rehabilitation. How so? Consider
| first that a wrongdoer cannot truly be rehabilitated
| until he comes to acknowledge the gravity of his offense.
| But the gravity of an offense is more manifest when the
| punishments for that offense reflect its gravity - that
| is to say, when the principle of proportionality is
| respected. A society in which armed robbery was
| regularly punished with at most a small fine would be a
| society in which armed robbers would have greater
| difficulty coming to see the seriousness of their crimes,
| and in which they would for that reason be less likely to
| be rehabilitated. Similarly, a society in which even the
| most sadistic serial murderers are given the same
| punishments as bank robbers is going to be a society in
| which sadistic serial murderers will have greater
| difficulty in coming to see the seriousness of their
| crimes, and thus will be less likely to be rehabilitated.
|
| [0] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/10/on-
| rehabilitation-a...
| tombert wrote:
| > Punishment does work.
|
| I should clarify. I think punishment mostly makes the
| punishee angry with the punisher. I don't think that they
| generally feel like they are paying their penance. If
| they didn't already think that what they were doing is
| wrong, I really don't see how they are going to suddenly
| start just because they were punished.
|
| I generally think that the way that Scandinavia does
| prisons is better. I think that punishing people
| specifically with the intent of making their life worse
| is _viscerally_ satisfying (the retribution part of that
| quote), but I think it 's not actually a good thing to
| organize a society around increasing suffering. The US
| has a higher murder rate than Western European countries,
| despite having stricter punishments, including the death
| penalty. There can be thousands of factors that influence
| that, obviously, but it doesn't seem to be massively
| deterring crime.
|
| I think prisons are basically a necessary evil; there are
| certain people that are antithetical to a functioning
| society, and so it's probably better to separate them
| from most people. I think the point should be, though, to
| not view these things as "punishment" but more "a chance
| at reformation".
|
| Prisons in the US _used_ to have college education
| programs, and job training programs, so that when you
| left you had a means of supporting yourself that wasn 't
| criminal. If I understand correctly, this is still the
| case in Sweden, and I think that's a good idea.
|
| Now of course, there are humans that are so warped that
| really no amount of job training is going to help them
| (e.g. a Jeffrey Dahmer), and at that point you really do
| just need to treat it like punishment.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| You think he can be rehabilitated? By American prisons?
| Seriously? Look around; that didn't happen.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Incarceration is not only about rehabilitation, it's also
| about justice and deterrence
| tombert wrote:
| I don't know that it will actually "deter" anyone, I
| think most criminals think they're not going to get
| caught, but I think it comes down to the much simpler
| "it's hard to commit more fraud when you're in prison".
|
| I'm not going to say it's impossible, maybe he could be
| managing this big crypto empire from jail, but it would
| certainly be _harder_ to do all that from prison.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| professional criminals absolutely think about what's
| getting prosecuted and how much hard time you're looking
| at. It's a business to them so it becomes just a part of
| the risk equation.
|
| For the "isolation from society" i think it's the least
| compelling part of lengthy incarceration. You can
| probably achieve the same effect with just house arrest
| and other such restrictions
| tombert wrote:
| They tried that with Sam Bankman Fried and he broke the
| terms of his house arrest almost immediately.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| Deterrence would involve beheading him this afternoon.
|
| Really, my preferred punishment for him would be a
| sentence of 25 years working in a non-managerial, non-
| ownership hourly position in the quick-service restaurant
| or janitorial fields, earning not more than the Federal
| minimum.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| > Deterrence would involve beheading him this afternoon.
|
| i think you missed the whole "justice" point there.
|
| spending 25 year behind bars with 21+ yrs mandatory seems
| like enough to deter most people.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| He won't do 25. He'll do ten, and it won't be at Devil's
| Island either.
|
| I'm not sure that's a sufficiently bad outcome to deter
| the next crypto narcissist.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| federal convictions are 85% minimum (though he can be
| pardoned, in theory)
| j-krieger wrote:
| You're in luck, because federal prisoners can be forced
| to work for even less
| linksnapzz wrote:
| No, that's bad for us, as we would be on the hook to
| subsidize his upkeep. I want him to join the working
| poor. I'd accept him getting EBT or Section 8 as part of
| his sentence...maybe.
| tptacek wrote:
| Rehabilitation simply isn't the only purpose of
| incarceration.
| plandis wrote:
| He's shown no remorse. He could continue to show no remorse
| and be out in 25 years, no rehabilitation necessary.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Why do you think punishment is only about rehabilitation?
|
| Punishment has three purposes, namely, retribution,
| rehabilitation, and deterrence.
|
| I also don't know how much rehabilitation actually occurs
| in our prisons. From what I understand, not much.
| golergka wrote:
| Breaking and entering into someone's house and stealing their
| cash is very different from having an obligation to pay them
| out cash and not fulfilling it. While it may be the same
| amount of money, it's a radically different relationship
| between parties.
| retrac wrote:
| Your logic is strange. With robbery, the primary crime is the
| violence (or para-violent threat), and not the theft. This is
| easy to demonstrate: the punishment for breaking into
| someone's home in many jurisdictions is essentially the same,
| even if you steal nothing.
| foobiekr wrote:
| "the primary crime is the violence"
|
| citation needed
| retrac wrote:
| Canadian law: Theft over $5000 - up to 2 years
| (misdimeanor) or to 10 years in prison (indictable).
| Breaking & entering a dwelling - up to life (indictable).
|
| Texas law: Theft between $2500 and $30,000 - 180 days to
| 2 years in jail (state jail felony). Burglary - 2 to 20
| years (second degree felony).
|
| English law: General theft - up to 7 years custody.
| Burglary - up to 14 years custody.
|
| Breaking and entering, without permission using
| deception, tools or force, with the intent to steal or do
| some other untoward thing, is the distinction between
| theft, and burglary. And burglary is punished much
| harshly, as a principle, across common law jurisdictions;
| entering a home as a stranger, terrifies its inhabitants
| and is a violent act, worse than theft. As William
| Blackstone wrote in his Commentaries, "[Burglary] has
| always been looked on as a very heinous offence: not only
| because of the abundant terror that it naturally carries
| with it, but also as it is a forcible invasion of that
| right of habitation."
| liendolucas wrote:
| > Sam Bankman Fried stole billions of dollars [1], probably
| often around $1000 at a time from tens of thousands of
| people. If going with my logic, he should be getting a lot
| longer than 25 years, upwards of hundreds or thousands of
| years.
|
| Apparently that logic applied to Bernie Madoff. He got 150
| years. How are these cases so similar and yet got radically
| different sentences?
| tombert wrote:
| Even more, Madoff actually turned himself in. I doubt he
| was "remorseful", mostly just realizing how insolvent he
| was, but it demonstrates at least _some_ accountability on
| his end.
| chollida1 wrote:
| > How are these cases so similar and yet got radically
| different sentences?
|
| Partially in that SBF's victims will get "100%" back, based
| on the USD value of their holdings at the time.
|
| Madoff victims, especially the wealthily got a large
| haircut on their holdings and clawbacks on money they had
| taken out as far as 5 years back from sentencing.
|
| Also Maddoff's fraud went on for 15+ years, SBF's was maybe
| a year to 18 months at the most?
|
| These two cases are so widely different that you can't
| really compare them except at a superficial level, ie they
| were both fraud, and that's about where the similarities
| end.
| liendolucas wrote:
| > These two cases are so widely different that you can't
| really compare them except at a superficial level, ie
| they were both fraud, and that's about where the
| similarities end.
|
| I have to disagree on that. Mostly because the order of
| magnitude of both scams is the same (billions) and both
| destroyed how many lives?
|
| And sure, maybe FTX victims will get 100% back, but when?
| How long until you see that money back?
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| a lot of the answer is that Madoff wasn't trying for 25
| years. When you're 71, they're both a life sentence.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| You've identified one of the primary failures of the courts.
| As the number of victims raises the punishment for each
| victim decreases in our judicial system. Victim count is an
| aggravating factor and should be a multiple when calculating
| punishment. Instead we have a system that pretends to grant
| justice but is an actuality a tool of injustice and
| repression wielded by people whose entire perspective can be
| effectively reduced to might makes right. Despite our toys
| and complicated rhetoric we're still just violent animals
| holding those with the least autonomy the most accountable
| and those with the most autonomy can escape the consequences
| of their violence indefinitely. A mass revolt or protest of
| the judicial system in the next generation would not surprise
| me in the least.
| thsksbd wrote:
| "If I broke into a person's house and stole"
|
| The owners, the police, the prosecutor and the jury would be
| far more interested in the breaking and entry charge than the
| $1000.
|
| In fact, in every state of the Union, if you're facing me
| whilst committing the act of trespassing inside my home, I
| can legally punch a hole through your torso with a 9mm.
| mgiampapa wrote:
| Many states (15) have a duty to retreat, not everywhere is
| a stand your ground state (35 states). It's complicated,
| but most of the time in your home there is an exception.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| According to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_retreat in all of
| those states the duty to retreat doesn't apply if in your
| home (or workplace)
| TeaBrain wrote:
| They specifically mentioned a scenario where someone is
| trespassing into the home. There isn't a single state
| that has a duty to retreat requirement that pertains to
| home invaders.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| > If I broke into a person's house and stole $1000, I could
| expect to get several years in prison
|
| Wrong strategy. Move to San Francisco, steal from shops and
| limit your self to $950 and nothing will happen to you.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| They don't stack like that, there is a curve with points and
| considerations like if it's your first time offending and the
| malice involved. Those points correlate to years. Judges
| don't have to follow the points, but they almost always do
| and if they don't, may have to explain it or have their case
| messed with in appeals
| Ctyra wrote:
| > If I broke into a person's house and stole $1000, even if I
| didn't directly hurt that person, I could expect to get
| several years in prison, basically regardless of the state.
| Lets say three years to be conservative on this?
|
| We are seeing this kind of crime on a regular basis in our
| neighborhood. The cops have pretty much given up. They also
| mentioned that even if they make an arrest, the bail is set
| so low, these guys would be out quickly. Overall, my
| impression is there is zero deterrence for these kind of
| crimes here (a pretty affluent neighborhood in one of the
| tech cities in the west coast)
| birracerveza wrote:
| I wonder how many of those will actually be served... one way or
| the other.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Federal prisoners serve an average of 85% of their sentence.
| One year gets you 54 days "good conduct time" and that's about
| it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_conduct_time
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Wouldn't that make 85% the minimum, not the average?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-
| bri... says 2012's average was 88%, so the two are quite
| close. I don't know how much it varies from year to year,
| but it would seem most are earning their good behavior
| time.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| I recall people very confidently saying he would never be
| prosecuted for his political ties.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Those same people have effortlessly pivoted to saying that 25
| years is a slap on the wrist (I'd like to see them stay locked
| in a prison for 25 years to demonstrate they actually believe
| this).
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Those people have pivoted to claiming either that a pardon is
| imminent or that 25 years is a weak penalty.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| People say things all the time. That's not relevant to this
| story, and is kind of flamebaity.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| Indeed they do, including on this very website
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33717992
| petertodd wrote:
| ...and enough people pointing that out, and making it clear
| that they are outraged by the possibility of that happening,
| makes it harder to get away with him avoiding prosecution
| because of his political ties.
|
| This is likely an example of free speech and free press working
| to overcome corruption to achieve justice.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| So, any result would've been evidence of corruption?
|
| ("This is good news for Bitcoin.")
| petertodd wrote:
| I think we can look at SBF's political ties and make a
| reasonable guess at how likely it was that there were
| people trying to get him a deal with minimal jail time. You
| don't need specific evidence of that to say it was _likely_
| happening; the outcome is obvious evidence that if that was
| happening, the attempts failed.
|
| Not sure why you are bringing up Bitcoin; SBF's business
| didn't have much to do with Bitcoin, beyond it being one of
| many methods used to deposit and withdraw funds.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| This sounds like a pretty startling goalpost shift.
| petertodd wrote:
| As I said: "This is likely an example of free speech and
| free press working to overcome corruption to achieve
| justice."
|
| I used the word "likely" for a reason.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| The regime occasionally must sacrifice one of its own to grant
| the appearance of fairness to its politically-motivated
| prosecutions of its opponents.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| Sounds unfalsifiable
| vuln wrote:
| You ain't seen nothing yet. Those ties are what's going to get
| his sentence commuted by Biden.
| carabiner wrote:
| Martin Shkreli predicted 20-25 years:
| https://x.com/wagieeacc/status/1768798879959400776?s=46&t=N5...
| Gerlo wrote:
| Dang. He certainly called it.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| How much did Jordan Belfort get?
|
| Elizabeth Holmes?
|
| Mt.Gox guy?
|
| 25 years is an exageration to be honest, there was never criminal
| intent, if anything there was too much belief in their creature,
| less like Madoff and more like the Long Term Capital Management
| guys. I don't remember them serving a single day in jail.
|
| It goes to show that judges and prosecutors are just trophy
| hunters for media attention these days, as proven by the 1000s of
| proceedings against Donald Trump which costed millions of dollars
| and recovered exactly 0 dollars.
|
| In any event this goes to show that if you are on the spectrum
| and can't empathize you should RUN at the first sign of things
| going south. This guy was in the Bahamas too, from there you can
| reach Cuba with an Inflatable Rib with a 40hp motor, South
| America too, St. Kitts and Nevis too which doesn't have an
| extradition treaty and is the place that many real criminals call
| home.
| stephenitis wrote:
| "Never any criminal intent"
|
| Sounds like someone didn't follow this case closely enough
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Hopefully it will scare / prevent others.
|
| The crypto space is rife with scams, so it's good to finally
| see some real sentencing.
| charonn0 wrote:
| Belfort cooperated with the FBI and got 4 years.
|
| Holmes got 11 years.
|
| The Mt. Gox guy was prosecuted in Japan.
| unregistereddev wrote:
| I don't know if your questions are rhetorical, but they are
| easy to answer so I looked them up for you. These are only the
| prison sentences and do not include court-mandated restitution.
|
| Jordan Belfort: 4 years (served 22 months)
|
| Elizabeth Holmes: 11 years
|
| Mt. Gox guy: I do not know which guy you refer to. Two Russian
| men were indicted for the actual Mt Gox hack. Separately Mark
| Karpeles was sentenced to 2 1/2 years, suspended sentence, in
| Japan - but only for record tampering. He was found not guilty
| of embezzlement. This entire saga seems very very far removed
| from what SBF did.
|
| Bernie Madoff: 150 years
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| It blows my mind that we let sex offenders off for less. Is it
| just me or does that seem backwards?
|
| Brian Peck got 16 months of prison and it seems to be that he
| caused a lot more harm to society than ol SBF here.
| sneak wrote:
| Yes, it is extremely backwards. The prison system in the US
| (like vehicle and environmental regulations in the US)
| exemplifies how little the culture there values human lives and
| lifespan.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| A plausible alternative is that the culture in the US puts
| considerably more value on the lives of the victims and
| assigns nearly zero value to the life of the criminal.
| Arguing that people should "please think of the criminals" is
| a non-starter.
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| I agree. I hope that's not what my original comment was
| implying.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Brian Peck was unfortunately allowed to plead "No Contest"
| rather then being brought to trial or pleading guilty.
|
| I can't find the case but he was also probably charged by the
| state rather than the Feds.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Legally, Brian Peck injured two victims. SBF arguably injured
| far more than that (especially if you assign even partial
| responsibility for the suicides of people he victimized).
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| Am I misunderstanding his crimes?
|
| I was under the impression his crimes were entirely financial
| in nature, whereas in my mind the sexual exploitation of
| minors is several orders of magnitude worse than financial
| losses.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| To put this into its proper perspective, see table 7 here:
|
| https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...
|
| In 2022, the average murderer in the Federal Southern District of
| New York (N = 58) was sentenced to a median of 231 months, which
| comes out to 19 years and change.
|
| No crime of any type had an mean or median sentence higher than
| 25 years; most were far less than half.
|
| So it should be really hard to argue that this is a "light"
| sentence. If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature
| of the crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| That's only one count of murder. One life destroyed. SBF
| destroyed numerous lives, so it is a relatively light sentence
| by that data.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I'm not convinced by that; I think theft in many ways deserves
| a greater penalty.
|
| Imagine if I rob 10,000 people of $2,000. Some people won't
| feel it. Others will be suicidal and may even commit suicide
| partially from hopelessness. There also could have
| ramifications that last years into the future, and cascade.
| (Can't buy new car to replace old car, don't have enough money
| now. Old car broke, missed work, got fired, found new job
| elsewhere that pays less...)
| marcinzm wrote:
| > If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the
| crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping.
|
| I suspect the resulting number of shortened lives amongst all
| the people who lost $8 billion worth of their money due to the
| fraud is more than the number caused by a single murder.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I thought the "lost" money was simply due to poor accounting
| and actually found.
|
| > Kaplan said he had found that FTX customers lost $8
| billion, FTX's equity investors lost $1.7 billion, and that
| lenders to the Alameda Research hedge fund Bankman-Fried
| founded lost $1.3 billion.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/sam-bankman-fried-be-
| sent...
|
| Clearly the real crime is bilking investors out of their
| money. It's also questionable whether they even ended up
| losing money given the rising price of crypto in the past
| year. It's also interesting how this happened:
|
| > when it filed for bankruptcy after traders pulled $6
| billion from the platform in three days and rival exchange
| Binance abandoned a rescue deal.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/bankrupt-crypto-
| exchange-...
|
| So basically the traders did a bank run and Sam ended up
| going to jail. It's interesting that by contrast SVB leaders
| didn't face any repercussions because they were part of the
| established ways of doing things even though that ended up
| being very costly for the government.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > It's also questionable whether they even ended up losing
| money given the rising price of crypto in the past year.
|
| Shkreli dealt with the "making people whole/replacing money
| you took": it's not okay to steal or defraud people just
| because you later make them whole or they don't even
| realize that you did.
|
| _But even moreso, to your point:_ Please don 't conflate
| the rising crypto price with SBF's intent. He _didn 't
| care_ about that. The fact that crypto rose and may have
| lessened the losses is _entirely orthogonal_ to his intent,
| just a "fortunate" coincidence. It could equally have
| cratered. The people who are being recompensed are only
| being recompensed in part because of something entirely
| outside of SBF's control and intention.
| vkou wrote:
| It's worse than that.
|
| The only reason people can be made whole is _because_ SBF
| was arrested for fraud, and all the funds got frozen.
| Given his track record, had he kept steering the firm for
| another year or two, he would have almost pissed away all
| the gains /potential gains from the crypto rally, and his
| customers would have found themselves in an even bigger
| hole.
|
| Also, Bernie Madoff could have just taken a ten year
| timeout, bought and rode the S&P 500, and had made his
| customers whole, too, so I guess he also did nothing
| wrong...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the "lost" money was simply due to poor accounting and
| actually found_
|
| What? No.
|
| The "lost" money was bet on red at the roulette wheel.
| While the firm was in bankruptcy, the wheel stopped
| spinning and came up red. That was enough to make customers
| whole to their original deposits. But it didn't make up for
| capital gains, opportunity cost or the emotional damage
| caused by having your funds locked away for years.
|
| > _interesting that by contrast SVB leaders didn't face any
| repercussions_
|
| Totally different situations. The analogy would be PayPal
| freezing everyone's accounts for 3+ years while they put
| all the money into Peter Thiel's hedge fund.
| beambot wrote:
| I would like to recuperate the cash value of my pre-crash
| SVB stock, even if it's 3 years later - please & thank
| you. Their complete lack of risk oversight for HTM assets
| definitely borders on negligence...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| SVB stock is a different thing than an SVB deposit.
| klelatti wrote:
| You can't call it a bank run if it's not a bank! Banks are
| highly regulated as they are vulnerable to this sort of
| issue and that's why there is compensation. A run should
| not have been problematic for FTX without the fraud.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| > Clearly the real crime is bilking investors out of their
| money. It's also questionable whether they even ended up
| losing money given the rising price of crypto in the past
| year. It's also interesting how this happened:
|
| That's not how that works. Whatever purchasing power they
| were supposed to have that they were deprived of because of
| his actions results in damages - obviously equal at least
| to the crypto gains they would have.
| FabHK wrote:
| > it's interesting that by contrast SVB leaders didn't face
| any repercussions because they were part of the established
| ways of doing things
|
| LOL, yeah, no. SFB also did really well established old
| fashioned tradCrime. It wasn't even DeCrime.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > even though that ended up being very costly for the
| government.
|
| Did it? The FDIC is funded by banks, not the government.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > When dues and the proceeds of bank liquidations are
| insufficient, it can borrow from the federal government,
| or issue debt through the Federal Financing Bank on terms
| that the bank decides
|
| It's not fully funded by the banks & borrows from the
| government when it's short. I don't know how to account
| the government borrowing from itself, but I wouldn't
| think it's necessarily "free". Yes it does get paid back,
| but you're borrowing on very preferential terms that
| aren't available to the public so there is as cost to the
| broader economy.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > It's not fully funded by the banks & borrows from the
| government when it's short.
|
| While it's true that the FDIC is "backed by the full
| faith and credit of the US Government" it is funded by
| the banks and by interest from treasuries [0]. Has there
| ever been a case when the FDIC actually ran out of funds
| and had to be bailed out?
|
| [0] https://www.fdic.gov/resources/deposit-
| insurance/understandi...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > During two banking crises--the savings and loan crisis
| and the Global Financial Crisis--the FDIC has expended
| its entire insurance fund. On these occasions it has met
| insurance obligations directly from operating cash, or by
| borrowing through the Federal Financing Bank. Another
| option, which it has never used, is a direct line of
| credit with the Treasury on which it can borrow up to
| $100 billion.
|
| So yes, it ran out of funds & had to borrow. It has not
| yet experienced a shock bad enough to leverage the
| Treasury line of credit but that's a fig leaf IMO. The
| 2008 crisis saw the government bailing out banks through
| TARP to shore up failing banks to the tune of 700B.
| Without that, FDIC would have failed. So from that
| perspective, yet it was bailed out in 2008 & the funding
| from members wouldn't have been anywhere near sufficient.
| That's why I don't understand the political football
| around TARP - "the full faith and credit of the US
| government" would have been meaningless if FDIC failed as
| that would have sent a giant shockwave of trust loss
| through the broader population as everyday people would
| have lost huge savings.
| Aloisius wrote:
| But it wasn't short in this case.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > So basically the traders did a bank run and Sam ended
| up going to jail. It's interesting that by contrast SVB
| leaders didn't face any repercussions because they were
| part of the established ways of doing things even though
| that ended up being very costly for the government.
|
| Because Silicon Valley Bank leaders were nobodies whereas
| SBF became perceived as a trophy, pretty much immediately.
|
| This is something to be mindful on. When doing self
| promotion some people start seeing you as an inspiration ,
| many others as a fraud or a human trophy to be captured and
| paraded around.
|
| Especially in startup communities where groupthink takes
| over and everybody wants to be the new cult figure of the
| Silicon Valley or the crypto valley or whatever. People
| outside that bubble (especially LE, prosecutors and judges)
| see right through that BS and are specifically looking with
| a magnifying glass everything that goes on hoping to get
| themselves a nice trophy on their desk, they want the heads
| of cult founders. Some would say rightfully so.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| We throw people in jail for committing fraud. We don't
| throw them in jail for making bad investment decisions
| within the bounds of the law. While I am loathe to defend
| SVB's management here, your line of argument leads to a
| world where either (1) everyone commits outright fraud
| with impunity, or (2) everyone goes to jail. Neither
| world is any good.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| My line of argument is one where the role of a prosecutor
| or judge or LE of any kind is a very serious one
|
| These people should be spending their free time reading
| papers and books on how Romans enforced their laws over
| remote German provinces of the Empire.
