Live data from Hacker News

Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang are cooperating in the criminal case against SBF

nytimes.com

281–290 of 338 posts

Re: Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang are cooperating in the criminal case against SBF

#281

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.

This time SBF just kinda dumped a huge bag full of evidence on the Justice department's doorstep like it was an early christmas present. The trial is going to be hilarious.

Re: Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang are cooperating in the criminal case against SBF

#282

The bigger story is that in their complaint, the SEC is declaring FTT to be an investment contract and therefore a "security". https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sec-calls-ftt-exchange-token-... Since all exchange native tokens more or less work the same way, that would mean they are all securities. That would include BNB. If this holds, the crypto exchange game is over.

FTT was clearly a security because something like 25% of FTX revenue was used for FTT buybacks. Other crypto tokens don't entitle you to a share of some businesses money, so less clear if they're securities.

Re: Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang are cooperating in the criminal case against SBF

#283
post #280
post #226

They all could have just been basic rich people pulling $600k[0] a year at Jane Street, but they just couldn’t get enough. [0]This number is completely made up and betrays my total lack of knowledge about what finance people make.

As far as I understand they were making pretty good bank with Alameda doing crypto arbitrage. Could probably have been set for life just doing that. Human psychology is funny. Not content with being stinking rich in their 20's, they embarked on a massive fraud to get even richer. To give them the benefit of the doubt, I'm not sure they set out to commit fraud, just make money off suckers, but when the temptation pres…

Their margins got squeezed quickly. Like the trader that makes a million one year and can’t repeat the random walk the next and starts pitching his “trading course” on YouTube instead of continuing to lose money, same for this but replace “trading course” with a much more sophisticated level of how to fleece retail. And they believed in themselves. I still think they don’t consider what they did “fraud”. They’re just now cooperative because the legal needle has pierced their Bahamas and SV bubble.

Re: Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang are cooperating in the criminal case against SBF

#284
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is up with the conspiracy theories that professors are somehow politically powerful entities? Is everyone putting forth these theories still in college? Do they not know how little power college professors wield outside academia. Personal connections to the head of the SEC on the other hand are valuable.

> Do they not know how little power college professors wield outside academia Are you joking? That's absolutely not the case for Economics (the context we're talking about here). Why don't you look up the backgrounds of the people on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors? Or, look up who drafts major legislation? If you watch MIT's Econ 101 course on YouTube, the professor who teaches it was actually the guy behind…

I looked up the backgrounds of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. And? A few were professors for a few years and maybe one made it a major job.

The former head of the SEC was also a partner at Goldman Sachs, where he co-chaired their Finance committee overseeing their internal controls, spent 4 years in an undersecretary position in the treasury department, joined the Senate staff and helped write Sarbanes-Oxley, is former chair of the US CTFC where he overhauled regulations for 6 years.

By my count, that's 12 years of high-level federal government experience, 18 years at Goldman Sachs, and maybe 6 years as a professor. And the professorship was after at least 24 years doing other things at a very high level

You seem to confuse cause and effect

Re: Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang are cooperating in the criminal case against SBF

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so she won't be prosecuted despite pleading guilty? Or how does this work?

> Wait, so she won't be prosecuted despite pleading guilty? She won't be further prosecuted (i. e., beyond the charges she is pleading guilty to) for conduct related to the acts specified, if she cooperates fully as agreed. In other words, supposing there are other charges related to that cobduct which could be filed, DoJ is bound not to pursue them if she upholds her end of the agreement. If she does not, DoJ can ad…

Thanks for explaining some of the subtleties of these kinds of agreements.

I hope (and assume) these details will have no practical value to my life! But it's good to know how the world works.

Re: Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang are cooperating in the criminal case against SBF

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to know for sure but I agree. SBF might catch a break for looking innocent and young, but this really is a textbook example of when bail should not be granted. Bail may happen if he ends up cooperating. I’m very interested to see if the parents are charged.

>looking innocent lol. lmao even

https://i.imgur.com/Mu9SZBI.png

Re: Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang are cooperating in the criminal case against SBF

#287

The bigger story is that in their complaint, the SEC is declaring FTT to be an investment contract and therefore a "security". https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sec-calls-ftt-exchange-token-... Since all exchange native tokens more or less work the same way, that would mean they are all securities. That would include BNB. If this holds, the crypto exchange game is over.

> all exchange native tokens more or less work the same way, that would mean they are all securities... If this holds, the crypto exchange game is over.

Exchanges don't need tokens to be a place to swap and park coins. I don't see Kraken or Coinbase using a house token/security. Some exchanges will be okay.

Re: Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang are cooperating in the criminal case against SBF

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federal sentences come with a maximum of 54 days per year [1] of good time credit, and there is no parole when serving federal time. This all but guarantees that a 10 year sentence will result in 102 months of incarceration and release no earlier than that. [1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/02/11/2022-02...

Look up the recent case of Aaron Singerman. He was sentenced to five years, but was out in ten months. Didn't spend a single Christmas behind bars. Now, this was presumably for some form of cooperation, and the circumstances are unclear -- but it's just not true that the Feds won't let you out early if they feel like it.

how could you suspect there would be jailhouse cooperation from a guy they call Singerman?

(for non-native English speakers, giving information to the police is called "singing" in early/mid-20th century slang)

Re: Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang are cooperating in the criminal case against SBF

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federal sentences come with a maximum of 54 days per year [1] of good time credit, and there is no parole when serving federal time. This all but guarantees that a 10 year sentence will result in 102 months of incarceration and release no earlier than that. [1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/02/11/2022-02...

Look up the recent case of Aaron Singerman. He was sentenced to five years, but was out in ten months. Didn't spend a single Christmas behind bars. Now, this was presumably for some form of cooperation, and the circumstances are unclear -- but it's just not true that the Feds won't let you out early if they feel like it.

> Look up the recent case of Aaron Singerman. He was sentenced to five years, but was out in ten months. Didn't spend a single Christmas behind bars. Now, this was presumably for some form of cooperation, and the circumstances are unclear -- but it's just not true that the Feds won't let you out early if they feel like it.

His sentence was reduced to 36 months in a court action that was publicly reported, and there were several subsequent sealed actions between then and the release.

> but it's just not true that the Feds won't let you out early if they feel like it.

A reduction in sentence is a very different thing than early release.

Re: Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang are cooperating in the criminal case against SBF

#290

The thing that makes me very uneasy about this is... it's crypto. If you let people walk away with anything less than decades in prison you're setting a bad precedent. Why? Because the entire design of crypto is to allow you to squirrel money away, honestly what are the chances that these guys have some cold wallet lying around with a few million dollars in bitcoin? That's what I'd do if I was running this scam.

You're assuming that FTX is the extent of the DOJ and SEC investigations. SBF is going to be offered a deal - "Spend the rest of your life in prison or give us CZ/Binance and all the other big players and be out in 10". Remember, in addition to their chat group labeled "Wirefraud" they also had another one called "Exchange coordination" that the heads of other exchanges participated in. In addition to SBF, CZ (Binanc…

They will all get deals to avoid trial because nobody in power wants to dig into political donations or possibly even money laundering from US funds that went to Ukraine with some of it stolen and washed through FTX.
Post reply on HN