191–200 of 338 posts
It's hard for me to fathom being so privileged and then essentially throwing away your life. I have no idea what they were thinking.
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Any ideas why these prosecutions are moving forward so fast? Usually this stuff takes forever as evidence is carefully gathered. Curious if anyone has any insights here.
Because two people near the top of the conspiracy, with broad knowledge of its details and where the supporting evidence is, have decided to fully cooperate.
And because SBF likes to talk and told his (original) lawyers to, as he tells it, “go fuck themselves” when they advised him to stop publicly confessing his crimes.
Lots of people are speculating on sentencing, some are comparing SBF to Holmes, but IMHO it's likely in this case he is going to plead guilty. Whatever comes out in a criminal trial, e.g., testimony, could be used against SBF in the civil cases brought by the SEC and CFTC. Assuming SBF will plead guilty, given the amount of the losses he has caused, which far exceed the amounts involved in Holmes' fraud, what sort of plea agreement will SBF be offered.
One theory of why these charges against SBF were brought so quickly is that the US attorney is extraordinarily confident he can obtain a conviction. The "brilliant" SBF's idiotic public behaviour after the bankruptcy filing has no doubt has made the government's job much easier. This makes sense because as many readers will know, generally federal prosecutors do not like to lose and they will not gamble. Their egos and reputations may be at stake. They want slam dunks. For Damian Williams this is probably a slam dunk. Assuming he does not make any significant mistakes.
What about the previous CEO of Alameda, Sam Trabucco? Caroline only took over recently, I haven't heard anything about his legal standing at this point.
I was wondering about Trabucco as well. His name is nowhere to be seen, but he was leading Alameda together with Caroline up until last summer. If SBF is also going for plea bargain, will various government institutions ask from him to get some dirt on Tether (and on Binance)? Might be that they are more interested in campaign financing.
In the last paragraph on page 3 of the plea letter, we see that most of the counts cover the period from 2019-2022 (2020 for the money laundering). Thus, the crimes that Ellison is pleading guilty to were going on while Trabucco was the co-CEO.
According to Wikipedia, he "officially became the co-CEO in October 2021", and resigned in August 2022.[1]
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Are those recordings publicly available or any source?
Would also appreciate a link. What I have (maybe GP is mixing these up?): Alleged Twitter DM conversation between SBF and Vox reporter that fits otherwise: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23462333/sam-bankman-frie... Audio recordings of two calls between SBF and Tiffany Wong where he says he donated to Democratic Party publicly but equivalent amount to Republican Party dark to play both sides: https://piped.video/…
And then, maybe 90% down the page, a little more on how he feels about ethics.
(It's too bad that this whole HN thread is still flagged, because it seems very relevant to the story, and one of the more interesting facets.)
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Interesting: On page 4, there's a section listing out the crimes she will not be further prosecuted for. As you'd expect this includes the 7 counts listed earlier, but there's also an 8th section that's been redacted. Any ideas on what this could be referring to?
> As you'd expect this includes the 7 counts listed earlier, but there's also an 8th section that's been redacted. Any ideas on what this could be referring to? My guess would be that it refers to a conspiracy (or other “group” offense, like RICO [0]) for which she was not charged, and which no one else had been publicly charged yet, such that not redacting it would reveal otherwise nonpublic information about how Do…
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It depends on how lenient they are. Many times, deals just for pleading guilty are a thing, leaving conspiracies aside.
That's also bad. Prosecutors hold a huge sentence over people and compel them to confess - it's a kind of hypothetical torture, forcing you to confess by the bad stuff they'll probably do to you. Prosecutors, along with their investigators, should come to a position on whether a party is guilty and if so what punishment they deserve. They should then make that case in court. Courts would need much greater throughput…
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There are no such things as benevolent billionaires. There’s a problem with a society that enables billionaires to exist at all. It shouldn’t even be possible but we’re here for a lot of reasons. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cu6EbELZ6I
> There are no such things as benevolent billionaires. Interesting thesis, do you have any reasoning to support your claim?
Could Caroline have reported prior to collapse and earned a buttload of cash from the SEC for whistleblowing?
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>decades in prison Something tells me they'll be okay. Just look at Liz Holmes of Theranos.
She got 11 years of which she'll have to serve at least around 9 because it's federal, and that was for something that probably wasn't fraudulent from the very beginning. So, seems like they... won't be okay.