|
| Instead they open all sorts of media and like hunters in
| the forest they pick a trophy that suits their liking and
| then they just use all their means to collect that
| trophy.
|
| Or even worse they are not even creative in their trophy
| hunting quest, they all pile on Trump because by the way
| he looks and acts he looks like a fraud and advertises
| his nature thanks to his huge megaphone . So every
| prosecutor in the Nation piles on him because they want
| to be the one uncovering this big revelation to the
| American public...pathetic.
|
| Their goal should be ratio of Money recovered from
| criminals to money spent for investigations/proceedings.
| No one operates this way because they are essentially
| predators, much like SBF and Trump are, just a different
| kind, but they receive a salary paid for by taxpayeyrs.
| SilasX wrote:
| You're not replying to the question of how much
| money/assets -- thought to be lost -- was later found,
| you're just copy-pasting random details about the case.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > basically the traders did a bank run
|
| Given that FTX is not a bank, and does not do any sort of
| (high regulated for a reason) fractional reserve lending
| ... how exactly can there be a run? _All_ of the assets
| should still have been there.
| okeuro49 wrote:
| > fractional reserve lending
|
| This is out of date. There is no reserve requirement
| anymore.
| Aloisius wrote:
| _> It's interesting that by contrast SVB leaders didn't
| face any repercussions because they were part of the
| established ways of doing things even though that ended up
| being very costly for the government._
|
| Why is it interesting? SVB leaders didn't engage in fraud
| or money laundering.
| ghnws wrote:
| Hopefully no-one bet their life on unregulated extremely
| risky investments.
| stonogo wrote:
| There have been at least three suicides. When this much
| money is being spent convincing people to buy into a bad
| idea, it's gonna work on _someone_.
| datavirtue wrote:
| People are buying Bitcoin like crazy still "because it is
| going to go up!!!"
| zulban wrote:
| That's not the point being made. However if 10,000 people
| lose 2000$ due to mysterious market forces, you bet this
| will contribute to some losing their lives.
| andruby wrote:
| Do people lose their lives over loosing $2000?
|
| * In developed countries. I doubt people from 3rd world
| countries had $2000 on FTX.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| I believe that, as a matter of public policy, there ought to
| be an important distinction between violent and non-violent
| crimes.
|
| The rationale behind prison, as opposed to corporal
| punishment without incarceration, is to remove dangerous
| people from society, so that they don't further victimize the
| public.
|
| A violent murderer -- of really _any type_ of murder, e.g. of
| a random stranger, of one 's spouse, or a murderer-for-hire
| -- should be removed from society for society's benefit. The
| key point is that the needs of society must come first;
| punitive measures are a secondary concern. As theory goes,
| this is trivial.
|
| In SBF's case, his ability to further harm the public is
| absolutely minimal, provided his punishment includes severe
| restrictions on his ability to access computers and serve as
| the director or shareholder of any business. I'd sentence him
| to a few years in jail, as a punitive measure, and then a
| lifetime of community service and probation. Let him try and
| do some good, if he's sincere about those stories he tells re
| his motivations.
|
| You might argue that punitive measures serve a vital function
| as deterrence, but evidence doesn't seem to support that
| argument, and in any case it applies far more strongly to
| violent crime than to financial crimes. As, in the latter,
| crimes are often amorphous and poorly delineated, and
| selective enforcement is the rule rather than the exception.
| jgeada wrote:
| We measure the worth of a life, for insurance and actuarial
| purposes, at about $10m (and frequently less). Stealing
| someone's savings is stealing their life, their time, and
| in some cases their ability to survive (as we have very few
| safety nets in the US)
|
| Please stop defending white collar crime as somehow more
| palatable, as somehow a better class of criminal.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/upshot/virus-price-
| human-...
| nemomarx wrote:
| If you consider the murder closure rate in most cities,
| selective enforcement of violent crimes seems absolutely
| normal - the cops simply will not find everyone who kills
| someone and track them down. They're not very good at it.
|
| This undermines a lot of the certainty of punishment and
| therefore the deterring factor of law enforcement, of
| course.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Are you suggesting corporal punishment for SBF?
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Yeah, there are almost certainly suicides from this.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the
| crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping.
|
| It also affected tens of thousands of people more than a murder
| or kidnapping.
| quatrefoil wrote:
| You're comparing to medians; is this a median crime?
| petertodd wrote:
| > If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the
| crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping.
|
| The value of a single human life is not infinite. In
| engineering and public policy, a value like $10 million / life
| is typically used to make trade-offs. SBF stole funds far in
| excess of that.
|
| Secondly, when funds of this scale are stolen, inevitably
| people wind up dying early from things like stress, and
| suicides.
| flutas wrote:
| > Secondly, when funds of this scale are stolen, inevitably
| people wind up dying early from things like stress, and
| suicides.
|
| Yep, it was mentioned in sentencing today by one of the
| victims.
|
| At least 3 have already committed suicide after the shit hit
| the fan.
| eastbound wrote:
| As fuming as I am, there are I think 30 attempts and 7
| successes out of 100k males per year? so we still need to
| prove that it is above average. And above average of the
| median cryptocurrency owner, because they may have a risk
| profile too.
|
| And then, yes, trial SBF for each of them as murder on top
| of embezzlement.
| enaaem wrote:
| The problem is that financial distress is a direct cause
| of suicide. It's like Sam shooting one of his clients and
| claim the death rate among his clients is still below the
| national average.
| fasthands9 wrote:
| One especially hard thing for sentencing public policy is
| when every crime is compared to every other crime.
|
| It is impossible, I think, to come up with a "ranking" of
| crimes that everyone can agree on. And because that's
| impossible, anyone can always point to a sentence of someone
| else who received too little or too much in comparison.
|
| I understand the desire to scale sentences by impact. But, I
| personally think it would be reasonable to give SBF the same
| exact sentence even if he had defrauded people out of twice
| as much or half as much money.
| petertodd wrote:
| An often forgotten aspect of sentencing is that once a
| criminal has done something evil, we still want there to be
| incentives for them to not do _further_ evil things, as
| well as to co-operate with authorities.
|
| That can play out into, say, giving both a murderer and a
| scammer 25 years in prison, provided that they turn
| themselves in and otherwise co-operate with the legal
| process.
|
| I'm sure police officers would rather go into houses to
| arrest people knowing that whatever the suspect has done,
| they're going to get another 25 years in jail if they fight
| back. Arresting someone who has no hope at all, regardless
| of what they do, is simply more dangerous.
| xotesos wrote:
| To me it is an absurd comparison.
|
| Someone stealing a billion dollars is committing a far worse
| crime than someone that murders me.
|
| The problem I have with this is imagine what a statistical
| poll would be if you posed the question "would you spend 20
| years in jail for 1 billion?"
|
| There is a good percentage that absolutely would sign up for
| that, obviously a much different result than "would you spend
| life in prison to get a billion dollars".
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I found the variance in sentencing data on the last couple of
| pages interesting. Notably there's no variances in murder
| sentencing listed there. Does anyone know why that is? Are
| judges/juries not allowed to set sentences outside the
| guidelines for murder trials?
| logro wrote:
| There is nothing "median" or "average" about this crime. This
| is one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| FTX was one of the biggest frauds in history.. and you're
| showing us averages. Madoff received a 150 year sentence, and
| that was with leniency for pleading guilty.
| j0hnyl wrote:
| Propotional to the size of Madoff's ponzi, SBFs sentence is
| heavy.
| tptacek wrote:
| Both Madoff and SBF redlined the 2B1.1 "monetary amount of
| fraud" criteria, so the comparison is moot.
| e40 wrote:
| Again, Madoff plead guilty. Has SBF shown any (real)
| remorse or taken responsibility?
| dml2135 wrote:
| I don't think there's any way to reasonable describe a life
| sentence as lenient, unless one was facing the death penalty.
| datavirtue wrote:
| It's pretty lenient in Canada. Child rapist murderers can
| apply for day parole in ten years (where yes, they let them
| scuttle off into society unattended) and permeant parole in
| 25 years. Families are continually retraumatized every few
| years in that system by having to beg parole boards to not
| let out the freak that stalked, kidnapped, raped, killed
| and dismembered their daughter or mother. They never get to
| move on.
| Repulsion9513 wrote:
| Oh wow, people are allowed to apply for parole and become
| productive members of society again, how terrible. Can't
| possibly be allowed.
| amanj41 wrote:
| Wasn't Madoff's plan the whole time to pocket investor money
| for himself, whereas Sam's was to arrogantly (and illegally)
| gamble it with the thought being he could return the
| principal from Alameda back to FTX in future? Genuine
| question, I'm not super informed on these.
| nickff wrote:
| From what I've read, it's not exactly clear that Madoff had
| a plan, it seems more like he lied to a few people about
| being able to make them a lot of money, and that snowballed
| into him taking a lot of "investments" that he didn't know
| what to do with.
|
| From what I've seen about SBF, it does seem like he has a
| very high risk tolerance, was betting big to win big, and
| thinking the reward was worth the risk.
| tim333 wrote:
| Funnily enough if SBF hadn't been found out the
| investments probably would have recovered enough to cover
| the deposits and he'd still be a hero.
| Repulsion9513 wrote:
| Tether, Terra, Circle, crypto lending
|
| Heck it's almost like this describes crypto itself
| nostromo wrote:
| No, SBF did directly steal from FTX users. He used an
| intermediary (Alameda) to do so. The end result is the
| same: he stole from customers to enrich himself, his family
| and his friends.
|
| I'm sure both SBF and Madoff originally thought they would
| be able to make enough money to cover up the theft.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Sam paid and loaned to himself $2.2B (and another $1B to
| top execs) out of the $8B that was lost. That doesn't
| include the Bahamas real estate; trabuccos yacht; celebrity
| endorsements; stadium naming; or the private planes to
| deliver amazon packages to the bahamas.
|
| The idea that Sam was just a risky investor is the story
| Sam wants to tell. But he already told that story in court,
| and it was rejected.. because the evidence doesn't support
| it.
| dns_snek wrote:
| Statistical value of a human life in the US is around $7.5
| million. Stealing $10 billion is therefore statistically
| equivalent to killing 1300 people, or pretty close to half of
| 9/11. That seems like a pretty light sentence to me.
| theragra wrote:
| Yet in 2008 crisis nobody was sentenced for more then 15
| years
| dns_snek wrote:
| And that's was unjust, too.
| whatscooking wrote:
| Yea let's let fraudsters run amuck, he damaged the lives of
| millions of people, fuck him
| akaike wrote:
| Same opinion. He should rot in jail forever
| Vicinity9635 wrote:
| "AUSA Nicolas Roos: Samuel Bankman-Fried stole $8 billion
| dollars. It was theft, from customers spread all over the
| world. It was a loss that impacted people significantly and
| caused damage. I want to address a few of the new victim
| letters"
|
| "AUSA Roos: They lost their life savings. A man who lives in
| Portugal - the day before bankruptcy his daughter was born. He
| was marred by the ominous specter of financial instability and
| his daughter's future. Then there's the 23 year old from
| Morocco"
|
| "AUSA Roos: He is the eldest son. He kept money on FTX not to
| loan it out to the defendant but for family's security. One
| more - a couple in the later stages of their life, late 60s,
| they invested with life savings. They were depressed, they had
| to go back to work"
|
| https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/177336575999912795...
| menomatter wrote:
| I have not been following any crypto news POST mtgx and
| pulling all my crypto to local storage. What did this guy
| actually do? Did he mismanage funds or literally took money
| from poeple and stashed it away?
| Flammy wrote:
| He let his private equity / investment company (Alameda)
| borrow unlimited customer funds via a software backdoor for
| various investments.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| (and lost most of it by "investing" in shitcoins,
| basically)
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Wasn't perjury and witness tampering significant here though?
| Messing with the actual justice system should end with heavy
| punishment I guess.
| edgyquant wrote:
| All this proves is that murderers get off way too easy.
| runako wrote:
| > So it should be really hard to argue that this is a "light"
| sentence.
|
| The well-considered federal sentencing guidelines put the
| sentence for this crime at over 100 years. That is, for an
| anonymous defendant at remove, our legal system believes that
| 100+ years is a fair sentence for this set of offenses.
|
| So another way of looking at this is _because_ of who the
| specific defendant is here, the court shaved 80 years off the
| "fair" sentence. I would consider that a light sentence.
| philwelch wrote:
| Ghislane Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's a light sentence by the sentencing guidelines; the judge
| has departed downwards from what the guidelines would seem to
| have recommended (we didn't get to see the PSR so we don't know
| which of the obvious details have been contested).
| kernal wrote:
| >So it should be really hard to argue that this is a "light"
| sentence. If anything, it's excessive if you consider the
| nature of the crime relative to the nature of murder or
| kidnapping.
|
| How many people's lives were ruined or ended by his
| malfeasance? He got off lightly.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I disagree with your assessment for all the reasons other
| people have said.
|
| However, the other thing I'd point out is that murder is rarely
| a federal crime - it's usually a state crime. I was curious as
| to when it becomes a federal crime and found this:
| https://www.greenspunlaw.com/library/when-murder-is-a-federa...
|
| Dollars-to-donuts that the vast majority of federal murders
| here were drug related. Not that I think the that makes it in
| any way better, but in many ways gang violence is more of a war
| than an individual, targeted killing. These types of
| circumstances matter when it comes to sentencing, and I'm not
| surprised at all that SBF's sentencing is longer than you
| "average" federal murder sentencing.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I don't think it's a light sentence, but maybe it's not the
| right sentence. For the punishment to fit the crime, he
| shouldn't ever allowed to be rich again. I think that's more of
| a deterrent for this sort of thing.
|
| I say this tongue in cheek, but mostly because I don't know
| what options judges have at their disposal in these situations.
| sonar_un wrote:
| The moral of the story, don't rob from rich people. If you rob
| from poor people, with MLM, or fraud, or money laundering,
| thats fine. But if you rob from the billionaires, you're being
| put away for life.
| ken47 wrote:
| It would be more accurate to compare this to a mass crime. 25
| feels light for perpetrating one of the biggest and notorious
| frauds in modern history. Did the judge go to the upper range
| of the punishment spectrum? There are judges out there who
| would have made an example out of this case.
| err4nt wrote:
| I'm not saying that people should kill others or themselves
| because of the amounts of money involved here, and I'm not
| entirely sure what the minimum threshold is for financial
| crimes where that becomes an (grim and unfortunate) side
| effect, but when we're discussing the largest fraud in history
| it's definitely on that scale. Even though he stole money, the
| human cost of that is beyond just fractured careers and
| relationships, undoubtedly because of how humans behave people
| almost certainly lost their entire lives due to the continuing
| effects caused only by this crime. That cost in human life
| should be taken into account here, even if it shouldn't have
| had that kind of cost.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Money is not just paper with pictures on it. Money represents
| human labor. So him stealing billions effectively destroyed
| thousands of lifetimes of labor. If anything, his sentence is
| extremely light.
| ellis0n wrote:
| It is bad to steal from lawyers, economists and judges at the
| same time. This has a negative impact on the court, in addition
| to the financial harm caused.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Honestly, comparing billion dollar fraud to murder is a bit
| tricky for me. In the one hand we could try to give a dollar
| value to a life, maybe a million dollars. But I don't know if
| stealing a million dollars is equivalent to murder, since money
| is fungible and people are not. The government can make the
| victim of theft whole. For murder, that is not possible.
|
| On the other hand maybe a more reasonable approach would be to
| treat criminals as people who need to be quarantined for as
| long as they're dangerous. If we could identify a treatable
| disease (a tumor for example) and know with 100% certainty that
| treating that disease could prevent further crimes, I
| personally wouldn't have an issue with it. We have an impulse
| to punish evil, and severely punish very evil things, but it's
| more of a primitive drive than anything productive. (Of course
| the exception is the extent to which punishment can deter
| crime.)
| wnevets wrote:
| Never steal money from the rich.
| zemariagp wrote:
| Good time to reflect on Ross Ulbright's 2xLife sentence
| mzs wrote:
| One life sentence and that was based largely on him paying to
| have five people murdered.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Two life sentences for charges that had nothing to do with
| the alleged murder-for-hire. Those charges were dropped.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Trial
| krisoft wrote:
| The judge can take into consideration during sentencing
| conduct not explicitly charged. Heck they can take into
| consideration things you have been acquitted over by a jury
| too.
|
| That is right (I'm telling you how the law is, not how it
| should be) A jury can decide that it was not proven beyond
| a reasonable doubt that you did something and yet you can
| still receiver a heavier sentence for it. (as long as they
| don't acquit you over all charges.)
| mzs wrote:
| only one life sentence plus $183,961,921:
| https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ross-ulbricht-aka-dread-
| pi...
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/29/silk-
| road...
|
| >The 31-year-old physics graduate and former boy scout
| was handed five sentences: one for 20 years, one for 15
| years, one for five and two for life.
|
| I can't find the actual court documents, but I personally
| find a report from someone presumably at the trial more
| trustworthy than a government press release.
|
| _edit_ did find the transcripts,
| https://www.scribd.com/doc/283722300/Ross-Ulbricht-
| Sentencin...
|
| >that on Counts Two and Four you are sentenced to a
| period of life imprisonment to run concurrently
| setgree wrote:
| An uncle once commented about a cousin of ours that he
| demonstrated how it's possible to screw things up so badly that
| you can't possibly recover. I think that's true for Sam. I hope
| it's not true for the people in his orbit; I hope they can get
| out from under this and try to find meaning, ideally from
| repairing the harm they've done.
|
| As Rick Heicklen writes, "We are not ever going to be Sam. But we
| could be Caroline, or Nishad, or Natalie. Or even Michael Lewis.
| We could easily make the same mistakes they do." [0]
|
| [0] https://asteriskmag.com/issues/05/michael-lewis-s-blind-side,
| posted previously here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39118124
| FabHK wrote:
| FWIW, I didn't find Lewis's book as bad (or amoral) as it's
| often made out to be. Yes, he didn't put his judgement in every
| paragraph, but his description of SBF was:
|
| a) absolutely damning! SBF's lack of empathy, his notion that
| (given that everyone else is stupid) he knew best and should
| basically ignore the advice of everyone else (particularly his
| elders), his naive utilitarianism without any
| deontological/virtue temperance, his reckless "many-worlds"
| risk-neutrality in gambling - that was all described in detail
| in the book, even if it was not explicitly condemned. Lewis
| didn't bother to show why these traits are bad. (I don't know
| what Lewis himself thought about them, but who cares? Show,
| don't tell.)
|
| b) empathetic, eliciting compassion. Sure, the kid was screwed
| up, but here's why. And, btw, _you_ might well have turned out
| the same way under similar circumstances, but for the grace of
| god.
|
| My conclusion: 1) Lewis's book was good and insightful, and
| it's unfair to describe it as an apologia. 2) SBF has severe
| moral deficiencies and belongs in prison for a long time, but
| not because he is "evil". 3) Let's have some damn humility.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Lewis also soft-sells the polyamorous relationships and
| complications that caused around SBF's relationship with
| Caroline Ellison. Caroline wants to go public, and why that
| would be a much bigger deal in the polyamorous world they
| were living in.
|
| It's similar in many of Lewis's other analysis of SBF's
| relationships. Lewis avoids context that makes SBF look much
| worse.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the book but this doesn't sound like
| it pattern matches with any of the poly I've experienced.
| Going public is a big deal in poly in particular? Since
| when? What kind of self respecting tech bro group house
| doesn't have a graph of all the poly on their whiteboard?
| ametrau wrote:
| Gross
| adolph wrote:
| What does an IPO (or ICO?) have to to with "polyamorous
| world?"
| meowface wrote:
| What does "going public" mean in this context?
| lazide wrote:
| What is your definition of 'evil' if not self-serving,
| lacking in empathy for others, and amoral?
|
| Would he have to torture puppies for fun to check all the
| boxes? Because if so, Hitler loved dogs.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Maybe "evil" is a word for fiction stories only. In SBF's
| case, maybe "narcissist" is better (includes the properties
| you listed, and can like dogs)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _btw, you might well have turned out the same way under
| similar circumstances_
|
| Which is where it's bullshit arising out of the incentives of
| access journalism.
|
| The Heinlen quote is more meaningful: you won't be Sam. (If
| you're in the set of people who _could_ be Sam, the
| conversation is different.) But you might fall into his
| orbit.
| gizmo wrote:
| I very much agree. "Number go up" by Faux is the better book
| in many respects, but Lewis's book contains much background
| info not reported elsewhere. Lewis's book is damning about
| SBF as you said. About how unapologetic and manipulative he
| is. About his willingness to gamble with other people's
| money. About his complete lack of ethical boundaries. About
| the casual way SBF ignored all laws he didn't like. About
| SBF's history of reckless gambling.
|
| Yes, Lewis was (and probably still is) sympathetic to SBF.
| But that's also how he got him to talk! The book wouldn't
| have been possible had Lewis behaved as a skeptical
| investigative journalist. Lewis gave SBF all the rope he
| needed to hang himself with, and that was all he needed to
| do.
| FabHK wrote:
| > Lewis gave SBF all the rope he needed to hang himself
| with, and that was all he needed to do.
|
| Very nicely put.
|
| Book recommendations: Faux _Number go up_ is beautifully
| reported, in particular on the many scam and trafficking
| victims, the culture (Bored Ape parties), some of the
| players (eg SBF, the Tether people, etc.), and the
| underlying anarcho-capitalist mindset.
|
| On the impact on the underprivileged (that the "check your
| financial privilege" and "banking the unbanked" predatory
| inclusion crypto crowd purports to care so much for), the
| green-washing of Bitcoin, the crypto philanthropy "bad
| samaritans", Metaverse and Web3, check Peter Howson's _Let
| Them Eat Crypto_.
|
| Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman's _Easy Money_ is another
| non-technical examination of fraud in crypto, El Salvador,
| and the severe consequences for victims.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > About how unapologetic and manipulative he is. About his
| willingness to gamble with other people's money.
|
| This describes most bankers? They're generally smarter in
| that they work for an organization that dillutes
| responsibility for their crimes.
| tremon wrote:
| That's why most bankers are subject to all the laws that
| SBF didn't like.
| tootie wrote:
| Banality of evil. I'm sure SBF seems like a decent person who
| just wants to run a cool business and play with technology.
| He never thought he was a crook.
| gizmo wrote:
| I don't think the banality of evil applies here. Banality
| of evil is when cogs in a bureaucratic machine don't think
| about how their actions hurt others, because they are just
| processing paperwork or following standard operating
| procedure. Regular people doing regular people things can
| do great evil.
|
| In this case SBF was the architect and the driving force
| behind the fraud. He decided to comingle customers funds
| with business funds. He decided to trick banks into
| processing client money. He decided to split FTX into
| dozens of shell corporations to make effective oversight
| impossible. He decided to operate from Hong Kong and the
| Bahama's.
|
| Banality of evil might apply to a junior engineer at FTX.
| It doesn't apply to SBF who masterminded the whole criminal
| enterprise.
| tootie wrote:
| The phrase was coined in reference to Adolf Eichmann.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| I think your usage/quote was bold but appropriate.
| frenchyatwork wrote:
| Yes, but it was coined to promote specific view of
| Eichmann that he himself tried to cast himself in: that
| he didn't really like murdering Jews, he was just
| following orders.
| gizmo wrote:
| Yes, and "banality of evil" is famously misunderstood:
|
| https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2016-10-12/ty-
| article/th...
|
| (Eichmann was a Nazi through and through, fiercely
| antisemitic, knew exactly what was going on, and liked
| it. He didn't just "go along with it" in the banal sense,
| he chose evil knowingly.)
| jimmydddd wrote:
| I think I read that Lewis was almost finished with the book,
| which was about to come out, and which was highly pro-SBF,
| when the FTX scandal Broke? So he then had to quickly revise
| and "save" the book by changing the tone in view of the FTX
| scandal? If so, it's probably an unusual book in view of the
| last hour rewrites.
| caturopath wrote:
| That doesn't seem to be the case at all. A lot of the
| sympathetic content occurs _after_ the scandal and arrest,
| and Lewis has continued to take the same tone in
| interviews. Further, an inordinate amount of time is
| dedicated earlier in the book to a problem at Alameda that
| Lewis draws parallels to the scandal that took him down,
| clearly working toward his thesis. Lewis is one of the
| most-read living authors: they could have gotten a crack
| team of editors to help him revise the book in no time if
| he wanted to. It seems that his _actual_ take was that SBF
| was a dumbass rather than a criminal mastermind. It's not
| even an implausible view.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > It seems that his _actual_ take was that SBF was a
| dumbass rather than a criminal mastermind.
|
| He _was_ a dumbass though. He got caught up in it all and
| you bend, bend, bend until the next thing you know...
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| > He got caught up in it all and you bend, bend, bend
| until the next thing you know..
|
| This denies him agency. Probably a better hypothesis is
| that he was a raging narcissist who thought he could
| swindle everyone with none the wiser, without realizing
| how transparent his fraud was.
| caturopath wrote:
| It seems like for your theory to be better, it should fit
| the facts better (not saying it doesn't). Whether it
| seems agentic or not doesn't seem very relevant to
| whether it's what happened.
| lancesells wrote:
| This guy was lying like crazy in the media. He even said
| it was a ponzi scheme. Maybe he's a dumbass but he's also
| a criminal who was committing crimes while out there
| doing PR the whole time. Even during his trial he was
| lying so let's not act like he was in over his head and
| made some mistakes. He's never even owned up to it.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| If you are talking about the time Alameda lost track of a
| bunch of money, and everyone freaks out except SBF, who
| turns out to be right, that story was hilarious
| foreshadowing.
|
| Lewis also spends lots of time explaining how the whole
| thing that led to the collapse could have been avoided,
| they didn't need to be 'lent' money from clients coffers.
| They had money they could draw on and had in the past to
| finance market bets. SBF was just not very detail
| oriented, certain of his success and sure the rules
| didn't matter much.
|
| He literally had meetings where he told people to buy
| other crypto companies with the criteria "Don't stop
| until you hit a billion dollars spent".
|
| One of his supporters was certain he didn't do anything
| wrong, when the collapse happened, because he thought it
| would be insane to risk a golden goose like FTX, where
| you are the house in a giant gambling frenzy.
|
| A special kind of non-chalant, non-selfaware hubris.
| inhumantsar wrote:
| this exactly. the freakonomics podcast (iirc, maybe the
| economist's money talks?) did a long form interview with
| the "emergency CEO" that was parachuted in when ftz filed
| for bankruptcy.
|
| my big takeaway from that is that the books, when they
| existed, were a complete shitshow. the money ended up all
| being there, but it was so scattered that it's taken all
| this time to find it. an investment here, a forgotten
| wallet there. they lost billions the way normal people
| lose dollar bills or car keys.
|
| ofc that doesn't mean there wasn't fraud happening. the
| fact that they intentionally faked reserve balances and
| treated alameda like a piggy bank and did gymnastics to
| hide it can't be ignored. but even that still smacks of
| hubris to me more than a Bernie Madoff type scam.
|
| it was like sbf didn't think it would be an issue because
| he genuinely believed that it would never be an issue. eg
| "people just want to believe there's a reserve, so let's
| show them one. we don't actually need it tho because
| we're actual geniuses." or maybe "no one will ever look
| because we're in the Bahamas and the Bahamas loves us,
| _needs_ us. " or it could be simply "money solves all
| problems and we have infinite money".
|
| tldr: gambling addict gambled to the end and the house
| always wins.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Well also they made a percentage on any money coming in
| and out of FTX. That gave them a buffer of profit, a free
| money machine basically.
|
| That could paper over any problems until the problems
| became big enough to sink them.
|
| He also made and then lost a crazy amount of money at
| Jane Street during election night before he started all
| this. He was a gambler.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| >the money ended up all being there, but it was so
| scattered that it's taken all this time to find it.
|
| This is explicitly not the case. The new management has
| not found hundreds of millions (billions) in
| cryptocurrency assets. Some other assets have surged in
| value and that may allow FTX to make some customers
| "whole" (meaning, they will not _lose_ much money in an
| environment where otherwise maybe they would have
| strongly profited), but this isn 't the same thing.
| DANmode wrote:
| You have a source indicating the $473 to $600+ million
| that was supposedly moved to cold storage from client
| wallets was all recovered by the law, and/or the new
| stewards of FTX?
| caturopath wrote:
| The new management found many billions of assets of
| various asset classes
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/bankrupt-crypto-
| exchange-... When FTX thought it was broke, there were
| really billions of dollars of stuff they were too much of
| a mess to come up with.
|
| That isn't to say that 'all the money was there' or that
| the conduct wasn't deeply criminal and unethical, but a
| huge part of the shortfall was really just terrible
| books.
| meowface wrote:
| If true, kind of funny. If they weren't so incompetent
| they may've been able to skate past it without the public
| realizing what was going on.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| When you're talking about 8 billion dollars, it's easy to
| lose sight of the fact that "a huge part of the shortfall
| was found" means that billions of dollars weren't.
| lowkeyoptimist wrote:
| That billions of stuff were other coins that dropped in
| value which they were using to run their scheme and
| investments that are still illiquid, like their 500
| million dollar investment in Anthropic. I can only
| imagine what that Anthropic investment is worth today.
|
| https://d1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net/production/7ab64a3b
| -6c...
|
| This is even from the article you reference: "FTX has
| benefited from a recent rise in crypto prices, Dietderich
| said. Its total recovery would be valued at $6.2 billion
| based on crypto prices from November 2022, when it filed
| for bankruptcy after traders pulled $6 billion from the
| platform in three days and rival exchange Binance
| abandoned a rescue deal."
| caturopath wrote:
| The famous John Ray (emergency CEO) quote from a court
| filing was
|
| > Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure
| of corporate controls and such a complete absence of
| trustworthy financial information as occurred here.
|
| which seems likely to be an understatement.
| duskwuff wrote:
| And John Ray had previously served as the chairman of
| Enron after its bankruptcy, so he might know a thing or
| two about dysfunctional accounting. :)
| Animats wrote:
| > the money ended up all being there,
|
| Someone associated with the case said that just because
| it was possible to recover most of the money he stole
| doesn't mean he didn't steal it. Crooks routinely go to
| jail even when the cops recover the money or goods.
| meowface wrote:
| >the fact that they intentionally faked reserve balances
| and treated alameda like a piggy bank and did gymnastics
| to hide it can't be ignored.
|
| To be clear, they also gambled with normal FTX customer
| funds. People who were just buying cryptocurrency through
| ordinary means and not trying to do sophisticated
| trading. It was simple theft. You can say they thought
| they'd make the money back plus some, but I think a lot
| of Ponzi scheme heads think the exact same way.
| jallen_dot_dev wrote:
| > kid
|
| He's a 32 year old man.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| No no, he is rich so of course he is just a kid, lost in
| the sauce, accidentally squandering a few billion. Now, 16
| year old male from a low income household, those are men,
| and should know the consequence of their actions better. /s
|
| This infantilizing is disgusting propaganda in and of
| itself.
| queuebert wrote:
| Propaganda or hired PR team influencing the discourse?
| ljlolel wrote:
| He dresses like a teenager
| ben_w wrote:
| So do most of my peers, and I'm 40.
|
| A few of us wear suit jackets now, but I think that's
| just to stand out from the crowds of jeans and t-shirts
| that became my generation's accidental dress code.
|
| (Though perhaps I'm just projecting; on the rare
| occasions I wear a suit jacket, that's what I'm
| thinking).
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| oh it was no accident. it took a lot of determined
| laziness and disregard for the casual Friday corporate
| culture BS by smarter than most people to change to
| rules.. band shirts, cargo shorts and skate shoes beats
| button downs, khakis, and leather loafers all day err
| day. got a not so casual work event to attend? bust out
| the nice grateful dead shirt, black zip up hoodie, and
| the jeans without the holes, and own it hard
| dotnet00 wrote:
| It's not really propaganda, I think it popped up mostly
| because typical finance leaders are seen as being on the
| older side. As a Patrick Boyle video on the issue had put
| it, they had barely been in finance long enough to be
| trusted with the morning coffee run.
|
| "Kid" is meant to be derogatory, highlighting the
| absurdity of traditional investors trusting openly
| irresponsible people with such little experience in such
| a heavily experience and regulation dependent field like
| finance. They behaved like spoiled children, with all the
| drugs and sex going around within the company, gaming
| while talking to investors etc. It doesn't make SBF look
| better.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Wealth is well known for extending childhood, sometimes
| until death.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| I'm learning his age in this thread and pretty surprised.
| I would have pegged him as being in his late twenties. I
| think stuff like his haircut, his general attitude, the
| league of legends thing, all contribute to making him
| seem younger than he his.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| There's not many years difference between "late 20s" and
| 32. 3 years, if we set our benchmark at 29. As someone in
| their early 30s themself, do I consider myself much more
| mature or experienced than I was a few years ago? Not
| really; my life is in a better place, but that's because
| of factors that are kind of orthogonal to maturity.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I think your criticism is unfair. I didn't know how
| biological age, and I thought he was probably in his
| early-mid 20s. Not because he's rich and white, but
| because he acts, dresses, and cuts his hair like an
| emotionally immature boy genius right out of college.
| Aeolun wrote:
| It's the label 'man' something you give to someone that
| is grown up?
|
| Friedman is many things, but 'grown up' is not something
| that I think applies.
| tptacek wrote:
| The problem with Lewis's book is that it was pretty clear it
| was an on-a-dime pivot from the original story he had planned
| to tell, about a wunderkind revolutionizing finance and
| trying to save the world at the same time.
| kolbe wrote:
| And Lewis was into the original plot less than this one.
| Lewis is clearly on board with the progressive inclination
| to say that their cause is more important than operating
| within traditional bounds on behavior. Lewis was on board
| with SBF's irresponsible approach to risk management and
| regulatory oversight, because unlike Wall Streeters taking
| excessive risk for personal gain, SBF doing it for the sake
| of "improving humanity" was just breaking an egg to make an
| omelette.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Yup, I'm really surprised by people defending Lewis.
| Don't get me wrong, I own most of his books but his 60
| minutes interview about SBF was a cringe fest.
| embwbam wrote:
| #2 is true of everyone. I'm not arguing against the kind of
| empathy you're describing, I just think we should extend it
| to all sorts of criminals. The murderer and rapist in the
| cell was screwed the moment they were born to dysfunctional,
| probably abusive parents. They have to fight hard to break
| the generational cycle.
|
| All this means is that crime and violence are a systemic
| problem. Thinking about free will as the cause of crime isn't
| useful compared to thinking about how we might support and
| treat abused children and help them take a different path.
| paulpauper wrote:
| A good biography does not cast too many moral aspersions. Its
| job is to paint a portrait of the person's life, including
| the details and quirks that shed insight into the subject's
| character. If you want affirmations of the awfulness of SBF
| and his crimes, there is no shortage of that by media and
| pundits.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Not for nuttin' but that sounds like Aspergers. Mind you, I'm
| not a trained professional (to make that diagnosis). It's
| also no excuse.
|
| That said, it makes a case for being aware of your blindspots
| (read: weaknesses). And if you think you have none... Well
| that's a blind spot. Fucking deal with it.
| greedo wrote:
| So much of the apologia for SBF is disgusting. I don't need
| to have any humility, because I don't steal from people. I
| don't throw colleagues and lovers under the bus when I get
| caught stealing. I have humility and don't believe I'm the
| savior of crypto, the unbanked, etc etc. His entire worldview
| reeks of hubris and narcissism on a level I find disgusting
| and so common in "bro" culture. The idea that he can get out
| in 25 years makes me sad with our justice system.
| bunabhucan wrote:
| Since the type of financial situation and financier Lewis
| writes about typically is amoral but also is sure that they
| are correct and proper, Lewis' continued access to future
| SBFs requires that he offload judgement to the reader.
|
| It's almost like a realtime version of "Manias, Panics and
| Crashes: A History of Financial Crises" or "This Time Is
| Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly".
| sopooneo wrote:
| No dog in this race either way, but what is Michael Lewis meant
| to have done? Is it just that people feel hist treatment of SBF
| in _Going Infinite_ was too lenient?
| caturopath wrote:
| Exactly.
| meowface wrote:
| Many people feel he whitewashed him and continued to defend
| him and minimize his misconduct long after his arrest.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > An uncle once commented about a cousin of ours that he
| demonstrated how it's possible to screw things up so badly that
| you can't possibly recover.
|
| Enough SBF talk. Let's hear some cousin stories!
| thedrbrian wrote:
| >Not true for the people in his orbit
|
| You mean the other people at FTX or Alameda who knew it was a
| scam?
| realfeel78 wrote:
| > I hope it's not true for the people in his orbit; I hope they
| can get out from under this and try to find meaning, ideally
| from repairing the harm they've done.
|
| Lol they're all very well off. Why tf are you worried about
| them, of all people in the world?
| cm2187 wrote:
| They are not mistakes, they are crimes. Anyone who worked in
| finance for more than a week can recognise their actions as
| such.
| dinobones wrote:
| You think a 25 year sentence is impossible to recover from? I
| think he can still leave a meaningful life coming out in his
| mid 50s.
| pseingatl wrote:
| Highly unlikely after spending most of his adult life in
| federal prison.
| romeros wrote:
| I don't think Caroline is a bad person. She was brilliant smart
| and focused on academics etc. She got pulled into this mess
| during the crypto mania phase.
| badrequest wrote:
| She willingly conjured up fake financial documents to suit
| Sam's needs. She had the kind of credentials that would have
| easily landed her a job at other financial institutions, she
| absolutely could have quit at any point.
| themagician wrote:
| I think you mean to say, "An uncle once commented about a
| cousin of ours that he demonstrated how it's possible to screw
| things up so badly that you can't _possibly get away with it._
| "
| bilekas wrote:
| Sorry but he didn't "screw things up" he knew (objectively)
| early on that it was a cascade. And so he did the first
| mistake, load from a sister company, using self assets. When it
| wasn't called out, of course you think "this must be okay".
|
| He's cheeky and a chancer. He is a victim of your uncles idiom.
| But that's not the crime, the crime is getting there.
| bodiekane wrote:
| It's wild that 99% of the "point" of crypto and a Bahamas-based
| exchange was to avoid all the laws around securities trading,
| banking, money transferring (anti-money laundering, taxes, etc),
| etc and yet when things go south, people still expect the
| government to come in and enforce a tiny subset of the financial
| laws they've otherwise been operating outside of.
|
| This is a weird form of "privatize the profits, socialize the
| losses" but with the benefactors being the people intentionally
| avoiding all the financial laws.
| sneak wrote:
| Yeah, I agree. This should fall under "caveat emptor". Everyone
| using unregulated exchanges (which IMO should be an option for
| everyone) should recognize that they are subject to additional
| risks (and benefits).
|
| The government shouldn't outlaw free climbing either.
|
| It's your own fault if you treat a bunch of foolish kids with
| millions of dollars the same way you would an onshore FDIC-
| insured regulated bank.
|
| Canada Bill Jones would like a word.
| i1856511 wrote:
| I agree with you as well, but this is a major example of how,
| despite this ideal, something like this can sweep up so many
| people that would otherwise never interact with a system like
| this. People who don't know who SBF is, never heard of Hacker
| News, who don't understand crypto, getting convinced to put
| money into this by, say, a younger relative. It is a real
| side-effect of this thing existing on this scale on a planet
| populated by humans.
|
| People don't go mass free-climbing because it isn't something
| you do by accident. The danger is obvious. But this danger is
| abstract, and the ease of entering this type of system can
| happen with just a few clicks from the comfort of your home.
| And getting dollar signs in your eyes is a very
| psychologically influential pull.
| bronson wrote:
| Free climbing in populated areas is outlawed (and should be).
| Try climbing your nearest skyscraper and see how it goes.
|
| Similarly, torching your money on some random shitcoin isn't
| outlawed. But when they enter populated areas, renaming
| stadiums and hiring celebrities to try to trick the masses,
| the rules change.
| GCA10 wrote:
| It's worth noting that a huge amount of the government's case
| involved evidence that SBF and team were buying lavish
| oceanfront condos, paying superstar athletes for weird TV
| commercials, etc.
|
| This was actually a tiny slice of the overall financial
| mischief at FTX. But it told well in front of a jury. And it
| reinforced a big point that prosecutors keep wanting to make,
| as publicly as possible. "Don't take the customers' money to
| live large on your thefts!" That's a message that they want
| countless bookkeepers, financial planners, etc. to hear,
| again and again.
|
| So, yes, they wanted to make an example out of SBF. The
| intricacies of FTX's full financial gyrations were sometimes
| too complicated to put in front of a jury. But the clueless
| or duped crypto-trading clients got a free bailout anyway. It
| came on the back of a prosecution that was largely intended
| to be a public slapdown of a guy committing lifestyle
| offenses with other people's money.
| trogdor wrote:
| > The intricacies of FTX's full financial gyrations were
| sometimes too complicated to put in front of jury.
|
| What evidence do you have of this? Jury trials frequently
| involve 'complicated gyrations' -- that's what expert
| testimony is for.
| GCA10 wrote:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/04/three-hours-were-all-the-
| jur...
| trogdor wrote:
| The article doesn't say that anything was too complex to
| put in front of the jury. It says that prosecutors
| presented the story as a straightforward case of fraud.
|
| >The key at trial, aside from the multiple cooperators,
| was the way in which prosecutors simplified the case and
| tried it as a garden-variety fraud instead of as a
| complex crypto scheme.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| Climbing pedant checking in. I think the type of climbing
| you're referring to is free-solo, that is climbing alone with
| no partner or protection from falling. "Free climbing" is
| climbing using only hands and feet for upward progression but
| typically involves the use of protection (gear, ropes, and a
| partner) to save you in the event of a fall. It's called
| "free" because the climber does not use metal tools, hooks,
| pitons, or bolts for upward progression like in aid, ice, or
| alpine climbing.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > people still expect the government to come in and enforce a
| tiny subset of the financial laws they've otherwise been
| operating outside of.
|
| I don't see how people ever expected the government not to
| enforce these financial laws on electronic currencies.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I agree, the average citizen would have expectation that the
| government would enforce these laws. However, I do think OP
| can be more clear that when they say "people" here, they
| don't mean your average citizen, but proponents of crypto who
| would agree that _99% of the "point" of crypto and a Bahamas-
| based exchange was to avoid all the laws_.
| ddorian43 wrote:
| The government must preserve the population even against
| themselfes.
|
| Depending how south things go, you can get assasinated inside
| an embassy or killed in plain day light with the whole world
| knowing who did it.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > This is a weird form of "privatize the profits, socialize the
| losses" but with the benefactors being the people intentionally
| avoiding all the financial laws.
|
| No, it's, as usual, the government choosing to do the wrong
| thing with your tax money, because it will be bad publicity not
| to, because votes, because power.
| loeg wrote:
| Can you elaborate on how FTX's losses were socialized here?
| dragontamer wrote:
| Its the US Government courts who are handling FTX's
| bankruptcy. So at a minimum, they are expecting the USA
| Government to figure out how to split the money / clawback
| what they can and untangle the mess of the balance sheets
| (rumor has it: a completely non-existent set of documentation
| in the case of FTX).
| loeg wrote:
| That's not really what socializing losses usually means.
| This isn't an FDIC bailout, for example.
|
| I'm really looking for a response from GP, bodiekane.
| dragontamer wrote:
| How is FDIC "bailout" socializing losses?
|
| SIVB stock collapsed and all the investors into SIVB were
| wiped out. US Government stepped in and started
| allocating the remaining assets, prioritizing the
| customers and hurting the bondholders and shareholders.
|
| IE: The shareholders / bondholders of SIVB were basically
| wiped out. The losses were privatized so to speak,
| isolated to the investor class.
| loeg wrote:
| Sure, you can quibble somewhat -- investor losses are not
| socialized. However, the FDIC insurance fund that makes
| depositors whole is ultimately funded by taxpayers.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > However, the FDIC insurance fund that makes depositors
| whole is ultimately funded by taxpayers.
|
| FDIC funds don't come from taxpayers. *Banks* pay FDIC
| insurance fees.
|
| Now you can quibble if FDIC is paid by banks, or if you
| think the "costs are passed onto the customers". But
| bank-customers are not necessarily "tax payers". At very
| least, the vast majority of my cash is in VMFXX and
| SWVXX, so I personally have very little money in
| Checking/Savings (so I barely pay any kind of "banking
| insurance" fees in practice, just enough to keep my
| checking account open).
|
| The little banking insurance that my money is going
| towards is my Checking account / Savings Account at a
| local Credit Union as well. Which is NCUA (not FDIC), so
| a totally different insurance program.
|
| -------
|
| So none of my personal wealth is actually tied to FDIC in
| any way, despite myself paying plenty of taxes all the
| time. I'm simply not a bank customer, so there's no way I
| personally am related to any FDIC related situation.
|
| And plenty other people are like me as well.
| SilasX wrote:
| "Expecting the government to bear the costs of enforcing
| the law" is not generally what is meant by "socializing the
| losses", even if you can define the expression in a way
| that that makes sense.
|
| But I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you've never
| referred to it as "socializing the losses of having
| possessions in your home" when police unravel a burglary
| operation and return the loot to its rightful owners.
| GenerWork wrote:
| I agree 100%. You want to operate outside the law? That's fine
| with me, but you gotta accept the risks. However, that means
| you have to be extra-judicious about who you operate with. I've
| found it funny to hear crypto proponents scream about how the
| government needs to prosecute him yet they'll turn right back
| around and demand that the government needs to have less
| regulation and taxation of crypto.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| If you conduct criminal activity while employed, you conducted
| criminal activity. You can't just walk into work at 8am, kill
| someone at 9am, and go home at 5. You still did the crime, and
| can be prosecuted for it.
|
| So let me rephrase your question: can a US citizen file some
| papers internationally that would permit them to conduct
| criminal activities in the US against other US citizens.
|
| The answer should not be surprising.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| That's not at all how I interpreted the comment you are
| responding to.
|
| That is, FTX's _customers_ knew, or most definitely should
| have known, that FTX (and crypto at large - that is
| essentially the primary selling point of crypto) was
| "outside the regulatory financial framework". Yet when things
| blew up and all these FTX customers lost all their money,
| there was very little reflection of "Hey, perhaps these
| financial regulations really _do_ have some purpose. ", it
| was more "I want the government to now enforce the banking
| laws that I was essentially trying to evade in the first
| place."
| rgbrenner wrote:
| SBF wasn't convicted for violating financial regulations
| (such as maintaining capital liquidity, reporting
| transactions or meeting KYC requirements). He was convicted
| of fraud and conspiracy.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yes, I know, but the type of fraud and conspiracy SBF
| committed is much easier when you're at a financial
| institution that essentially has no regulators or
| auditors keeping tabs on thing.
|
| Just read some of the reports John Ray III, the current
| "cleanup" FTX CEO, wrote shortly after he was brought in.
| It was a total clown show, with little to no
| documentation for things like huge multimillion loans to
| FTX principals. It's a lot easier to steal money when
| there is no standardized, auditable paper trail to begin
| with.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Using crypto with or as a custodian never had that standard you
| are referring to.
|
| Fascinating level of cognitive dissonance that is prevalant in
| this thread. It's a mixture of conflating competing ideas, and
| strawman arguments to discredit crypto users.
|
| Custodians are subject to liability based on their own
| citizenship, the citizenship of their clients, and the location
| of the infrastructure being used, it doesn't matter what type
| of asset is involved.
|
| Dang, we should really flag these non sequitur posts on every
| crypto thread that appears on HN, we're almost 20 years in and
| the discussion level is a large aberration lower compared to
| other tech topics on HN and other dev and enthusiast crypto
| forums still, when it should be the opposite. flagging
| practically everything would promote more substantive
| discussions by making that point to otherwise well adjusted
| people, and surfacing the things that work well within crypto
| to people that otherwise aren't exposed to that.
| robswc wrote:
| Those people are mostly hypocrites.
|
| Your complaint would be solved with less gray area.
|
| Businesses outside of the US should be able to do business with
| US citizens _without_ the consent of the US government. This
| comes with the caveat that if you, the customer, reject the
| "protection" of the US government, you are completely and
| totally SOL if things go south.
| bombcar wrote:
| Time and time again this just results in people complaining
| to the government to "fix" it once their get rich quick
| scheme blows up in their face.
| robswc wrote:
| Because time and time again the government does. While
| hypocritical its a perfectly logical step to take because
| it has proven success.
| ebiester wrote:
| The hard part is that US citizens may not know they are doing
| business outside the jurisdiction of the US government. Are
| you rejecting the protection of the US government if the
| company is doing its best to obscure that fact and the
| associated risks? How about if they are advertising in the
| US? On the superbowl?
| robswc wrote:
| If they're putting life changing amounts of money into a
| company they should be doing a modicum of research on it.
| If someone gives $100k to a Nigerian prince, I don't think
| the US government should be spending thousands of dollars
| of resources on attempting to recover that money.
|
| US citizens have never implicitly been allowed on these
| off-shore exchanges. You have to deliberately circumvent
| and lie to get an account.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I'm not aware if any cryptobros advocating to decriminalize
| fraud. Fraud is always going to be illegal. This isn't some
| regulatory compliance thing.
| Munksgaard wrote:
| I've definitely heard variants of "the market will decide
| what is fraud" from people that I know in real life.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > This is a weird form of "privatize the profits, socialize
| the losses" but with the benefactors being the people
| intentionally avoiding all the financial laws.
|
| It was SBF who put it in the hands of the US by declaring
| bankruptcy in essentially 3 days instead of playing the long
| wait game
|
| Also SBF who put it in the hands of the US by staying in the
| Bahamas and essentially waiting to be arrested (and immediately
| extradicted to the US) instead of fleeing to Cuba or Colombia
| or South America. 25ft Inflatable ribs can make that route.
|
| During the first day of crisis he could have gone to Russia too
| by private plane and pull a Snowden
| aftbit wrote:
| Let me just provide a counter-point. As an early crypto
| advocate, and someone who has lost thousands of USD to hackers
| and scammers, I did not ever expect the government to bail me
| out. As you said, the whole point of crypto was to free
| ourselves from these regulations, which means high risk high
| reward investments, and the opportunity to create truly
| innovative products. High risk means sometimes you lose your
| money, even to illegal and unethical actions.
|
| The real tragedy is that NFTs turned into digital trading cards
| and DAOs turned into pump and dump scams. The really
| interesting use cases will appear once the USDT Tether books
| are exposed and Bitcoin price plummets. Imagine NFTs attached
| to shipping containers tracking custody throughout a series of
| mutually distrusting last mile carriers. Or DAOs that allow
| people to organize for collective action with radically
| transparent finances to prevent corruption and grift.
|
| Of course I'm sure this will not go over well here on HN, where
| everyone reflexively hates crypto and loves government
| regulation. It's a bit ironic for a forum where the majority of
| members are engaged in the business of "disrupting" one or
| another traditional industry. Of course the industry of finance
| is too sacrosanct to risk such disruption. Why should Uber have
| to pay for taxi medallions though?
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| As a former eth miner and now crypto un-enthusiast, i was
| attracted to the idea of contract disruption and value
| transfers utilizing blockchain but ever since the entire
| industry has become scams, wall street and *bros, yeah I'd
| love to see it all crash and burn. Exposing tether would be a
| great start.
| FabHK wrote:
| Same here, former enthusiast now appalled by it.
|
| GP: > HN, where everyone reflexively hates crypto
|
| Yeah, no, the hate of crypto stems from a fairly well
| grounded understanding of the technology here. BTW, the
| good folks at FT Alphaville also mostly hate crypto -
| there, it stems from a good understanding of finance.
| Basically, everyone that understands the tech/finance
| intersection reasonably well hates crypto, with one
| important caveat best expressed by Upton Sinclair nearly a
| century ago:
|
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
| his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
| skybrian wrote:
| Murder is still murder even if it's a dispute between two
| criminals. I suppose the same is true of fraud. Law enforcement
| is always a socialized cost.
|
| Though, there are fines. Apparently, FTX might owe $9 billion
| in fines and penalties and $10 billion other government
| litigation [1]? The creditors might not get much at all.
|
| I don't know what the users of a cryptocurrency exchange
| expect. I think there's always some chance of a "rug-pull?"
|
| [1] https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/03/US-v-...
| adrianmonk wrote:
| That ship sailed years and years ago. You can buy Bitcoin ETFs
| from traditional investment companies (like Fidelity and
| BlackRock), and those companies aren't in it for the freedom.
|
| More to the point, the IRS has been collecting taxes on Bitcoin
| earnings since around 2014[1]. Since the government is taxing
| you, it's fair to ask the government to protect you.
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-
| taxpayers/freq...
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I'm sure the people running the Bahamas-based exchanges (such
| as Sam) wouldn't like this law to be enforced.
| easyThrowaway wrote:
| Am I the only one who feels like they basically got a patsy and
| whoever was actually running the con while he was playing LoL
| during meetings got away scot-free?
| sneak wrote:
| I don't think there is any crime whatsoever that imprisoning
| someone for more than ten years would be reasonable or
| productive.
|
| If jailing someone for a decade doesn't do it, nothing will.
|
| It seems purely vindictive at some point. The justice system
| should not be vindictive.
| FredPret wrote:
| Either the justice system is at least a little vindictive, or
| the survivors of the crime will become so much more vindictive
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Now we all get to play judge! 25 going once twice sold.
| maxclark wrote:
| SBF is 32 years old - 25 years isn't a death sentence for him
| Parole is available after 1/3 of term, realistically he won't
| serve 100% There's still a chance for him to get something out of
| his life post jail
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Parole is available after 1/3 of term
|
| IIRC it's 85%. Federal prison does not have parole, but they do
| give some credit for good behavior, up to 15%.
| tired_star_nrg wrote:
| I thought that was only in Louisiana if they pass one of
| their new "tough on crime" laws
| setgree wrote:
| I do not expect SBF to express remorse, be a model prisoner,
| etc. I expect him to royally misunderstand the rules of the
| game, which he routinely does in formal settings.
|
| This is the same man who leaked his ex's diaries while she
| was testifying against him, which led to his bail being
| revoked https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/11/technology/sam-
| bankman-fr...
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| > I expect him to royally misunderstand the rules of the
| game
|
| What a weird take on his behavior. His parents are law
| professors, he had an army of lawyers working for him at
| the time, yet he just didn't care and did what he felt
| like, knowing full well the damage it would do, because
| that was the whole point. There is no misunderstanding, it
| was just indifference.
| setgree wrote:
| SBF was not indifferent to going to jail...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/05/technology/sam-
| bankman-fr...
|
| https://nypost.com/2023/08/24/why-sam-bankman-fried-
| likely-w...
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| > it was just indifference.
|
| Absolutely spot on, and to paraphrase Tallyrand, it was
| worse than a crime, it was indifference.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| This was true for a long time, but the "First Step" act,
| passed I think in 2021, increased the good behavior credit
| maximum to 50%.
|
| Realistically then, SBF is looking at 11.5 years if he can
| stay out of trouble, which is relatively easy for white-
| collar criminals in relatively low security prisons.
|
| Federal rules still don't have parole.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| The big problem for SBF I think is that he's been shown to
| have "no filter", or no regard for accepted norms. That
| could bite him even in federal prison (and he has to go to
| a medium security, I believe, because of the length of the
| sentence).
|
| Piss off an inmate and get in an even slight altercation,
| lose some of your good behavior points.
|
| 12.5 years would be possible only if he scored 100% on good
| behavior.
| ufo wrote:
| (as described in the linked article)
| bjacobel wrote:
| He's proven repeatedly that he's incapable of abiding by
| the conditions of his parole. What makes everyone in this
| thread so sure he'll demonstrate "good behavior"?
| zer0x4d wrote:
| Let's be honest here, "good behavior" is extremely easy
| to demonstrate in prison where everyone else is
| constantly getting in fights, beating up guards, etc.
| It's not a high bar and a person like SBF should easily
| be able to do that.
| hackermailman wrote:
| There is many other ways to get written up and lose time
| credits like sharing commissary, having too many books,
| and sometimes fighting is not optional if your cellmates
| are into stupid things and drag you with them.
|
| It depends if he is sent to a USP like regular federal
| convicts or club fed minimum because of his connections.
| Typically club fed you can only get through a plea
| bargain like Madoff or through years of good time
| credits.
| ddorian43 wrote:
| IIRC it was federal, where you need to do 2/3, no?
| tempsy wrote:
| 85%
| neaden wrote:
| 85%, not 2/3.
| vadansky wrote:
| It's been posted a thousand times already, there is no parole
| for federal sentences.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| There is, however, pardons.
|
| He'll probably need to wait about 2-4 terms, but eventually
| the bribery ... uh ... mercy will go through.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| so what would the presidents excuse be? "I feel he
| shouldn't get 25, and he's free to go"? Or "his crime
| wasn't that bad"? Just wondering
| eadmund wrote:
| The pardon power is constitutionally absolute and
| unreviewable -- the president can pardon for any reason,
| or none. Some people dislike that, but I personally like
| it, because it acts as an ultimate safety valve on the
| state's ability to persecute an individual.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The question is more "why would the President self-
| immolate themselves politically for someone who appears
| to have minimal actual political capital, especially now
| that they're broke?"
| toast0 wrote:
| Presidents generally don't suffer much from pardoning the
| wrong person.
|
| There's maybe one President that didn't get elected
| because of his use of the pardon. But then, Ford wasn't
| elected President or Vice President before he pardoned
| Nixon either.
|
| Otherwise, I'm not aware of a pardon so controversial
| that it became a major campaign issue. And for a second
| term President, there's not really any downside.
| rocqua wrote:
| The fact that no one ever lodt an election because of a
| stupid pardon could equally be explained by no really
| stupid pardons having happened.
| gorbachev wrote:
| But they don't.
|
| Because the pattern they usually follow is to pardon the
| questionable cases (personal friends, people with
| financial ties to the President, etc.) just before they
| go out of office.
| bena wrote:
| The "state" being the federal government in this case and
| not any individual state. The president cannot pardon
| state-level offenses, that is at the discretion of that
| state.
| eadmund wrote:
| Yup! I probably should have capitalised it as 'State' to
| prevent confusion.
| krapp wrote:
| And in exchange for this "safety valve" you get the
| potential for absolute and unreviewable corruption by
| giving one person the authority to arbitrarily override
| the judicial branch at will. And to do the same with the
| legislative branch through executive order.
|
| If America mistrusts government so much that it wants the
| President to be a de facto monarch, it should just drop
| the pretense at being a republic and have a monarchy
| already. Or make the oligarchy official and elect a CEO
| in chief. At least then there's only one head for the CIA
| to put a bullet into.
| taco_emoji wrote:
| Yeah man, everybody knows this. The question is why would
| any president BOTHER pardoning SBF? It's an idiotic move.
| Literally no one is defending SBF besides his lawyers
| justinator wrote:
| There is a more than 0% chance we will re-elect a man
| that has shown that he does not mind partaking in
| incredibly corrupt business practices out in the open. We
| don't even know if they would pardon themselves for
| crimes and has argued that they should have full immunity
| to do anything, including harming his adversaries. This
| person would not need an excuse to do anything.
| basil-rash wrote:
| Much more likely the individual for whom he was a top
| donor than his opponent.
|
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/02/sam-bankman-
| fried-bi...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| FTX was attempting to buy influence on both sides of the
| aisle.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/20/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-
| allies...
|
| > Ryan Salame, who was the CEO of FTX's digital markets
| division, donated millions of dollars to Republican
| political action committees and affiliated "dark money"
| groups with funds from FTX's affiliated hedge fund,
| Alameda Research, according to the documents. Salame
| pleaded guilty last month to federal campaign finance and
| money-transmitting crimes. Caroline Ellison, who ran
| Alameda and once dated Bankman-Fried, also gave millions
| to right-leaning nonprofit groups, the documents say.
|
| > Bankman-Fried donated $10 million to a [Mitch]
| McConnell-linked group named One Nation in August 2022,
| according to the evidence filed by prosecutors. The money
| came directly from an Alameda Research account,
| prosecutors said.
|
| There's little reason to believe any of that influence
| remains now that he's broke.
| basil-rash wrote:
| He donated far more to liberals and it's a well known.
| Nobody on the right wants to see him walk free.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://globalnews.ca/news/9946242/ryan-salame-ftx-
| political...
|
| > The purpose of those donations, he said, was to fund
| political initiatives supported by Bankman-Fried. In a
| criminal complaint unsealed Thursday, prosecutors said
| they had obtained private messages in which Salame wrote
| that Bankman-Fried wanted to support politicians in both
| parties who were "pro crypto," while working to get "anti
| crypto" lawmakers out of office.
|
| https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/09/07/ex-ftx-
| executive-...
|
| > Salame doled out more than $24 million to Republican
| political candidates during his time at FTX, and he was
| the 11th largest individual U.S. political donor in 2022
| according to OpenSecrets.org. In a court filing last
| month, prosecutors shared "private messages" from Salame
| that purport to show him explaining how he was used as a
| straw donor to secretly funnel money from FTX and
| Bankman-Fried.
|
| https://qz.com/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-republicans-
| democrats-m...
|
| > In one interview last November, Bankman-Fried admitted
| to donating roughly equal amounts to Democrats and
| Republicans but made sure that "all my Republican
| donations were dark." He said he did this because he felt
| the press had a tendency to "freak" when donations were
| made to the Grand Old Party (GOP). At the 2022 midterm
| campaign funding cycle, he said he may have been the
| "second or third biggest" GOP donor.
|
| Nobody on the _left_ wants to see him walk free, either.
| His remaining political capital is nill. Politicians only
| care about rich donors if they _remain_ rich donors.
| basil-rash wrote:
| If you want to believe a known fraudster saying "oh yeah
| I totally donated to the winning side, but I didn't tell
| anyone", that's on you. But it doesn't change the fact
| that Trump is very unlikely to pardon someone who
| publically donated to his opponent, and _maybe_ privately
| donated to some random GOP members he refers to as "the
| swamp". And that's only if we take as fact some guys "oh
| yeah I used stolen money to make political donations, but
| I was just following orders" statement as uttered in a
| trial.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > If you want to believe a known fraudster saying "oh
| yeah I totally donated to the winning side, but I didn't
| tell anyone", that's on you.
|
| Salame has pled guilty to this, and his tens of millions
| in donations are entirely in the public record.
| https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-
| lookup/results?name=Ryan+S...
| basil-rash wrote:
| That's not SBF. But perhaps Salame will be pardoned by
| Trump, sure. If any of those PACs supported trump.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > That's not SBF.
|
| No shit. If you scroll up, I assert "FTX was attempting
| to buy influence on both sides of the aisle" and mention
| Salame numerous times. Please don't blame me for a lack
| of reading comprehension on your part.
|
| SBF's texts to Salame about all this were obtained by
| prosecutors, garnering a guilty plea. I've presented a
| number of links to reputable sources, to which your
| replies amount to "nuh uh", so I think I'm out.
| basil-rash wrote:
| You've yet to produce a single bit of evidence supporting
| the claim that Trump is somehow more likely to pardon him
| than Biden, which if you could read you'd know is what I
| contested.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| > He donated far more to liberals
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/sam-
| bankma...
|
| "He was lauded for his major donations to Democrats, but
| now he says he was secretly giving to Republicans in
| roughly equal measure."
| basil-rash wrote:
| "Convicted fraudster makes unsubstantiated claims,
| internet cites them as concrete evidence. More at 6."
| michaelt wrote:
| If you're cynical enough to believe donating cash to
| politicians directly buys pardons - then surely you're
| _also_ cynical enough to realise the politician doesn 't
| have to uphold their end of the bargain.
|
| It's not like SBF is going to be making any big future
| donations.
|
| Donors hoping for favours know donations only buy so
| much; the politician takes the money in order to improve
| their chances of getting elected. If you want a favour
| which noticeably _reduces_ their chance of getting re-
| elected - you won 't get it.
| basil-rash wrote:
| Ok and this makes Trump more likely to pardon him than
| Biden how?
| notatoad wrote:
| there doesn't need to be an excuse, and there frequently
| isn't. "i'm the president and i can do this" is the only
| excuse necessary
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| They don't need an excuse
| throwaway74432 wrote:
| They address this in the article. He can serve as little as
| 12.5 years without any form of parole.
| bsuvc wrote:
| Not "parole" but his sentence can be reduced.
|
| From the article:
|
| > There is no possibility of parole in federal criminal
| cases, but Bankman-Fried can still shave time off his 25-year
| sentence with good behavior.
|
| > "SBF may serve as little as 12.5 years, if he gets all of
| the jailhouse credit available to him," Mitchell Epner, a
| former federal prosecutor, told CNN.
|
| > Federal prisoners generally can earn up to 54 days of time
| credit a year for good behavior, which could result in an
| approximately 15% reduction.
|
| > Since 2018, however, nonviolent federal inmates can reduce
| their sentence by as much as 50% under prison reform
| legislation known as the First Step Act.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Since 2018, however, nonviolent federal inmates_
|
| I'd be in favour of amending the law to expand to cover
| fraud and corruption. Those are crimes that corrode social
| trust in a way that is analogous to challenging the state's
| monopoly on violence. (And is separate from _e.g._ theft.)
| daveguy wrote:
| "...the state's monopoly on violence" does not help your
| argument.
|
| Otherwise, I agree.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| I wonder if there's a name for this rhetorical device:
| like casually insert shocking statements about atrocities
| committed by those in power. Chomsky uses it extensively.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| It's the Weberian definition of a state [1]. When non-
| state actors freely use violence to further their aims,
| we call it a failed state.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
| airstrike wrote:
| no single crime, violent or not, really challenges the
| state's monopoly on violence
| caskstrength wrote:
| Prison should be to rehabilitate (i.e. ensure that
| convict doesn't re-offend after they are released) as
| opposed to just punish and ruin people lives for their
| mistakes for the sake of making random commenters on
| internet feel good. Also, consider that keeping people in
| prison is very expensive and is not an optimal way for
| the state to spend you tax money IMO.
| wpietri wrote:
| Well, sort of. Prison should be a) to rehabilitate, and
| b) keep the unrehabilitated from doing harm. But the
| American prison system is not really interested in the
| first bit. I'd like to see a general change here, but
| SBF, given his entirely unrecalcitrant behavior, is among
| the worst people to make the argument with.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Punishment is also useful to society, in that a sentence
| that is considered grossly insufficient could prompt
| victims to resort to violence.
| bsuvc wrote:
| > as opposed to just punish and ruin people lives for
| their mistakes for the sake of making random commenters
| on internet feel good
|
| That is a strawman.
|
| Besides (potentially) rehabilitation, prison serves to
| protect the populace from dangerous people who would harm
| others and as a deterrent to others who can see what
| punishment they might get if they do something illegal.
|
| I am not claiming prison does a good job of these things,
| just that its goal is not to "ruin people's lives".
| caskstrength wrote:
| > Besides (potentially) rehabilitation, prison serves to
| protect the populace from dangerous people who would harm
| others and as a deterrent to others who can see what
| punishment they might get if they do something illegal.
|
| It is not like he will be getting away with a slap on the
| wrist one way or another. I just don't see more years in
| prison past some reasonable threshold as a good
| deterrent.
|
| > I am not claiming prison does a good job of these
| things, just that its goal is not to "ruin people's
| lives".
|
| The purpose of a system is what it does.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| How can you rehabilitee someone like him? It can work
| even with violent criminals, whose crimes was strongly
| related to the circumstances they were in. A guy like him
| who stole billions? What could anyone ever do to convince
| him to not commit fraud again if given the opportunity...
| caskstrength wrote:
| > What could anyone ever do to convince him to not commit
| fraud again if given the opportunity...
|
| IMO 10 years in prison should be more than enough to
| discourage SBF from repeating it. And if it is not
| enough, then 30 years won't be enough either...
| thinkerswell wrote:
| Biden can also pardon him on his way out.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| why would Biden do that? plenty of his guys got burned by
| crypto, and the democratic donations are soaring due to
| DJT's continued proto-fascistic behavior, not via SBF or
| his family's efforts.
|
| it's like saying Trump could pardon him on the way in --
| and might
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > it's like saying Trump could pardon him on the way in
|
| That is more likely than a Biden pardon: Trump in his
| first term was big on pardoning both financial criminals
| and people involved in political corruption on both sides
| of the aisle, and SBF is both a financial criminal and
| someone involved in political corruption (on both sides
| of the aisle, even), so he is something of an ideal Trump
| pardon candidate.
| harambae wrote:
| > That is more likely than a Biden pardon
|
| Since SBF publicly despised Trump, donated vast sum to
| his opponents, and tried to architect Trump not being
| president I'd say that's less likely.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/sbf-wanted-tom-brady-to-
| run-...
| xdavidliu wrote:
| I read in the Michael Lewis book that at one point SBF
| was floating the idea of paying Trump not to run, and
| asked around for what a reasonable number would be, and
| figured it would be around 50 billion
| carom wrote:
| He was one of Biden's biggest donors and generally
| supports democrats.
|
| >Bankman-Fried's largest donations were $27 million to
| his own super PAC, which supported Democratic candidates,
| and $6 million to a PAC that helps elect Democrats to the
| U.S. House. Bankman-Fried also gave the maximum $5,800
| each to support dozens of candidates, mostly Democrats.
|
| >President Joe Biden's 2020 run for president was one of
| the major beneficiaries of Bankman-Fried's donations.
| Bankman-Fried gave $5 million to a PAC that supported
| President Joe Biden's 2020 campaign, $50,000 to Biden
| Victory Fund, and $2,800 directly to Biden for President.
|
| 1. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/12/1
| 6/ftx-...
| philwelch wrote:
| Google Marc Rich. Politicians take care of the people who
| take care of them.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Or Charles Kushner or Paul Manafort or Roger Stone or
| Conrad Black or Steve Bannon or Elliott Broidy..
| maxclark wrote:
| I'm not versed in this at all. What is the DOJ's US Parole
| Commission?
|
| https://www.justice.gov/uspc
|
| "The mission of the U.S. Parole Commission is to promote
| public safety and strive for justice and fairness in the
| exercise of its authority to release and revoke offenders
| under its jurisdiction."
| mikeyouse wrote:
| They changed the law in 1984 - but if you were sentenced to
| prison before that, you can still be paroled..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_parole_in_the_United_
| S...
| danpalmer wrote:
| A cushy job as a guest speaker at fancy dinners for finance
| people perhaps?
| tempsy wrote:
| There's no parole in federal cases
| carabiner wrote:
| He'll be out around 2040:
| https://x.com/wagieeacc/status/1768798879959400776?s=46&t=N5...
|
| Shkreli far and away has been providing the most informed
| analysis of this case. He trashed the letters to the judge from
| SBF's parents, then Judge Kaplan went on to raise the exact
| points Shkreli said he would.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Shkreli is a smart guy that also went through that, so yeah,
| I was also happily following his commentary of this.
| tempsy wrote:
| That's an old tweet from 2 weeks ago.
| carabiner wrote:
| And everything he said still applies.
| tempsy wrote:
| well no because his 2040 prediction assumed 20 years not
| 25
| notreallyauser wrote:
| That was based on a sentence of 20 and he got 25 -- so closer
| to 2044, I guess.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > 25 years isn't a death sentence for him Parole is available
| after 1/3 of term, realistically he won't serve 100%
|
| Federal prison does not have parole. Only good behavior
| options. But that could reduce it to 12.5, if he hits all
| behavior targets.
| jojo100 wrote:
| What a travesty of American justice. He'll be out in 12-13
| years and will jet off to the mansion he bought for his parents
| in the Bahamas with his customer's money. You just know the
| smug felon has a huge BC wallet Caroline is hiding for him.
| He's directly responsible for the 3+ suicides that have
| happened due to his deception and theft but he'll live in
| luxury for his silver and golden days.
|
| And people are on here arguing that this sentence is too long.
| How laughable.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I love HN, it's one of the few places you can get reasoned
| conversation online.
|
| But this is one of those subjects where it gets weird.
|
| SBF was directly responsible for millions, if not billions, of
| direct monetary loss to identified individuals. Yet the top
| comments on HN are all discussing whether incarceration is
| retribution, spite, deterrence, or rehabilition.
|
| The USA incarcerates people for tiny financial damages at a
| higher rate than anywhere else in the world. $20 of theft? 5
| years away, no problem. $1 billion: well we should consider what
| we're trying to achieve here...
|
| If the USA is going to be consistent in sentencing then just
| fucking kill him.
|
| Or reconsider and free the thousands of black dudes serving
| ridiculous sentences for minor crimes.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| > $20 of theft? 5 years away
|
| Who in this day and age is going to jail for half a decade
| because they snuck a 20 dollar bill out of the cash register
| when no one was looking?
|
| There are almost always violent actions involved that are
| conveniently glossed over whenever someone bemoans "life in
| prison for stealing a loaf of bread!"
| shuckles wrote:
| Nobody. Federal prisoners are almost entirely convicted of
| serious violent crime.
| monocasa wrote:
| Which is why you saw this with relatively local and state
| level prosecutions from 90s tough on crime policies like
| three strikes laws.
| tredre3 wrote:
| I've noticed the same trend. HN (as a collective) doesn't
| believe in punishing white-collar crimes with incarceration. I
| guess it hits too close to home.
| anon291 wrote:
| Realistically, I mainly believe in punishing violent crimes
| with incarceration. Most white collar criminals could be
| sufficiently contained with house arrest and restrictions on
| visits/internet access/etc. Just realistically, you can keep
| a financier in an apartment they pay for, but probably not a
| good idea for someone who's murdered and burglared.
| thuuuomas wrote:
| It's simple - everyone here arguing the merits of a lower
| sentence identifies with Sam.
| anon291 wrote:
| Violent crime is ultimately more than just monetary damages.
|
| Like realistically, sbf can just be kept in a fenced compound.
| He's shown no great violent urge. House arrest would probably
| serve the same purpose of removing him from the population for
| X years.
|
| Someone breaking into a building is a lot different. They need
| more security and cause more chaos.
| itscodingtime wrote:
| It's almost night and day compared to when Bob Lee was murdered
| and they thought vagrant or some other (insert stereotype here)
| was the culprit. Remember how tough on crime this crowd was
| then ? Remember the silence and lack of thought pieces when it
| turned out to be someone he knew instead of some brown person
| or drug addict ?
| theragra wrote:
| Only one person was sentenced in us for 2008 crisis. So,
| consistent, as in big financial crimes are not punished,
| because criminals are very close to the people on top.
| 9front wrote:
| SBF was a top political donor in Washington. I expect a pardon by
| the end of this year.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I think that would be a hugely unpopular move, for essentially
| no benefit (he doesn't have any more money to donate), and
| would be one hell of an unforced error on the part of the
| democratic campaign.
| politician wrote:
| It's an election year for a first term incumbent, there is no
| chance of a pardon.
| jes5199 wrote:
| he _was_ a donor. he's not likely to be a donor in the future.
| so why bother?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Well, he gave just as much to the other side, why would the
| sitting president be inclined to pardon him as some kind of
| favor? _Especially_ in an election year. That would be
| political suicide. Won 't happen. He has a much better shot if
| there is a new guy in the hot seat in 2025. But even then I'd
| say it's pretty remote.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I can't believe how many people here are defending him to be
| honest
| gjvc wrote:
| HN walks the fine line between "entrepreneurship" and crime
| (whatever they can get away with), so no surprise, really
| k8svet wrote:
| I met a nice Israeli filmography couple (somewhat known in
| Israel, I think) in Tulum last summer. After conducting important
| business, they were telling me about how they were vacating on
| the back of a nice windfall -- they got paid upfront for an
| editting/production job which was unprecedented and generous.
| Implications of lots of money and some "image rehabilitation".
| They're acting a bit coy about it, and I'm feeling perfectly fine
| to be nosy.
|
| So they ask if I've ever heard of "S.B.F.". After my mouth fell
| open and I gasped for air a few times, and demanded some proof, I
| got to see a not-public interview of SBF. Nothing particularly
| juicy, but still. I'm a nerd and I love gossip.
|
| Apropos of nothing, other than the world is small, and weird; I
| guess.
| ipnon wrote:
| I propose the Bankman-Fried number: how many people you
| personally know who got rekt in the crypto crash of November
| 2022.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I had somewhere between $10k and $20k in FTX. Took it all out
| when CZ started tweeting
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Are they gonna claw it back in bankruptcy?
| tim333 wrote:
| Nah - doesn't work like that. I had about $20k deposited
| as USDT and will probably get it back from the receivers.
| It's rough on people who had bitcoin with FTX though who
| will only get what it was worth back then ~17k, rather
| than what it goes for now.
| KenArrari wrote:
| Was it nas-daily?
|
| I remember even before he got arrested it seemed bizarre how
| much PR there was about him. Allegedly it was organic but I'm
| sure he was paying for a lot of it in anticipation of when he
| got caught.
|
| Lots of puff pieces came out after his arrest as well which
| also seemed bizarrely forced.
| briankelly wrote:
| Tulum seems so greasy. I want to see it anyway.
| k8svet wrote:
| Tulum is _fine_ but I would not ever go again if my friend
| didn 't live there. It's just the intersection of nacros,
| tourism, cancun spillover, hella overpriced beach clubs.
| Probably my least favorite place I've been in Mexico, tbh.
| briankelly wrote:
| I think it's the hippie aesthetic some of the younger
| people there have at total odds with its reality that
| amuses me. Truly more interested in the other parts of the
| Yucatan though - looks gorgeous.
| layer8 wrote:
| From the article, SBF will likely be out in 2036, at the age of
| 45. There's a good chance he'll get himself into shenanigans
| again, if not already from inside prison.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Or he could end up like Michael Milken, who went to jail for
| securities fraud but became known as a philanthropist. As
| Gandalf once said to Frodo, Pity? It's a pity
| that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some
| that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not
| be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the
| very wise cannot see all ends. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7374580-frodo-it-s-a-
| pity-b...
| jonathankoren wrote:
| A philanthropist with the money he stole? His entire fortune
| is fruit of the poisoned tree. Milken is trash. He was in the
| 80s, and he is trash in the 20s.
|
| No amount of philanthropy washing can erase the damage his
| done.
|
| Fuck that guy.
| digging wrote:
| I mean, the damage is done. Let's not condemn him for at
| least doing good _now_. Would you rather he did nothing at
| all?
| jerlam wrote:
| Milken spent less than two years in prison, and was fined
| $600 million.
|
| SBF has been sentenced for 25 years, and fined $11 billion.
| Pretty big difference - how much money does he have left?
| jonathankoren wrote:
| I honestly don't know what your point is. The topic being
| debated, "Is Michael Milken good?"
| __loam wrote:
| I'm not broadly aware of what Milken did but it sounds
| like he paid the price for his crimes and served his
| sentence. If he's rejoined society and has had a positive
| social impact, I'd call that a win.
| papichulo2023 wrote:
| Isnt 11bns after all his assets being seized?
| bitcharmer wrote:
| You can be sure there's a healthy reserve put aside in
| his parents' name.
| nradov wrote:
| Michael Milken got a raw deal. His actual criminal offenses
| only resulted in $318K of damages and were largely related to
| facilitating tax fraud by others. He was a piker compared to
| SBF. The judge in Milken's case gave him an unusually harsh
| sentence explicitly as a deterrent to others; I suspect it
| would have actually been _lower_ under current federal
| sentencing guidelines.
|
| https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-
| library/abstracts/highly-c...
| justinator wrote:
| I do enjoy the idea that he'll create a prison super economy
| based on promissory notes for ramen packets and cigarettes that
| are tracked in some sort of hand-written block chain kept under
| their bunk bed and shared between toilet water pipes.
|
| Or maybe he'll just start making yogurt.
|
| https://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/magazine/yoghurt-mafia-unexp...
| bunabhucan wrote:
| US prison currency is mack:
|
| https://cointelegraph.com/news/sam-bankman-fried-mackerel-
| fi...
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| I think there's a good chance his tendencies to arrogance and
| mendacity will get him killed in prison.
| gizajob wrote:
| Maybe not killed but pummelled on the regular. He might be
| cut out for crypto fraud but he's definitely not going to be
| cut out for such a long stretch in a "survival of the
| fittest" environment. Any skills he has are worse than
| useless inside.
| SnorkelTan wrote:
| Nonviolent offenders don't rub elbows with convicted
| murderers. It's still prison time but I doubt his life will
| be in jeopardy. None of the people in that security level
| would risk the privileges.
| gizmo wrote:
| It also means his co-conspirators will get a much lesser
| sentence (if any). Kind of disappointing that nobody else will
| see the inside of a prison cell. Ellison, Wang, Singh and SBF's
| parents all deserve lengthy sentences.
| timbo1642 wrote:
| He'll do about 30% or less. Maybe they'll say jails are full
| again and release most the inmates like they did during covid.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| These are federal charges, not state. In the federal prison
| system, you do almost all your time, with just a small
| percentage knocked off the end of your sentence if you
| maintain consistent good behavior. State justice systems do
| have a tendency to let prisoners out early for various
| different reasons but when you get a federal sentence, you're
| serving almost all of it.
| queuebert wrote:
| Like hackers, I wonder if he'll be restricted from using a
| computer.
| huytersd wrote:
| I hope he gets pardoned. Trump pardoned some straight vermin
| and I just don't feel all that much hate towards SBF (I did
| lose a few thousand). I have to say I don't see Biden being so
| blatantly "teamist" though I wish he would.
| neilv wrote:
| There's still a lot more 'crypto' scammers to go.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Crypto doesn't need quotes
| segasaturn wrote:
| I've seen people in the cryptography space use airquotes when
| referring to cryptocurrency to show their contempt for what
| they see as a scammy riff on their very serious and important
| work.
| neilv wrote:
| Before the Bitcoin et al. scamming, some people said "crypto"
| to abbreviate terms like _cryptography_ and _cryptographic
| protocol_. Scammer bros appropriated "crypto", and made it
| dirty.
| FabHK wrote:
| True; unfortunately, that battle is lost.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| Tether.
| pierat wrote:
| This type of punishment is actually pretty terrible for all
| parties.
|
| I could easily see a different, harsher, but more fair
| punishment...
|
| 1. All assets are sold off to pay victims
|
| 2. Prison for a few years. 5?
|
| 3. can only work jobs where nobody reports to them (no
| management, C levels, etc). Also cannot make companies.
|
| 4. Cannot own more than 2 properties, one of which is his place
| of residence.
|
| 5. Cannot rent out any property.
|
| 6. 25% of what he makes goes into restitution for the rest of his
| life.
|
| 7. Investments into any wealth instrument is to be confiscated,
| with exception to a 401k.
|
| Basically, this person cannot be trusted with making money other
| than by working for someone else. This still allows him to make a
| life, but severely limits the similar path he used to defraud
| people.
|
| Sending this guy to prison for 25 years is a waste for everyone
| involved.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _still allows him to make a life, but severely limits the
| similar path he used to defraud people_
|
| Do you remember the trial? The man can't follow rules. You
| would be wasting the court every microsecond because Sam
| decides he doesn't understand what two properties or renting
| technically means.
| lfkdev wrote:
| True. But americans love to waste their tax money and put
| harmless (in a physical violence sense) people like him behind
| bars instead of doing something useful for society. In 10 years
| he'll be free and start the next scam with the couple of
| millions he's probably hiding somewhere.
| FabHK wrote:
| That's quite a definition of harmless you have there.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| >Sending this guy to prison for 25 years is a waste for
| everyone involved.
|
| Agreed. 10 years is pretty much a life sentence already; who is
| the same person that they were a decade ago? Sentences beyond
| 10 years are not instructive but punitive and sadistic: if
| you're putting people in cages for that long then justice would
| be better served to banish. International waters? Make an
| interior Australia on federal lands over a few States: walled
| off with full security entry/exit points?
|
| Not only is taking so many years equivalent to partial death,
| without the normalcies prison strips from its victims (yes
| America's prisoners are victims like the Brit's victims of
| hang-em for everything were still victims) it effectively kills
| off the family lines of these people because only a few states
| have conjugal visits. Most prisoners in the US are in enforced
| inceldom. If you argue crime is genetic and it's a good thing
| they are prevented from reproducing, then you just contravened
| civils rights arguments against that.
|
| As bad as the American ones are, Japan treats you worse. I got
| to hear my internet friend and troll JS on voice chat after
| Japan let him out of jail, what he said completely disabused me
| of any interest in visiting that place. It's soft torture not
| by exposure to appaling conditions (US), but by excruciating
| and consistent techniques of 'light' torture employed, such as
| only being able to sit/kneal and lay in two positions almost
| every bit of all 24-hour periods and being unable to
| communicate with anybody. It is a mental solitary confinement,
| and if I witnessed some parent treat even an "unruly child" the
| way the Japanese system treats those in their custody, I would
| see pink mist/red cave and be sent off to prison for a long
| time myself.
|
| Zimbardo's prison experiment decades ago should have indicated
| to us that we are experiencing dozens of holocaust-tier human
| rights crises (sans the mass deaths) every year these things
| continue to operate in current form.
|
| If you can't treat them as human in prison (partial autonomy,
| dignity), then you are saying they are criminally insane. If
| they are insane, they need to be in an assylum and not a
| dungeon (assylums had {and may still have [idk]} their own
| serious issues too). Prison should never be punitive, that is
| partially killing someone to punish them. Deterrence Theory is
| century old bunk we tell ourselves so we don't feel bad for
| Uncle Ned possibly being equivalent to a camp guard in a
| massive human rights quagmire made trying to address a
| millennia-old problem.
|
| Wow, this turned into a rant! Time to smack submit, push the
| hemorrhoid back up, flush, and be done! :^)
| daedrdev wrote:
| He will serve 12.5 unless he is truly a dumbass though good
| behavior for nonviolent crime.
|
| Don't forget he has ruined many peoples lives, and probably
| driven quite a few to kill themselves.
| soerxpso wrote:
| He's well-connected within the easiest industry ever to launder
| money in. Realistically, after the 5 years he'd get a job
| consulting for a buddy at the heart of some other
| cryptocurrency exchange, and from that position he would find a
| lot of scummy ways to make sidemoney under the table, none of
| which would go to his victims, since it would all be hidden. He
| doesn't need to have his own direct reports if he has the ear
| of someone else who does.
|
| Even if he does everything above-board, the absolute most he
| could expect to make legally from a job that's not a grift and
| has no direct reports would be ~500K/yr. Over 60 years, that
| would mean his victims get back $30,000,000, or about 0.3% of
| what he stole.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| 10 years is a life sentence, anything more is satisfying
| bloodlust in voters to keep the magick trick of civilization
| afloat.
|
| This human impulse is why aliens don't visit. We're too barbaric
| to ourselves! xD
| s3r3nity wrote:
| Actions have consequences.
|
| Billions of dollars of fraud that took years and hundreds of
| thousands of dollars in lawyer fees to prove should have a
| sentence that is a strong deterrent to future crime
| probabilities.
| rustcleaner wrote:
| The next SBF will not think about SBF even if he knows about
| SBF. Deterrence Theory is back-justification to make yourself
| feel good about the crime that is going to happen to SBF for
| a quarter century just like millions of others today. This
| isn't living in a Motel 6 like apartment working at an Amazon
| warehouse for 25 years never making enough to save a dime
| despite putting in 50+ hours on average, with no economic
| hope of escape (a hell by most people's standards here); this
| is locking him up like an animal in abysmal conditions that
| would never pass public scrutiny if we designed zoo
| enclosures as such!
|
| If we continue to run prisons the way we do in America, all
| sentencing needs to go through a strong base log function,
| and be strictly concurrent.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| > Deterrence Theory is back-justification to make yourself
| feel good
|
| Retribution is a valid component of justice.[1]
|
| [1] Stolen from another commenter above
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _10 years is a life sentence, anything more is satisfying
| bloodlust_
|
| Retribution is a valid component of justice. But I'd argue, in
| the case of a fraudster, incapacitation is of equal concern.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| Lol. "My useful life is over," he says. As if there was anything
| useful about setting up a fraudulent exchange to steal billions
| of dollars so he could go play animal house with Caroline in his
| penthouse.
| shombaboor wrote:
| this is like a lot of tech "philanthropists" they're always
| ABOUT to do something nice. There's nothing ever stopping them
| from doing some volunteer work. But first the millions must be
| made. It's like borrowing good will on credit that's never paid
| back.
| theragra wrote:
| Regardless of fraud, he donated a lot of money, some to noble
| causes. This is useful, even of it was not his money.
| daxaxelrod wrote:
| I'd be upset if my bank used my checking account to fund
| Alzheimer's research.
| imacomputer wrote:
| Sure, tell that to all the people who were bankrupted because
| of him.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| SBFs dream scenario: With the emergence of ASI which causes an
| era of super abundance and without a need for economics, everyone
| forgives the financial crime and SBF goes free.
| chihuahua wrote:
| Then he immediately starts an even bigger scheme to destroy
| that super abundance, based on some crazy "effective altruism"
| idea that it's somehow even better for 100 billion people who
| may exist in the future.
| dvektor wrote:
| "Wow jeez! 'Only' ten years! That's not so bad, I think I could
| live with that, now I think I'm gonna go pull a huge scam! But
| damn, if he would have got 20 or 25 years, then I'd have to
| reconsider my carefully thought out decision to commit fraud" --
| Nobody, Ever.
|
| To most people, just the act of losing everything you have,
| losing your ability to provide for your family or yourself.
| Losing your reputation, your career and future career
| opportunities, is enough to deter them. Whether a crime will give
| you 10 years or 20 years, most people consider that to be so
| long, that it's more or less all the same. It feels like an
| eternity, and it feels like your life is over. So if they are
| going to take a risk, or make a stupid decision, then they are
| going to do it regardless. Not because they accept the risk, but
| because nobody ever believes they are ever going to get caught.
| They consider that as "my life is over anyway". And usually, it
| is. That's not the point of prison. If you are ever going to let
| people out, why not focus on making sure they don't come back.
| Punishing people by throwing them in cages with worse people,
| absolutely does not work. (note: I am speaking mostly about non-
| violent crimes, which make up 72% of the federal system)
| sp332 wrote:
| This was directly addressed by the judge during the sentencing,
| so you might be interested in finding a recording or
| transcript.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Prison is a way to get cheap labor, and some prisons are run by
| publicly traded companies.
|
| Not the best sources but you get the point.
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...
| 2. https://www.dailyo.in/wallet/heard-of-prison-stocks-here-
| are...
| codedokode wrote:
| To be honest, isn't 25 years too much? He didn't beat or kill
| anyone, he simply found dumb people and took little of their
| money. It is not like he was robbing poor people by increasing
| their utilities bill every year or raising rent. Why is such a
| small, non-violent crime so severely punished? Of course he
| deserves a punishment but maybe not that much?
| notatoad wrote:
| > small
|
| in what world is stealing ~$8bn a "small" crime?
| kstrauser wrote:
| "Stole" is the word you're looking for. He stole their money.
| Lots of it.
| judah wrote:
| > It is not like he was robbing poor people
|
| A crime is not less of a crime based on the economic status of
| the victims. And raising rent or utilities is not a crime.
| usefulcat wrote:
| If steal $1000 from you, how much time should I serve? A year?
|
| If I steal $1000 each from _thousands_ of people, how much time
| should I serve then?
| codedokode wrote:
| If you make a scammy-looking cryptoexchange and promise I
| will get rich if I invest, you won't be able to steal a
| single cent. Only dumb people can believe that you can buy
| cryptocurrency and get rich without doing nothing.
| nabla9 wrote:
| As the article says, it sends important message. And he does
| not serve 25 years.
|
| I don't know how it is the US, but in Finland people get
| relatively longer sentences for financial crimes because long
| sentences have inhibitory effect for money crimes.
|
| Most violent crimes happen without premeditation by people
| without impulse control and longer sentences don't actually
| reduce crime. White collar criminals weigh the costs and
| benefits and do their crimes in cold blood after long time of
| planning.
| mrbonner wrote:
| I really don't understand the severity of criminal justice system
| punishment. SBF got sentenced to 25 years for a white collar
| financial crime while a guy in my hometown hit and killed 2
| people, while DUI and ran over 100mph on a local street with
| 35mph limit got 26 months sentence forb2 vehicular homicide.
| survirtual wrote:
| The money he stole and defrauded is lifetimes worth. Lifetimes
| of economics stolen from people. Lifetimes of stresses caused
| on people because of what he stole. How many people may have
| ended their lives because they lost everything? How many
| silenced voices are there in pain because of his fraud?
|
| White collar criminals can and should be likened to serial
| killers in the severity of their crimes. They spread invisible
| miseries indiscriminately, near entirely without justice or
| recognition. I am glad one of them is finally being properly
| punished.
| bena wrote:
| Intent has a lot to do with it.
|
| SBF operated with forethought and malice. He intended to
| deceive people. He was trying to commit fraud.
|
| Hometown guy did not intend to crash or kill anybody.
|
| Now the results of hometown guy's actions were more direct and
| severe, but had he had the choice, he would not have crashed
| and killed anybody. He's not a criminal, just a fucking idiot.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > SBF operated with forethought and malice.
|
| And hometown guy accidentally got behind the wheel of a car
| while drunk?
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| A well-known effect of alcohol intoxication is cognitive
| impairment.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| Yeah I don't buy it. I suspect most DUI cases were
| conscious decisions made while sober. You don't
| accidentally drive to a bar. You go there with plans to
| drink knowing full well you plan to drive back drunk.
|
| If you go out to drink, you don't bring your car. If you
| know you need to drive later, you don't drink.
|
| They might be drunk when they are driving, but they very
| much put themselves into a situation where it was the
| likely outcome while sober.
| bena wrote:
| You think he woke up that day and said to himself, "Today,
| I'm going to get drunk, drive my car, speed, crash, and
| kill two people."
|
| No. He did not. Everything that happened was likely
| unplanned. Hence, no forethought. And I doubt he was trying
| to hit anybody. Hence, no malice.
|
| Yes, he still made those choices and they were bad choices.
| So he does need to make restitution. But the fact that he
| wasn't intentionally trying to do what he did makes his
| offense different than SBF's.
|
| Now, is there an issue that our penal system is ultimately
| more punitive than rehabilitory? Of course, but even from a
| punitive standpoint, accidental murder should warrant less
| punishment than intentional large-scale multi-billion
| dollar fraud. We can't base punishments _solely_ on the
| outcome of an event. Intent of the perpetrator has to
| matter.
| z2 wrote:
| Not that this holds up to scrutiny, and there are certainly
| issues with fungibility of lives and money, but let's say the
| value of a life in the US is $10 million. $10 billion in fraud
| is 1,000 lives claimed. The sentence could have been worse.
| hgfghj wrote:
| Vehicular deaths are almost always under prosecuted in the US.
|
| This does not mean that it should be legal to defraud people of
| billions of dollars, ruin countless lives, and harm many more.
|
| This is a rare case where a white collar crime was
| appropriately punished. Sam showed no remorse, and no evidence
| that he would not engage in similar crimes in the future. He
| earned this time.
|
| Hopefully he'll reform and be worthy of early release; but
| candidly I doubt it. I think he's irredeemable.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| It's simple really. Money is considered more important than
| human lives.
| publius_0xf3 wrote:
| Motor crimes are punished leniently because almost everyone
| drives, and every driver can imagine themselves making a
| mistake behind the wheel and they don't want that mistake to
| ruin their life or the lives of their loved ones.
|
| I'm not saying it's right. But it's the tacit consensus we
| maintain to make ourselves comfortable with the risks of
| piloting deadly machines every day.
| bdcravens wrote:
| White-collar criminals doing fed time are serving "easier" time
| than those in state prisons.
|
| That said, I've personally known of two people who were
| convicted of DWI vehicular manslaughter, and they both received
| 15-year sentences, so 26 months seems to be an aberration.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >a guy in my hometown hit and killed 2 people, while DUI and
| ran over 100mph on a local street with 35mph limit
|
| What was his plan? What did he expect to earn from this action?
| And now, who would plan to DUI because they believe it's worth
| a 26-month sentence?
|
| SBF knew what we was doing and did it knowingly. He thought he
| wouldn't be caught and earn a few extra billions. Unless we was
| drunk all along...
|
| It's about the long-term planning and the clear intent to
| choose a path with such a risk/reward ratio.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| This was intriguing to me, so I want to share how I did some
| light investigation of the question.
|
| https://chat.openai.com/share/2dc83d60-d14b-4438-8226-ac59de...
|
| I don't know if it can summarize books correctly always, it
| almost always does; and I also don't know if there's just a
| bias in publishing about race relations because that sells.
|
| But it seems right to me that the most orthodox opinion is that
| racial bias, drug policy and socioeconomic status are the
| biggest factors in the severity of sentencing in general.
|
| So you are referencing two acutely exceptional cases - a white
| collar crime by a rich person that only somewhat interacts with
| drug abuse of Aderrall that is acutely severely punished, and a
| drug-related crime that is acutely poorly punished.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| There is a saying, "If you want to kill someone and get away
| with it, do it with a car".
| btbuildem wrote:
| Now do all the other ponzi scheme bros, including 80% of the
| insider traders in Congress
| xrd wrote:
| As other people have pointed out here, he has the possibility of
| getting out in 12.5 years.
|
| That means he might miss his chance to have kids. Having your
| first kid at 38 is old, I should know.
|
| That means, ironically, he will be prevented from self imposed
| financial ruin, which is to say, trying to raise children in the
| US, especially as someone who came from the opulence of the bay
| area. Can you imagine the cost of trying to keep up with the
| Joneses when those are your peers.
|
| It seems like a fair punishment for him would actually be to
| force him to have kids and have to work as a janitor in silicon
| valley until they graduate from community college. That would
| really be teaching him to experience the financial ruin he
| imposed on others.
|
| </sarcasm>
| duderific wrote:
| > Having your first kid at 38 is old, I should know.
|
| Had my first kid at 45 and second at 49. Guess that makes me
| ... ancient?
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| Less than he should have gotten, but more than I thought he would
| get!
| publius_0xf3 wrote:
| It's funny. I lost tens of thousands of dollars thanks to this
| individual, yet his sentence brings me no joy or arouses any
| emotion at all. I'm utterly indifferent to his fate for some
| reason and I don't know why. Yet if he had been a mugger who
| stole a much smaller amount of money from me on the street, I
| think I would've been far more vengeful.
|
| Should I feel vindictive? Or is it healthy to forget about it and
| move on? I'm not sure.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| It is _obviously_ healthy to forget about it and move on.
| Having said that, any anger at the guy is going to be not
| because he effected any one person, but because he effected so
| many - and because he embodied a particular attitude in the
| cryptocurrency world that lives on in so many others who
| haven't yet had their luck run out.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Perhaps previous exit scams in the crypto space dulled your
| senses?
|
| If anything, I feel like you should share your story to protect
| others, especially during times when crypto is peaking (like
| now) and others are tempted to jump in: use exchanges to
| buy/sell and get out, store your keys on a cold storage device,
| and transfer out fiat ASAP.
| CivBase wrote:
| Surely the better takeaway is to just not bet on crypto in
| general? It's supposed to act like a currency, not a stock.
| So long as people keep feeding into these pump-and-dump
| schemes they'll keep happening.
|
| Money doesn't come from nowhere. For every dollar you make on
| crypto, somone loses a dollar. All these BS coins do is
| shuffle wealth from the unlucky gamblers to the lucky ones.
| Go spend your money at a casino instead.
| fragmede wrote:
| > For every dollar you make on crypto, somone loses a
| dollar.
|
| If that's not true of the stock market, why would that be
| true of crypto?
| CivBase wrote:
| This is oversimplifying, but stocks are essentially
| purchasing a stake in ownership of the company. The
| company uses that money to advance its mission - ideally
| generating more profits which are shared with the
| stockholders (dividends). It's that stake in ownership
| and expected dividends that give stocks inherent value.
|
| There is no company behind crypto currencies that holders
| get ownership of. There is no product or service to drive
| profits. There are no dividends, voting power, or
| anything that gives inherent value to the coins. It's all
| pure speculation. Just money getting shifted around among
| the holders - with exchanges taking a cut off the top of
| each transaction.
| fragmede wrote:
| I'm sorry, but what am going to do with my Class C shares
| of Google which have no voting rights? They also haven't
| paid dividends. My buying of them didn't give Google any
| money, either. My infinitesimal ownership in Google
| doesn't get anything other than it's a number in a
| database somewhere that hopefully goes up. There's
| underlying assets there, sure, but as we've seen with
| GME, TSLA, and now NVDA, it's all just vibes.
|
| In this case though, FTX had their own token FTT that
| gave people that owned it voting rights in FTX and
| "staking rewards" aka dividends. It's not worth anything
| today due to the fraud that SBF perpetrated, but that
| sure smells a awful lot like a stock to me.
| hgomersall wrote:
| Right. There seems to be a real aversion to accepting
| that trading shares is really just middle class gambling.
| methodical wrote:
| Stocks are not completely nondeterministic games of
| chance, which is why most people who hold properly
| diversified stock portfolios have seen long-term growth
| instead of loss. That's probably why people don't call it
| gambling.
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| Crypto is not a completely nondeterministic game of
| chance either. There are people in crypto who are
| consistently profitable.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>My buying of them didn't give Google any money, either.
|
| really? how can that be true?
| hcks wrote:
| Why would someone sell the share for less than this
| "inherent" value then? Or conversely why would some buy
| for more than that?
| gambiting wrote:
| They don't though? Share buy/sale price is directly
| correlated to the value of the company.
| shinryuu wrote:
| Which changes depending on how many buy the stocks. Was
| gamestop really worth billions at the top of the mania?
| acdha wrote:
| The market cap of its stock might but if you looked at
| the financial press during that episode it was full of
| people pointing out that there was no change in the
| fundamental value of the company. That's because real
| businesses have things like sales volume, profit margins,
| property rights, etc. which aren't entirely arbitrary and
| dampen the swings considerably. That's not perfect or
| immune to abuse as Boeing shareholders are no doubt aware
| but it's very different from something which has no
| grounding beyond momentary social consensus.
| shinryuu wrote:
| While I agree that there is a lot of hot air in crypto,
| what gives value to something like ethereum is the fact
| that you need it to use the network. Given people think
| it's useful to use that network it will give value to
| ether.
| skaag wrote:
| Publicly traded companies make money by creating value
| and selling products or services. At least, the good
| companies that actually sell something (you'll find a
| bunch of them don't do crap or are just outright scams).
|
| Take Apple or Coca Cola for example: They have well
| established lines of products and lines of business. You
| know people will keep buying iPhones and MacBooks and
| AirPods and whatever else Apple makes. You know people
| will keep buying Coca Cola drinks forever and ever.
|
| The popular blockchains do not create any intrinsic value
| (Looking at Bitcoin and Ethereum). They are heavy and
| cumbersome and can't handle planetary scale. Some
| blockchain solutions promise secure, fee-less transfers
| (for example IOTA and NANO). In my opinion, those
| blockchains at least partially implement the true promise
| of Crypto that, if successful, would be able to replace
| the existing financial system which is extremely
| wasteful.
|
| Just think about how much money it costs to implement
| FIAT: You have to print it, which is very expensive (both
| notes and coins). You then have to move it around using
| heavy armored vehicles. You have to secure it in
| extremely expensive vaults. You then need to keep
| securing it across the entire vertical: Every business
| that takes cash has to deal with theft, securing the
| cash, fake notes, etc. Even credit cards are very
| expensive to maintain. Cards have to be printed & mailed
| out all the time. It's all plastic, and it all ends up in
| landfills. The inks are toxic, as are the metals in the
| chips. The equipment required to process cards is
| expensive, breaks and needs to be replaced, is annoying,
| slow, ridden with fraud and theft and chargebacks and a
| host of other issues.
|
| I implemented EMV and 3D-Secure for card processing, a
| few years ago. I also implemented cash processing
| equipment. It ALL sucks. You have no idea how Crypto is a
| breath of fresh air compared to those crappy standards
| and mechanisms that take an insane amount of time and
| money and bureaucracy to implement and maintain.
|
| A really good blockchain that does secure, fee-less
| transactions in less than a second and can handle
| planetary scale, now that is the holy grail! You don't
| need equipment, you already have a phone. The merchants
| get their money instantly, and they are done, that's it.
| They have their money. Done. They need to pay their
| vendors? They pay them, done! They could even instantly
| pay their vendors at the moment of sale. Can you imagine
| how revolutionary that is? how this completely changes
| the game for commerce?
|
| The entire crypto world has been held back by greedy
| assholes, tens of thousands of scammers (how many ICOs
| and rug pulls have screwed countless users?!),
| governments, government bodies and banks, and unregulated
| companies that behave irresponsibly with customer funds
| (for example FTX and BlockFi). Leadership that lacks
| vision and initiative (Any 1st world country that accepts
| crypto and leads with it, would make its citizens rich,
| by definition, on a planetary scale).
| B56b wrote:
| You're basically just describing fee-less digital
| currency. The problem is that achieving the fee-less part
| by using a blockchain makes some extremely undesirable
| tradeoffs. To name a few: -Money
| laundering becomes impossible to prevent when no entity
| has control over identity verification of the users.
| -All transactions are public, so normal users who won't
| be trying to lie about their identity lose all financial
| privacy. -Undoing transactions due to fraud
| or simple error becomes extremely cumbersome and
| ultimately requires re-centralization of authority that
| crypto supposedly was created to avoid.
|
| Digital fiat transactions operating in the current
| financial system are the best of all worlds, and
| unsurprisingly they are already extremely common.
| skaag wrote:
| Except greed...
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| Crypto is one of the only markets where someone with
| virtually zero investment can become very rich. It's not
| easy, but smart traders can make a lot of money. You are
| not doing that at the casino.
| forgotmyinfo wrote:
| If it isn't obvious already that cryptocurrency is one giant
| grift, then I don't know how many more stories are going to
| help. The SEC or Congress or someone with power needs to just
| make it illegal, or else this kind of thing will keep
| happening. It happened before we got our shit together in the
| early 20th century, but we collectively realized markets were
| actively doing shady things, and then we legislated to fix
| things. Will we do it again?
| ragazzina wrote:
| It is funny - especially when you consider a mugger on the
| street would need your money much more than SBF ever would.
| blululu wrote:
| Not really. The use of a gun/knife/lethal force implies a
| much different risk profile (you could easily die or be
| crippled for life). It's not about the money - it's about the
| violence.
| xmprt wrote:
| That's a fair point. With FTX you might feel some sense of
| responsibility because you voluntarily gave up your money
| (whether it was fraud by deception or not). But a mugger is
| infringing on your freedom to walk around at night.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Yeah, in one case, a few numbers in a database somewhere
| changed.
|
| In the other, you could be left for dead in an alley in
| Oakland.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > a few numbers in a database somewhere changed
|
| That is very crass. Tell that to someone who lost a big
| chunk of their savings. "Just numbers in a database"
| indeed.
| acdha wrote:
| If someone put a big chunk of their savings into a
| speculative vehicle, they should be having a moment of
| contemplation about why they ignored basic investment
| advice. It's not a happy moment for anyone but at some
| point you do have to take responsibility for your
| decisions.
| robocat wrote:
| It is just as crass to say people "lost" their savings.
|
| Who were these hypothetical savers putting their money in
| a safe place?
|
| Few people should have been unaware of the risks they
| were taking by investing in crypto.
|
| Certainly not saying they deserve to be defrauded, but I
| am saying they took obvious risks and then got burned by
| those risks.
| hgomersall wrote:
| It's kind of farcical when you put it like that. So much
| misery and sorrow is caused by the state of that database
| being problematic for some people.
| zarathustreal wrote:
| Money _should be_ the least of the concerns of a mugger on
| the street. Subjecting yourself to lawlessness exposes you to
| real danger and kinda detracts from your ability to
| participate in commerce.
|
| Granted, I haven't seen any scientific evidence to suggest
| that a lack of money causes a lack of ability to reason (and
| thus a lack of responsibility for one's own actions) but my
| own anecdotal experience does suggest it
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| lol I don't consider how much a criminal "needs" the money.
| ragazzina wrote:
| So a person stealing their eleventh billion and a person
| stealing to eat something are the same for you?
| stass wrote:
| Both are completely immoral.
| mandmandam wrote:
| There's nothing immoral about stealing to eat.
|
| Nothing.
|
| The wealthy stole the commons. They cut down or fenced
| off the fruit trees, claimed all the common land,
| poisoned all the natural water sources, and you think
| it's immoral to steal to survive? Even equivocating it
| with theft on a grand scale?
|
| Honestly I think your moral compass needs a tune-up, if
| it ever worked at all. I'm not saying that to be mean -
| you _need_ to understand this, or you 're morally
| deficient.
|
| We live in a world where scarcity is artificial. That
| some people need to steal to eat is an indictment on all
| of us, and blaming the victim is ghastly. Like, did you
| never even watch Le Mis? People understood this hundreds
| of years ago. _Children_ understand this.
| samatman wrote:
| It is always immoral to point a weapon at a stranger and
| demand the contents of his pockets.
|
| No circumstance whatsoever justifies such behavior. None.
| mandmandam wrote:
| I said "stealing to eat". Because the claim was "stealing
| is never moral and is just as bad no matter the amount".
|
| You heard "point a weapon at a stranger and demand the
| contents of his pockets".
|
| And, since this seems to be really confusing to a lot of
| people here for some reason, stealing tens/hundreds of
| millions of dollars from people is in fact unambiguously
| worse than mugging someone for their wallet. It's far
| more violent, and causes far more suffering.
| zarathustreal wrote:
| You realize Le Miz is fictional, right? No one _needs_ to
| steal to eat, some people _choose_ to steal rather than
| earn. Stealing is immoral regardless of the circumstance,
| don't take your moral philosophy from Disney movies and
| broadway.
| vkou wrote:
| If we're going to talk morality, a lot of land ownership
| and resource extraction stands on very shaky ground,
| given that a lot of land was at some point in recorded
| (or recent) history stolen from someone else. And
| stealing is always immoral, so...
| mandmandam wrote:
| > You realize Le Miz is fictional, right?
|
| Do you think no one irl ever stole bread to feed their
| family only to be extremely punished? ...
|
| > No one _needs_ to steal to eat, some people choose to
| steal rather than earn.
|
| You're wrong. You're a hundred kinds of wrong. That
| mindset is a deep, deep sickness.
|
| > Stealing is immoral regardless of the circumstance
|
| If the choice is between stealing and starvation, the
| moral thing to do is steal. Which is, in fact, the
| scenario we are talking about.
|
| Not everyone can earn - and in a society where wages have
| become untethered from productivity for over 50 fucking
| years, where the social contract is broken and ground
| into dust, where healthcare and housing are seen as
| privileges rather than rights, you might start to expect
| getting pushback on such untethered and inhuman views.
|
| > don't take your moral philosophy from Disney movies and
| broadway.
|
| Better than taking it from literal comicbook villains.
| jojo100 wrote:
| This might be the most out of touch comment I've ever
| read, to the point where it genuinely looks like sarcasm
| mocking someone who would think like that. Apologies if
| so.
| gambiting wrote:
| >There's nothing immoral about stealing to eat.
|
| Of course there is - being mugged(or having stuff stolen
| from you) can ruin your life, not even in any physical
| sense but psychologically it can be devastating. I've had
| a bike stolen from my house, I didn't even witness it
| being stolen or anything, just one morning I woke up and
| the house was broken into and my bike gone - relatively
| minor financial inconvenience in the grand scheme of
| things, but for the next 2 years I _hated_ living in that
| place, I was uncomfortable in my own house and scared of
| walking around, I honestly felt violated in the sanctum
| of my own home and couldn 't get relaxed around there
| again. Eventually we moved and in the large portion it
| was exactly because of that.
|
| So please tell me, even assuming if that person stole my
| bike to buy bread - how can it possibly have been moral
| given the impact it had on the life of another person?
| snapcaster wrote:
| What do you see as the value of removing all nuance?
| laurels-marts wrote:
| Need money for what though. Alcohol, drugs and gambling? The
| vast majority of crimes are not committed due to an inability
| to obtain food.
| rsoto2 wrote:
| Mugging is more traumatic short term? In total, white collar
| wage-theft dwarfs property theft but you may not feel its
| effects immediately.
| flockonus wrote:
| It's good to process the emotions associated, if truly is none,
| then great! Still suggest meditating if something didn't get
| pushed under the mind's rug with the financial loss.
|
| Definitely move on, this case had some external closure where
| most hurts in life don't.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Mugging is much more violent and personal. SBF didn't see you
| and think "that's the person I'm going to get" he essentially
| created a fraud machine that you and hundreds of others got
| caught up in. Very impersonal.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| But no less financially destructive
| freedomben wrote:
| Purely speculation on my part, but I tend to feel similarly,
| and I think the reason is that the mugger includes a physical
| threat of violence.
|
| Evolutionarily, the emergence of an economy with capital at
| modern-day scales are so new that we haven't had time to really
| adjust emotionally. It kind of reminds me of the various birds
| on previously untouched-by-humanity islands that had no fear of
| humans and would just sit there and allow a human to club them
| to death, until their species went extinct. They had no time
| evolutionarily to develop an innate (emotional) fear of humans.
|
| Physical violence/robbery on the other hand is a long-standing
| human tradition, and something we are hardwired to react to
| emotionally (Amygdala vs. PFC, etc). We can of course override
| our Amygdalas with our PFCs to some extent (in the medium to
| long-term), but the "gut reaction" core is still there.
|
| Another possible reason (for me at least) is that ethically I
| have a lot of inner turmoil over violent punishments (which
| physical incarceration absolutely is IMHO) for nonviolent
| crimes. Of course reality is much more grayscale than that
| given that crimes like SBFs could leave a family destitute and
| starving, which is violence-adjacent if not outrightly violent.
| A violent sentence for a violent crime intuitively feels a lot
| more "let the punishment fit the crime" than a violent sentence
| for a nonviolent crime.
|
| Anyway, I don't have answers, but throwing some speculation
| onto the pile.
| bgitarts wrote:
| I had a business partner/family member steal money from me in
| our business. It very much hurt and was a painful experience
| hoping for vengence. Perhaps SBF being distant from you is
| what makes you indifferent.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| This is the pain of losing trust and getting taken
| advantage of by someone that is close to you.
| freedomben wrote:
| Yes that's fair criticism regarding my feelings, but GP
| feels the same and they had stolen $10K. So the distance
| from it can't be all there is to it.
|
| I'm also pretty distant from a mugging that might happen
| today, but I find myself getting angry about it, so that
| also seems to contradict the theory that it's about
| distance (though to be clear, I largely agree with you and
| I suspect distance is going to be a factor for most or
| maybe the vast majority of people).
| amelius wrote:
| I think humans also feel no anger towards deadly diseases.
| Maybe it is more comparable to that.
|
| However, I do know that people can feel very ashamed from
| scams like phishing attacks and caller scams.
| iamthirsty wrote:
| There no intent to personally harm with a disease/virus --
| it's just what they do and one of the players in the game
| of life.
|
| Versus someone calling you specifically to cause harm,
| especially when they can comprehend the harm they are
| intending to inflict, in your example.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Predators also 'play the game of life' and humanity is
| downright vindictive about any who prey upon them. I
| personally suspect the real difference is how incredibly
| hard it is to target a disease. Hell, just identification
| of what a disease really is was spotty for millennia.
| freedomben wrote:
| After thinking about it, I think some humans _do_ feel
| anger towards deadly diseases. If not anger, certainly
| fear. My aunt died of cancer, and most of our family was
| pretty mad at "cancer." I remember seeing a Twitter thing
| going around that was basically a lot of people tweeting
| things like "fuck cancer" and encouraging others to donate
| to the cause.
|
| Maybe that's not really "anger," but it kind of feels and
| seems like it
| __loam wrote:
| I didn't lose a penny and I'm giddy about it. Justice has been
| done.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _I didn 't lose a penny and I'm giddy about it. Justice has
| been done._
|
| How can you be giddy about a human being locked in a cage for
| 25 years? Would you be giddy if he were being flogged, or
| hanged? As long as there has been recording, flogging and
| hangings were common punishments and usually defended as
| "justice has been done." Incarceration really isn't far from
| medieval punishments.
|
| I'm by no means suggesting that nothing should be done, and
| maybe 25 years in prison _is_ a just sentence (that 's
| debatable, but for moving forward let's assume it is), but it
| still leaves me with a sick feeling. I just can't relate
| whatsoever with feeling "giddy" over it.
| __loam wrote:
| > How can you be giddy about a human being locked in a cage
| for 25 years?
|
| Said human is responsible for the financial ruin of
| thousands of people. It's entirely likely that some small
| portion of those people committed suicide.
|
| White collar criminals, especially those as pedigreed as
| SBF, are rarely held accountable for their actions. The
| maximum sentence was 110 years so he got off pretty lightly
| here and it's entirely possible he serves less than 25
| years for good behavior.
|
| So yeah, I'm excited to see an at least somewhat positive
| outcome here. A criminal was held accountable for their
| actions.
| freedomben wrote:
| Genuinely, thank you for your reply. I appreciate you
| sharing your perspective :-)
| kbos87 wrote:
| I don't entirely disagree with your point, and I see the
| real harm done here. But if I were a juror on this case,
| I'd have a really hard time being a part of taking away a
| full third of another human beings' life for what he did.
| There's no doubt that he knowingly did something wrong,
| he hurt people, and he deserves some level of punishment.
| But when I really think about what he did relative to the
| potential for 25 years in prison, that strikes me as
| barbaric.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I think treating petty criminals so badly and going easy
| on white collar criminals is barbaric. A third of his
| life is nothing compared to the damage he caused. I find
| it incredible that you would feel sorry for him.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _I think treating petty criminals so badly and going
| easy on white collar criminals is barbaric._
|
| Where do you see GP arguing that we should treat petty
| criminals as badly as we do?
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| SBF's actions caused more damage than many violent
| muggings. If /u/kbos87 would support letting dozens of
| muggers to go free to (say) halve SBF's sentence, then I
| take the argument seriously and will rescind my positions
| here so far.
| quonn wrote:
| It's not a third, it will probably be 1/6 in practice.
| And what should it be? 3 years? 5? If it's just than it
| will incentivize others to try the same. In fact many do,
| I know plenty of crypto guys running a bunch of dodgy
| offshore companies, there is a long tail.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| I'd be able to do it easily and sleep at night like a
| baby.
|
| How many hours, days, weeks, months, and years did he
| steal from the people who bought crypto in FTX? Most of
| them were workers, using their wages (which means trading
| their working hours for money) to buy crypto. How many
| years of their time did he lose?
|
| If there was real justice in the world, they'd take the
| amount of money he lost, divide it by the average hourly
| rate of the account holders, convert that to years, and
| then make him serve each and every single one.
| __loam wrote:
| If you think 25 years is too much, I don't think you
| actually understand what he did, how many people he did
| it to, and why what he did was bad. Think about the years
| of savings he destroyed.
| fragmede wrote:
| > White collar criminals, especially those as pedigreed
| as SBF, are rarely held accountable for their actions.
|
| Eg, Andy Bernstein got charged $200, scaled down to FAANG
| engineer salary for insider trading.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39838351
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Many people see justice served as a win for society, a
| reason to be hopeful that the future will be better. One
| life out of billions is valuable only to that person and
| their immediately family, it would be odd to feel sick over
| someone else getting punished for defrauding so many others
| of their life savings.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _it would be odd to feel sick over someone else getting
| punished for defrauding so many others of their life
| savings._
|
| that's a pretty extreme strawman of my position. Don't
| you think there's some spectrum between 25 years of
| prison time and no punishment? And if you don't, then how
| would you feel about flogging or hanging as I mentioned
| above? Does it seem odd to you for someone to feel sick
| about a public hanging in the town square, even if the
| person is guilty of the crime?
| adolph wrote:
| > some spectrum between 25 years of prison time and no
| punishment
|
| That isn't the range at hand. SBF got something between
| what prosecutor and defender asked and much lower than
| theoretical max. Max: 110y
| Procecutor: 40-50y Defender: 6.5y Actual:
| 25y
| mlcrypto wrote:
| Very lenient and it doesn't set a deterrent at all for
| people like SBF. Basically you can go off the charts on
| the sentencing guidelines and commit 3 counts of perjury
| in court and still have the same Expected Value as if you
| stopped the crime at a smaller scale
| biftek wrote:
| Our prison system is undeniable terrible but we also so
| rarely see white collar criminals get what they deserve.
| Most of these guys get a slap on the wrist and somehow fail
| upwards.
|
| And he's almost guaranteed to serve a smaller portion of
| that time for "good behavior".
| rendall wrote:
| > _Incarceration really isn 't far from medieval
| punishments._
|
| Sincere question: in your ideal world, what would be done
| in this case?
|
| I, too, am dubious that 25 entire years serves justice. On
| the other hand, many victims' entire life savings wiped
| out, hard-working people impoverished. How do we deter or
| redeem, here?
|
| To answer my own question, in an _ideal_ world, SBF would
| voluntarily work every day to pay everyone back.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _Sincere question: in your ideal world, what would be
| done in this case?_
|
| Great question, and very hard. I don't really have a
| concrete answer, but generally speaking in my ideal world
| justice would focus on restoration to the victims. I
| concede that we may need some aspect of "punishment" to
| serve as a deterrent, but I think that punishment should
| benefit the victims, not the state. For example, stole
| $10k from somebody? Pay them back $25k. There should be
| no victimless crimes IMHO, and if "society" is the
| "victim" we should approach that one very skeptically and
| there should be very clear causation. For example, a dad
| who takes a few hits on a cannabis joint before bed is
| not "harming society" even though that has been the
| justification for draconian drug laws for decades.
|
| I also fully concede that real life is going to be a lot
| messier and more nuanced than what I've captured, and
| that such a system would require a large mindshift from
| society in addition to just systemic reform. It may take
| a while to get there.
|
| _Disclaimer: If I actually had any ability to influence
| this I would want to spend a lot more time stuyding it
| and examining current research /science, and it's quite
| possible my opinion would adjust based on evidence._
| jamespo wrote:
| I think part of the issue and what the judge didn't like
| is he doesn't seem to have any remorse.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Ideally, a much higher-tech system would have highly
| tailored solutions for incapacitation, rehabilitation,
| and restoration. (There should be no considerations for
| "retribution".)
|
| I'm conflicted on whether incapacitation should continue
| only until rehabilitation is achieved, or also until
| restoration is completed.
|
| Prison is just a really blunt instrument for
| incapacitation, and sentences are a really blunt way to
| predict how long it would take to be rehabilitated.
| adolph wrote:
| > Ideally, a much higher-tech system would have highly
| tailored solutions for incapacitation
|
| This is pretty interesting. If a person could be
| anesthetized for the entire sentence and then revived at
| the end of their period of incapacity, would that be
| acceptable?
| tunesmith wrote:
| Of course not, that would render rehabilitation
| impossible.
| __loam wrote:
| SBF lost billions of dollars. How does one work to pay
| that all back, especially with his crap reputation?
| foobiekr wrote:
| Because he is a scamming, unethical asshole who would did
| profound damage to society.
| j-krieger wrote:
| > How can you be giddy about a human being locked in a cage
| for 25 years?
|
| The guy is a massive fraudster who not only cost thousands
| of people their savings, but - maybe even worse - he did
| significant damage to crypto finance reputation.
|
| He was an already wealthy entrepreneur who could've at any
| point chosen _not_ to be a massive fraud. Actions have
| consequences. Good riddance.
| blendorgat wrote:
| Justice is not opposed to empathy. Everyone should look at
| SBF and feel empathy, and think, "losing the prime years of
| my life as he will would be horribly painful. Maybe I
| shouldn't commit fraud and steal thousands of people
| livelihoods like he did?"
| flextheruler wrote:
| Last I checked he's not going to Treblinka. If you're
| feeling sick about this you obviously need to read the
| court case and look into what low security federal prison
| is like.
| jojo100 wrote:
| Don't spare too much of a thought for SBF. He won't go to
| the same prison you will.
| jug wrote:
| Giddy is maybe the wrong word but I am happy about it. He
| has acted indifferent during the trial which makes it
| likely that he could become a repeat offender. This was a
| strong motivation behind his sentence. If the judge is
| right in that, and who am I to not believe so, then it is
| probably correct to remove him from society for 25 years.
| This is an extremely dangerous individual who may lead
| hundreds or thousands to financial ruin and is indifferent
| about it.
| anonu wrote:
| Are you expecting to recover any money from this? I understood
| everyone would be made whole at some point.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I understood everyone would be made whole at some point
|
| That is only true if you define 'made whole' as giving back
| each customer the amount of money denominated in USD that
| they deposited with FTX. That is super convenient for FTX,
| which has benefited from the spike in BTC value, but not for
| the customer. To really be made whole, they would need to get
| back exactly what they deposited. 1 BTC in? 1 BTC out.
| philipov wrote:
| When you invest in monopoly money where the main feature is
| eliminating institutional protections, don't be surprised
| that institutions refuse to protect the value you pretend
| it has. The US government has no obligation to recognize
| BTC as a measure of fungible value.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Exactly this
|
| Fiduciary amounts are in $. Yes if you deposited 1 BTC
| expect the equivalent value at the time of your deposit
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I feel like I'm experiencing whiplash. When it's
| convenient, crypto is unregulated and unprotected. But
| for this argument it is convenient to refer to it the
| matter as fiduciary, which implies trust, and declare
| that the only amount which matters is USD.
|
| You might _expect_ to only get the USD equivalent back,
| but not for one minute does that make you whole. A lot of
| money was in fact stolen.
| DANmode wrote:
| The USD equivalent would _still be higher than before_
| due to the _USD value_ of the asset that FTX systems
| would be reporting - if they hadn 't been taken down in a
| criminal investigation, through no fault of the client.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Finally a take I agree with. The victims here are IMHO
| victims of their own greed. They wanted all the reward of
| putting money into unprotected and unregulated schemes
| and now many cry that the risks didn't go their way.
|
| It doesn't make SBF less of a criminal but it does make
| the victims less victimised.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > They wanted all the reward of putting money into
| unprotected and unregulated schemes and now many cry that
| the risks didn't go their way.
|
| Is that not just victim blaming? This was not an
| investment gone bad, this was stolen funds. It would be
| one thing if they lost all their money because BTC value
| dropped to zero. But _SBF stole the money_.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > The US government has no obligation to recognize BTC as
| a measure of fungible value.
|
| And the very next reply says these are unregulated
| schemes. So what does the USG's opinion on BTC have to do
| with FTX's obligation to return the assets deposited with
| it, or whether their renumeration constitutes 'making
| customers whole'?
| michael1999 wrote:
| Maybe had already internalized the idea that money "invested"
| in crypto is doomed to theft, or collapse. Slot machine players
| have a similar vibe -- the money is already gone, even before
| it enters the machine.
| skaag wrote:
| I'm an indirect victim via BlockFi (headed by Zach Prince),
| which did business with FTX and lost my money as a result. I
| held 33 ETH in a BlockFi BIA account, and only recently got 4
| ETH back. I don't know if I will ever recover the rest of my
| funds.
|
| I don't know what your financial situation is but I'm not rich,
| and it is extremely painful to look at ETH trading at above
| $3000 and realizing my rainy day fund has been stolen by
| criminal nincompoops.
|
| My personal values dictate that I be significantly more careful
| with money when it is someone else's money. Even if you gave me
| $20 to get you a Burrito, I'll get you the best deal, tip the
| minimum, and give you your exact change. I'd even give you a
| few cents more just in case because I don't want to be owing
| you anything.
|
| So when a group of people behaves irresponsibly with people's
| money it boils my blood. He deserves every jail year he got,
| just on the hubris alone.
| KenArrari wrote:
| A mugger is less likely to be deterred by fear of punishments.
| It usually comes from desperation _and_ impulsiveness, it 's
| not like they've carefully weighed their chances of being
| caught. SBF probably thought "If I get away with this I get a
| billion dollars and if I don't I just get a slap on the wrist
| and go back to normal life".
|
| I think not letting anger factor into it is good, but we also
| have to make sure the deterrence is there to prevent the
| inevitable future SBF.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > Should I feel vindictive? Or is it healthy to forget about it
| and move on? I'm not sure.
|
| However _you_ feel about it is the right way to feel about it.
| Everyone copes with things differently. Regardless, it would
| appear some type of justice has been done in this case.
| miduil wrote:
| It's a bit of a different scale/topic, but I found the
| discourse here quite insightful. It talks about the method
| "Restorative Justice" by going through a concrete example where
| this was lacking. Really heartwarming to listen to.
|
| https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/how-to-make-amends/
| coryrc wrote:
| "Restorative Justice" is more bullying from authorities and
| taking time from the victim.
|
| From your link: "Victims may help decide on the punishment
| for the person who harm them. They often get answers and an
| apology. Offenders might receive reduced sentences." -- how
| about _increased_ sentences because of how the victim feels?
| No, it 's all about going easier on offenders. All the
| authorities involved are pushing victims to "go easy" on
| offenders aka bullying, victimizing them once again.
|
| Someone, not a thief, hopefully filled the seat in the
| master's program Donovan was eligible for.
| kstrauser wrote:
| It's ok and normal to feel both. If I lost tens of thousands of
| dollars, I'd be thinking of how much that would affect either
| the timing or the quality of my retirement. That would tend to
| make me inclined toward feeling pretty damn vindictive.
|
| And yet, the damage is done. Feels of anger and vengeance are
| withdrawals from your balance of available happiness and they
| don't actually affect the end result. The money's gone. Mourn
| it, accept it, and move on.
|
| I'd totally forgive anyone for wishing bad things on him if he
| destroyed their investment. It's better to forgive, but
| sometimes that's asking a bit much.
| fragmede wrote:
| > The money's gone.
|
| Hilariously with crypto, that's not necessarily true, for
| better or worse. The change in valuation of underlying crypto
| assets means that customers can sometimes be made "whole" -
| meaning they get back the value in USD they put in, but not
| including inflation and interest, so they're still poorer
| than they would be, but at least not out the whole amount.
| It's still not resolved, but it's possible creditors in Mt
| Gox will be made whole. 1 BTC was worth $760 when Mt Gox went
| down. Today 1 BTC is around $70k, meaning they have almost
| $10 billion in BTC with which to pay back creditors.
| dheera wrote:
| Honestly I feel more vindictive toward the IRS and CA FTB who
| steal way, way, way more of my money and don't do anything
| useful with it. I still get cars smashed and I don't have free
| healthcare or high-speed rail.
|
| SBF's crime is a lot smaller in comparison.
| jmspring wrote:
| For me, I don't think I feel the same way as you (my loss was
| small). There have been many cases where white collar crime
| which has similar (or greater) financial ramifications as the
| example of mugging you give, but the punishment is generally
| significantly lower (if at all). Granted a mugging could have
| differing levels of direct emotional impact, but white collar
| crime generally ends in lighter sentences.
|
| SBF and Elizabeth Holmes deserve their sentences.
| anonymoose33282 wrote:
| I think "violence" is at times such a silly measuring stick
| for modern justice.
|
| Instead, we should see it as lost/ruined human potential.
| What is worse, violently robbing one bank of $10k, or
| "peacefully" robbing a massive number of people for billions
| of dollars?
|
| I sure as hell know what I think, and it's absolutely _not_
| in line with SBF's sentence. He should rot in Ryker's with
| people who have, unfortunately, done less harm but still
| found their way there.
| ekms wrote:
| Did you get paid back yet? From what I read the ftx estate
| claimed to be able to make all claimants whole
| ekms wrote:
| Hm, not sure why people are downvoting this ^ Here's a
| source: https://www.wired.com/story/ftx-bankruptcy-bitcoin-
| value/
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| Maybe on some level you felt that the risk of this kind of
| thing was part of the investment decision? Presumably this was
| high risk, high return sort of stuff. As others say, the mugger
| is threatening you physically - SBF just cheated (I assume,
| haven't read the details) at a game, wild west new types of
| badly regulated investments.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| You should feel how you want to feel. However, I think certain
| politicians and most mass media outlets push you to have more
| compassion for white collar criminals and to think of others as
| less than human. When you hear them talk/print "tough on
| crime", they never seem to include white collar criminals in
| that. When the current admin expanded the IRS enforcement, they
| pushed back.
|
| It's no surprise. After all, these politicians and the owners
| of such outlets are likely to be a little guilty of ripping
| people off a few thousand here and there as well...
| goalonetwo wrote:
| As someone who lost a little bit through this whole debacle I
| think it is because we willingly gave our money to FTX. We
| wanted to believe in this story that was too good to be true.
| We got fooled and we are slightly ashamed.
|
| When you get mugged you have no choice on what is happening.
| The actions are being forced physically on you. With FTX We
| chose to go that way so it somehow feels like we are as much to
| blame as SBF (and to be honest, we are).
| harambae wrote:
| "You can't cheat an honest man" as the expression goes.
|
| Not literally true - completely innocent people do get
| victimized - but there's certainly a reason for the
| expression.
| StressedDev wrote:
| This response is not helpful and I know of honest people
| who have been cheated. Basically, the response boils down
| to "if you got cheated, you are dishonest and deserved it".
| Bullshit.
| acdha wrote:
| In this case, it's somewhat more fair: everyone involved
| was trying to find much higher returns than they could
| get in regulated financial markets so while it's sad that
| they were defrauded it's also part of the risk they
| voluntarily took on by using cryptocurrency.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| "Can't con an honest John" for the rhyming edition.
| tim333 wrote:
| I deposited some money with FTX and expected them not to
| steal it in the same way you expect a bank not to steal your
| deposits. I didn't gift to them or expect anything too good
| to be true. If a bank manager steals customer deposits to pay
| his gambling debts I put the blame 100% on the manager 0% on
| the customers.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Sorry for your loss.
|
| I'm actually surprised the sentence is this low. This is Bernie
| Madoff territory.
|
| This doesn't get you your money back. It doesn't even
| necessarily make you feel better so what's the point? This gets
| into the philosophy of a criminal justice system.
|
| The noble idea behind the criminal justice system is to be
| _restorative_. The offender is to be reformed so they don 't
| repeat their crimes and can become productive members of
| society. This is why we push for things like education in
| prison, access to mental health treatment and so on. It's for
| our collective good. Unfortunately, the criminal justice system
| in the US is predominantly _retributive_. We punish to make
| ourselves feel better. There is a ton of evidence of this and
| it lays bare other societal issues (eg racial disparity in
| sentencing).
|
| One big argument is whether heavy sentences _prevent_ others
| from committing crimes. This has been used to justify, for
| example, three strikes laws and 10+ year sentences for mere
| drug possession at the height of the war on drugs. None of this
| works. Such crimes are the result of over-policing, up-charging
| by prosecutors and material conditions.
|
| But where it actually works is with rich people. Why? Because
| you fine a company or a rich person and that becomes the cost
| of doing business. It's factored in. But depriving the wealthy
| of their liberty is something the wealthy want to desperately
| avoid.
|
| Case in point: the Sackler family, who are hugely responsible
| for the opiod epidemic by knowingly lying about the
| addictiveness of Oxycontin. If I had my way, the Sacklers would
| have every asset they own seized and they would all spend the
| rest of their lives in a prison cell.
|
| Put SBF's sentence in context: this Californian man was
| sentenced to 10 years for carjacking and robbing a gas station
| with a BB gun [1]. That's roughly half of SBF's sentence. Who
| do you think has done more societal harm?
|
| [1]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/los-angeles-man-
| sentenc...
| datavirtue wrote:
| The point of the system is to remove threats from society. It
| should be long enough such that the person will never pose a
| threat to society again. Justice was served in this case.
| Lance_ET_Compte wrote:
| We see this among political figures that swindle hundreds of
| millions, fail to pay taxes, etc. over and over again. They are
| granted absolution and even admired.
|
| Someone who steals food does time in jail.
| dkarras wrote:
| It is probably because there is a difference between getting
| mugged and being scammed. With falling victim to SBF's scheme,
| you probably believe you are partly to blame and you had to
| face that fact yourself, did some work on it mentally at the
| very least in the background. Him getting punished does not
| make a difference, you probably punished yourself and that is
| what mattered. With a violent mugging encounter, you are
| blameless, so you need to see the other party get punished to
| process and to feel that the world will get slightly better /
| safer with the delivery of the punishment.
| paulpauper wrote:
| maybe tens of thousands of dollars was not that much relative
| to your net worth. some people lost it all
| m463 wrote:
| I believe the justice system correlates with your feelings.
|
| wrt outcome, it seems physical crimes are almost
| inconsequential in monetary damage compared to "white collar"
| crimes
|
| I can't help but think of that clint eastwood line:
|
| "It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man. Take away all he's got,
| and all he's ever gonna have."
|
| I think physical damage, and also the psychological damage of
| violence has a permanence compared to money and property
| "damage"...
|
| Not to make light of anything, but you can always get more
| stuff. (and over my lifetime I've noticed stuff has been easier
| to get)
| x86x87 wrote:
| which one would make you more angry: 1) being mugged in full
| daylight in an area with low crime rate (maybe near where you
| live) 2) being mugged walking in a dark alley somewhere in the
| "bad" part of the town?
|
| How about if you chose going to 2) knowing very well that
| muggings are a real possibility and you should probably not go
| there?
| diamondfist25 wrote:
| I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars with this guy. I was
| hateful when this whole thing was unwinding. Now I'm
| indifferent -- I just hope John Ray can make the customers
| whole
| cdchn wrote:
| I think there is a lot of feeling of "I gambled with funny
| money and lost. Thats the game."
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| No you shouldn't feel vindictive because ultimately you lost
| funds by your own bad decisions, not Sam's
| bdcravens wrote:
| I can't help but think it's ironic that he was sentenced while
| BTC is near its ATH.
| MichaelRo wrote:
| 25 years seems excessive. Funk, for murder they get 10 years in
| Sweden. Yes, fraud is bad but he didn't kill nobody. I think 5
| years would have had been enough.
| s_dev wrote:
| Three suicides make this crime a bit more violent than you give
| it credit for. Not to mention absolute destruction of 00s if
| not 000s of lives.
| gjvc wrote:
| absolutely agree
| caturopath wrote:
| You could also think of it as 11 minutes each for defrauding
| each of 1.2MM people. I don't know whether either of those
| sentences are good ones, but there does come a point at which a
| narrow violent crime should be punished less than a huge non-
| violent one. FEMA uses about 7.5MM for a human life for certain
| cost-benefit analyses (much lower values are used in many of
| the countries where most FTX customers lived): is there a sense
| in which doing a billion dollars of damage is in certain ways
| comparable to 130 killings? Surely some people who lost money
| would have used that money in part to save someone's life.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Fraud affects huge amounts of people, and is always
| premeditated. Murdering one person is much more excusable than
| defrauding hundreds of thousands.
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| Am i dreaming, Americans clarify is there like a catch that he'll
| be out in 2.
| sidcool wrote:
| Harsh sentence. What could possibly have helped reduce it?
| sanjit wrote:
| Maybe if he had taken some responsibility and demonstrated
| remorse? He may have felt he was too smart for this situation
| and could continue fooling people?
| gscott wrote:
| The moral of the story is to always accept a plea deal if there
| is some chance of your being seen as guilty.
| Zambyte wrote:
| I think the moral of the story is to keep your fraud below the
| billions
| user_7832 wrote:
| Does anyone know/have an idea what a plea might have netted
| him?
| medler wrote:
| He wasn't offered a plea deal:
| https://www.axios.com/2023/10/03/sam-bankman-fried-trial-ftx...
| tdudhhu wrote:
| The difference between opinions in this thread is interesting.
|
| I think it's mainly because some see a punishment as revenge and
| others as correction.
|
| But, as user publius_0xf3 is showing, revenge does not work. The
| victims don't get their money back.
|
| If this sentence is used as correction I also think it does not
| work. Would such a correction really take 25 years? His life is
| over. I don't see how such a long time is helpful to him, to his
| victims and to society.
| edgyquant wrote:
| If you think it's "revenge" then yeah, you can say it doesn't
| work. In reality it is a punishment and deterrent to future
| victimizers.
| tracedddd wrote:
| What do you think about it being a preventative measure against
| future SBFs?
| quasarj wrote:
| Isn't there tons of evidence that this simply doesn't work?
|
| I mean, I don't know this SBF guy, but do you think he
| thought there would be no punishment if he got caught
| stealing 8 billion dollars? I think his plan was not to get
| caught.
| __loam wrote:
| He was judged before a jury of his peers and found wanting.
| It's not revenge, it's being held accountable for his actions.
| Some crimes, like murder, can't just be "corrected". The
| solution we've landed on as a society is for there to be a
| punitive cost to be paid by the responsible individual. In this
| case, it's jail time.
|
| SBF caused an incredible amount of irreparable harm with his
| actions, which almost certainly has resulted in suicides. He
| deserves this punishment.
| YellowZeeZee wrote:
| The sentence is neither revenge nor correction. It's simply
| punishment for having broken the rules.
|
| Society is not necessary interested in helping him. Ultimately
| he's not that important.
|
| What is important is maintaining the rule of law and preserving
| faith in the justice system.
| KenArrari wrote:
| The next potential SBF will look at this sentencing and realize
| "oh stealing money isn't worth the risk of spending my entire
| life in prison".
|
| SBF probably assumed that if he got caught nothing would happen
| because he's witnessed that historically.
| gabesullice wrote:
| I wish society would stop viewing punishment as a tool for the
| greater good, whether as revenge or as something that will
| "correct" the criminal.
|
| Treating it as a correction feels like a lie that polite
| society tells itself in order to absolve itself of the distaste
| of knowingly harming someone. We shouldn't pretend we can "re-
| educate" anyone. We can merely provide opportunities for self
| improvement, but we can't actively "correct" them.
|
| On the other hand, treating punishment as revenge is unhealthy
| too. It's too easy to get carried away and it's even easier to
| get carried away by perverse incentives ( _gestures broadly at
| US incarceration rates_ ). Two wrongs don't make a right, as
| they say.
|
| So then how should society decide what punishment is fair? I
| believe the punishment should be as harsh as an elected judge
| feels is necessary for the perpetrator to think, "it wasn't
| worth _this_ "--and not a bit more.
|
| Isn't that using punishment as a deterrent? It's easy to see it
| that way, but no. That would make punishment impersonal again--
| unbinding it from the specific person, place, and circumstance
| that we should elect judges to consider carefully and
| compassionately. In other words, when one says, "the
| perpetrator should be punished {this much} to deter the
| others", then the perpetrator becomes a pawn, not a person.
|
| All that leads me to believe that: the purpose of a punishment
| should be to inflict a harm equal to the perceived personal
| benefit of the perpetrator's crime, as an enforcement action of
| the social contract between the perpetrator and society.
| tdudhhu wrote:
| I think this is a wise answer. Thank you.
| user3939382 wrote:
| When money and politics is involved at this scale I believe
| nothing I read and half of what I see.
| Dig1t wrote:
| https://archive.is/jwrbE
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| I sincerely wish every centralized exchange had their own SBF to
| burn them down. The negative impact of "investors" has been
| terrible for crypto. They've turned what should have been a
| trustless medium into a caricature of traditional banking with
| all of its downsides and none of the benefits. Whats the point of
| computing all the hashes if you end up handing your coins to some
| guy who pinky promises to pay them back at some point in the
| future with interest?
| freedomben wrote:
| Without centralized exchanges, do you think crypto would ever
| really have become a thing? I like to think it would, and that
| we don't need exchanges, because I too have a strong dislike
| for exchanges (if not a hatred), but I'm a fairly technical
| user and even for me it's not exactly easy to be deep into
| crypto without exchanges. Particularly when it comes to
| exchanging dollars for coins.
| ragebol wrote:
| Exchanges or _centralized_ exchanges?
| freedomben wrote:
| Good point, although can an exchange really exist that is
| decentralized? What would that look like? Basically just a
| neutral broker between two individuals? That is a very
| interesting idea
| svachalek wrote:
| A decentralized exchange is called a DEX and there are a
| lot of them. The biggest one is UniSwap as far as I know.
| They operate via the blockchain's smart contract system.
| Unfortunately there's no way for them to handle exchanges
| with offline assets and currencies so I don't think they
| can exist in a world without CEX.
| ragebol wrote:
| Can't anyone with some Bitcoins and some dollars be an
| exchange?
| freedomben wrote:
| Yes anyone with bitcoin can "exchange" bitcoin directly,
| but when most people say "exchange" they mean some sort
| of trusted third party that executes and coordinates
| trades on somebody's behalf. With most crypto currencies
| there are significant risk and trust issues when going
| directly unless you trust the other party. It can also be
| very difficult to find somebody who wants to buy or sell
| the amount of coin that you are looking to buy/sell, so
| there's considerable utility in the match making.
| gosub100 wrote:
| In (my preferable) alternative universe, there would have
| been no speculation and to buy crypto you would have to buy
| in smaller amounts in cash or at local shops. It would have
| displaced PayPal and been used primarily for e-commerce and
| local small dollar value transactions to allow small
| businesses to escape ACH fees. The largest movers would have
| been international travelers and migrant workers.
| tommoor wrote:
| That would be nice, but what are the other on-ramps from fiat
| that are usable for mainstream folks? (Genuinely asking)
| svachalek wrote:
| You can buy crypto directly from other people, you pay them
| and they sign it over.
| dheera wrote:
| Actually, I wish we could burn down the IRS instead. I have to
| pay $1 of taxes to the US government for every $1 of Bitcoin I
| want to spend, because when I pull it out of my Bitcoin wallet
| (hardware, software, exchange, it doesn't matter) they consider
| it a "taxable event" and I have to pay taxes according to it's
| USD value, which ultimately makes its ecosystem still tied to
| USD, and makes me reluctant to spend crypto because of the
| taxation. Total bullshit. I'm just spending a currency.
|
| Singapore doesn't tax this, you can spend crypto and transact
| crypto and none of that is taxable.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I have to pay $1 of taxes to the US government for every $1
| of Bitcoin I want to spend
|
| AIUI, if the basis price of your Bitcoin was $0 _and_ your
| marginal income tax rate was 50% _and_ it was a short-term
| gain, that would be correct, but:
|
| (1) Your basis value shouldn't usually be 0 or close to it,
|
| (2) Where (1) does not hold, because you got Bitcoin when the
| price _was_ near 0, it should usually be a long-term gain, on
| which you pay the lower LTCG rate, and
|
| (3) The top marginal income tax rate that you would have to
| pay _to the US government_ is well below 50% to start with.
|
| > Singapore doesn't tax this, you can spend crypto and
| transact crypto and none of that is taxable.
|
| Singapore is, then, tax subsidizing crypto speculation, which
| seems like a phenomenally bad policy (but orobably
| sustainable, as long as the crowd that can afford to engage
| in it locally is small enough that the effective subsidy can
| be absorbed), but, I mean, you should absolutely feel free to
| emigrate to Singapore if they'll let you if this is important
| to you.
| spxneo wrote:
| Been following SBF for a long time and this quote my local rabbi
| told me once comes to mind:
|
| "spxneo, if you deceive people that demands to be deceived, you
| will be rich. if you are truthful with those people that demands
| to be deceived, you will become enemies. if you are truthful with
| people that demands truth, you will be neither friends nor
| enemies and poor."
| wolpoli wrote:
| If you deceive people that that demands truth, do you become
| rich and become enemies?
| spxneo wrote:
| maybe but you wont get to keep it because the people you
| fooled will try their best to not let you have it which is
| what happened to SBF. I'm trying to point at the analogy to
| crypto here. everybody believed in something that wasn't but
| badly wanted it to be true. somebody sold them that false
| reality and the capital moved from people who were living in
| a false fictional reality to people who never left this
| reality.
| riversflow wrote:
| There is a huge difference between demanding something and
| badly wanting it.
| spxneo wrote:
| yes the spelling is different.
| silent_cal wrote:
| Am I misinterpreting this, or was your rabbi recommending that
| you deceive people?
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| This is how I read it as well. If the rest of Judaism is like
| this I might consider converting to it.
| spxneo wrote:
| no need. just join YC
| gigatexal wrote:
| Should have got 50+ years
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Judge Lewis Kaplan, just before announcing Bankman-Fried 's
| 25-year sentence, said there was a risk "that this man will be in
| a position to do something very bad in the future, and it's not a
| trivial risk."_
|
| I call bullshit. Typical punitive justice reasoning. He might had
| done fraud, but it's hardly a risk that he "will be in a position
| to do something very bad in the future".
| throwawayyyyy10 wrote:
| Many of the comments here about the utility of punishment is very
| utilitarian, which is ironically fitting since we're talking of
| SBF.
|
| What I never see acknowledged (or believed) by more lenient
| people is the fact that adequate punishment (sometimes harsh is
| adequate) serves to send a message not only to other offenders,
| but maybe most importantly to non-offenders, that the justice
| system is worth something.
|
| "Crime doesn't pay" is to me a greater message to people who are
| not willing to commit crimes in the first place.
| ct0 wrote:
| Great opportunity to remind everyone to think of Ross today.
| https://freeross.org/ He just tuned 40 yesterday.
| damontal wrote:
| Didn't he try to order hits?
| j-krieger wrote:
| Yes. Ulbrecht deserves his sentence.
| vwkd wrote:
| Source?
|
| It seems there's a counter claim that he didn't.
|
| > Ross was smeared with unprosecuted, false allegations
| of planning murder-for-hire that never occurred, were
| never proven, never ruled on by a jury, and were
| ultimately dismissed with prejudice.
|
| https://freeross.org/case-overview/
| tim333 wrote:
| >The district court found by a preponderance of the
| evidence that Ulbricht did commission the murders. The
| evidence that Ulbricht had commissioned murders was
| considered by the judge in sentencing Ulbricht to life
| and was a factor in the Second Circuit's decision to
| uphold the sentence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Allegedly.
| ct0 wrote:
| IIRC that was according to a fbi agent that ended up
| serving time due to pocketing a large sum of bitcoin.
| willy_k wrote:
| One Sam down, one to go
| jMyles wrote:
| Even when (maybe especially when) people greviously harm others
| for profit, prison still doesn't make sense.
|
| How is putting this person in a cage (and filling the coffers of
| prison profiteers) supposed to restore his victims?
| rrdharan wrote:
| Deterrence
| nvr219 wrote:
| RIP to a real one
| underlogic wrote:
| What happened to Caroline Ellison? Did she really escape charges
| of billions of dollars of fraud by rolling over on SBF?
| wmf wrote:
| She pled guilty and will be sentenced at some point.
| meindnoch wrote:
| This is peak effective altruism!
| AlexanderTheGr8 wrote:
| Reposting one of my comments that wasn't particularly liked when
| i originally submitted it but i think becomes more relevant now.
|
| ``` I find such white-collar crimes very interesting because of
| the math between crime and punishment. For the crime that SBF is
| alleged to have committed, we can reasonably expect 20 yrs (he
| will be out in 10-12). But if he had committed a murder, he would
| be in prison for life (no parole).
|
| Mathematically speaking, this implies that a life is worth more
| than fraud worth 8 billion dollars. We can make a very reasonable
| assumption that the govt can save 1 additional life using a
| million dollars (giving necessary treatment to drug addicts /
| suicidal people / etc). Out of the 8 billion dollars from SBF,
| government would have got at least 50 million dollars from taxes
| (this is a lower bound). Out of that 50 million, maybe the govt
| puts 10-20 million back for public good. So the govt could have
| saved at least 10-20 people from the money that SBF is alleged to
| have defrauded.
|
| Based on the above, can we say that SBF indirectly killed 10-20
| people? What would be the punishment for someone who kills 10-20
| people? Surely more than 20 years.
|
| This balance between the scale of crime and the severity of
| punishment can be very interesting. Should someone defrauding 2
| billion dollars suffer twice the punishment of someone defrauding
| 1 billion dollars? What about 2 murders to 1 murder? What about
| numbers on scale that can change an economy (what SBF did)?
|
| More fundamentally, is our legal system scalable? ```
| legendofbrando wrote:
| The point of the punishment is to tell you how much we don't
| want you to do it. You get life for murder because we really
| don't want people killing people. Fleecing them out of money is
| bad, but we can (literally) print more of it. Once someone is
| dead we can't bring them back.
|
| Your analysis is flawed because you're looking at the problem
| from the vantage of collective outcomes. A murderer is one
| person who is making a decision to take an action that can end
| one or many lives. You want them to weigh that heavily as an
| absolute cost (I will go to prison forever if caught) not some
| relative cost (well if I just murder a little then I'll only
| get a little punishment).
| AlexanderTheGr8 wrote:
| > Fleecing them out of money is bad, but we can (literally)
| print more of it. Once someone is dead we can't bring them
| back.
|
| The math of my argument was that with money, you can save
| lives, i.e., prevent people from dying. I don't believe the
| govt can print as much as it likes without hurting the
| economy (and thus people) in some other way.
|
| The core of my argument is that defrauding billions of
| dollars causes deaths of dozens of people indirectly. Is that
| better than directly causing a death? I am not accussing
| anyone; just asking what I think is an interesting question.
| slibhb wrote:
| I don't understand why we need to put this guy in jail for 25
| years. Similarly, Bernie Madoff, whose crimes were far worse, was
| sentenced to 150 years.
|
| For stealing money! Given that the risk of repeat offense is low,
| I just don't see the point of these sentences. I think they're
| mostly about notoriety. Meanwhile murderers and rapists get less
| time, and they're at high risk for re-offending.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > Given that the risk of repeat offense is low, I just don't
| see the point of these sentences.
|
| Is it? Did he even admit to criminal wrong doing? The article
| thinks otherwise:
|
| > Judge Lewis Kaplan, just before announcing Bankman-Fried's
| 25-year sentence, said there was a risk "that this man will be
| in a position to do something very bad in the future, and it's
| not a trivial risk."
|
| > Bankman-Fried acknowledged his mistakes and said he was sorry
| for what happened to customers but "never a word of remorse for
| the commission of terrible crimes," Judge Kaplan said.
|
| > "He knew it was wrong," he added.
| virissimo wrote:
| His likelihood of re-offending is low because he now has a
| near universally bad reputation and so is much less likely to
| be trusted with other people's money in the first place.
|
| Whether that means he should have a shorter sentence depends
| on the purpose of criminal sentences. If the purpose is
| punishment or deterrence, re-offense probability isn't as
| relevant, but if it is merely to protect others while he is
| put away, it is the most relevant consideration.
| BWStearns wrote:
| Adam Neumann _should_ have an atrocious reputation given
| how he treats other people's money but VCs seem happy to
| fund his new adventures (presumably assuming they can still
| make money on the way up before the bust).
|
| There would no doubt be people happy to give SBF the funds
| to go fleece a whole new herd of victims on the off chance
| he got away with it enough to make the number go up.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| I think scammers are frequently repeat offenders too.
| uxp100 wrote:
| For one thing, retribution is accepted in American law as a
| justification for punishment is my understanding.
|
| For a second thing, I'm not so sure the chance of a repeat
| offense is low.
| slibhb wrote:
| I'm not arguing against retribution. I'm arguing that this
| particular retribution is not proportional.
|
| In terms of the chance of repeat offense...who would invest
| money with SBF at this point? It's not like he was mugging
| people, they voluntarily gave him their money.
| ibern wrote:
| Don't underestimate American stupidity.
| apsurd wrote:
| It's a deterrent for other would-be white collar criminals. The
| punishment should match the magnitude of the fraud so it indeed
| does deter in proportion.
| bjt wrote:
| It's about deterrence. Imagine you're considering committing a
| crime. You're looking at the upside and the downside. The
| equation on the downside looks like this:
|
| risk = size of punishment * probability of being caught.
|
| So how do you deter a potential criminal who is unlikely to get
| caught? You have to jack up the size of the punishment to
| compensate for that low probability.
|
| Economist Gary Becker started this school of thought in the 60s
| and it's been implemented and debated in a million ways since
| then. Example:
| https://masonlec.org/site/rte_uploads/files/JEP/Readings/But...
| slibhb wrote:
| In other words he's not being punished for what he did; he's
| being punished to dissuade others from copying him. I think
| people should be punished for their actions and not to
| increase utility of society.
| csallen wrote:
| FWIW, I've read that multiple people committed suicide in
| despair of the financial ruin caused by SBF's fraud. So he
| did do things worthy of hefty punishment.
|
| Stealing money may not inherently "feel" like a real crime,
| because money (especially digital crypto money) is a very
| intangible hypothetical thing. It does not resonate with
| our lizard brains like violence does.
|
| However, it _is_ a real crime. And harsh punishments like
| prison time are needed to remind us of that.
| lwood42 wrote:
| It acts as a serious deterrent - if he got a slap on the wrist
| then it shows that any aspiring crypto scammer can steal
| millions of dollars and live the high life. You could also
| argue that the number of people affected by his crimes is
| orders of magnitude greater than the those affected by the
| majority of crimes, and would therefore justify such a much
| greater sentence.
| bowmessage wrote:
| You sound like someone that didn't lose millions due to SBF's
| negligence.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| The judge felt if the sentence were too short he'd do it again.
|
| Also - the real reason he's getting such a heavy handed
| punishment isn't because he stole money, it's because he stole
| money from the rich and the powerful.
| sandspar wrote:
| Maybe think of money as embodied energy. If you realize that he
| stole 15 years of retirement from thousands of people then it
| may make more sense. 15 good years of your life turned into 15
| bad ones, repeat thousands of times.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I love harsh American justice. In some countries you can stalk,
| kidnap, rape, kill, and then dismember a child and get less of a
| sentence than SBF. I have seen terrorists conduct attacks where
| mass casualties and death occur, they get sentenced to five
| years, get "rehabilitated" and then go free and do it all again.
| I have heard people drone on about American prison sentences
| being overboard but after seeing hundreds of
| murder/torture/terrorist cases prosecuted all over the world, the
| US is the only country that gets it right. If you are a danger to
| society you should be removed from society according to the risk
| you present. There is no excuse for reoffense.
| xeornet wrote:
| Sorry but you're suggesting that the USA is the only country
| that gets punitive justice right?
|
| Works pretty well out here in Australia, or much of Eastern
| Europe.
| tim333 wrote:
| Yeah they may have got it right on SBF but they get in wrong
| in plenty of others. See groups of shoplifters clearing out
| stores in SF in full view because no one will prosecute for
| example. https://youtu.be/Uo-LIGTHZc8?t=36
| sdo72 wrote:
| Everyone has only 1 life, imprisonment of a life is one of the
| ultimate forms of torturing. This basically is killing his most
| meaningful years away.
|
| I can only agree this form of imprisonment for murderers,
| rapists, ones who physically and mentally hurt people with
| permanent losses.
|
| Ones can argue that he mentally & physically hurt others, but we
| need evidence. We should have a better system to force these
| individuals to pay back or make up the losses. Of course, he will
| never be able to pay back all the losses, but at least that's a
| better punishment and I'm almost certain every prisoner will
| agree to do. They will absolutely trade all of their finances for
| x years in exchange for freedom.
| ezfe wrote:
| This type of imprisonment is just as much to scare other people
| as it is to punish him. Repaying the people he stole from is
| also required here, but that has no meaning as a deterrent.
| sdo72 wrote:
| Imagining how much more value he could produce and even pay
| back if he's not imprisoned.
| ezfe wrote:
| lol
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Personally, I think we should offer prisoners corporal
| punishment alternatives. Flogging every six months for ten
| years, plus fines, plus community service, plus you can't
| handle investors money or be in the c-suite or start a company,
| and you pay double taxes seems fair to me.
| mpalmer wrote:
| Without the swift promise of decades in prison, what prevents
| the "next SBF" from committing similar crimes and causing
| similar damage?
|
| > Everyone has only 1 life
|
| Doesn't that make imprisonment (the ultimate time penalty) one
| of the fairest, most equitable punishments there is?
|
| > We should have a better system to force these individuals to
| pay back or make up the losses.
|
| As you say, he'll never be able to pay it back. The state can't
| force him to pursue high-paying work, and he goes unpunished in
| the meantime?
| efitz wrote:
| The article is followed at this moment with an article titled
| "SBF's Parents are Heartbroken" with a picture of his parents
| where both are unhappy, outside in the rain under umbrellas.
|
| I wonder if they considered their role? I haven't seen anyone
| accuse SBF of being a psychopath; given that, how does a person
| become so ethically bankrupt? A: His parents failed to do their
| job of ensuring that he developed a conscience.
|
| SBF's actions are his own; but he would never have gotten to
| where he ended up if they had done their job.
| olalonde wrote:
| Not only that but his parents were actively involved in FTX and
| profited greatly from it[0].
|
| [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-
| assets/2023/09/24/sam-b...
| tim333 wrote:
| Yeah:
|
| >The suit says that SBF's father directed where company
| payments would go, picked out charities to benefit from his
| son's largesse, entered into and terminated contracts, hand-
| picked the company's outside counsel, made hiring
| recommendations, and authorized expenses.
|
| >SBF's mother, used ill-gotten funds from her son's
| businesses as a piggy bank for her political action
| committee.
|
| >The suit says that Bankman, SBF's father, was at one point
| drawing a $200,000 annual salary from FTX but that he thought
| he was "supposed to" be getting a nice, round $1 million. He
| emailed his son, according to the suit, "Gee, Sam I don't
| know what to say here. This is the first [I] have heard of
| the 200K a year salary! Putting Barbara on this," he added,
| calling in the boss's mother. The suit says that shortly
| thereafter, Bankman-Fried made a $10 million gift to his
| parents out of funds from Alameda Research (FTX's sister
| hedge fund), then had the couple put on the deed to a $16.4
| million Bahamas property with funds "ultimately provided" by
| FTX.
| AI_beffr wrote:
| prison is such an interesting concept. violent people need to be
| physically separated for the safety of the population. but for a
| crime like this maybe it would be better to just give him 5-10
| years in prison but never let him deal in finance again. i would
| rather have him on a road crew tying re-bar than using up tax
| payer money in prison...
| smoovb wrote:
| Excessive. It's not hard to take away his ability to do harm
| again, he is not a threat to society. In fact, put him to work
| righting all his wrongs. This judge and sentence a waste of
| taxpayer money.
| donohoe wrote:
| Here is a quote from Dept. of Justice
|
| "Four major goals are usually attributed to the sentencing
| process: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, and
| incapacitation. Retribution refers to just deserts: people who
| break the law deserve to be punished. The other three goals are
| utilitarian, emphasizing methods to protect the public."
|
| Given the scale of fraud, the money involved, and the nature of
| SBF at trail, I would disagree.
|
| https://www.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh241/files/archives/n...
| switch007 wrote:
| Is the US similar to the UK where he will very unlikely serve
| anything like 25 years in prison?
| pavon wrote:
| It's hard to say. Historically federal convictions were very
| strict, requiring you to serve at least 85% of your sentence.
| The First Step Act passed in 2018 significantly relaxed that
| down to 50% for non-violent crimes[1]. I don't know if there is
| enough data yet to determine how common or easy it will be for
| convicts get their sentenced reduced by that much.
|
| [1]Specifically for crimes not included in this long list:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3632#d_4_D
| freejazz wrote:
| Good, put his parents in jail next.
| reso wrote:
| Sam is a crook, no doubt, but even now I find him a funny figure.
| His trial defence was awful. He sincerely believes he was trying
| to do the right thing, so spent his time on the stand defending
| his actions at length, instead of keeping his mouth shut except
| to express contrition. This probably cost him years of freedom.
|
| It's strange to say but there's an... authenticity to this that I
| find endearing.
| la64710 wrote:
| Bitcoin is and will be a scam
| la64710 wrote:
| Bitcoin is and will be a digital scam
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