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Bankman-Fried's Shrinking ‘$250M Bond’

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Re: Bankman-Fried's Shrinking ‘$250M Bond’

#111

Post by darth_avocado »

georgeecollins wrote: post #6

For anyone who is not aware, in the US you sometimes have to put up bail money to get out of jail because you are a flight risk or there is a danger you will commit further crimes (assuming you are guilty which is at that point unproven). There are services that do this as a bond, called a bail bond. You typically don't put up the full amount, maybe 5-10%. The rest of the risk of you not showing up for your trial is…

> is that it favors people with wealth

Are you sure it is just the wealth though? People get denied bail for smaller offenses like stealing from a store, because you know, they look a certain way.

Re: Bankman-Fried's Shrinking ‘$250M Bond’

#112

Post by dragonwriter »

loeg wrote: post #105
tiahura wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence, the ankle monitor and his parents’ house. And judge, don’t forget, Mr. SBF voluntarily waived extradition.

His parents' house is the secured portion of the bond! It's $4M, which is a lot, but nothing compared to the unsecured $246M IOU.

Its not an IOU. Bail is not a loan. People often have the model that the premium paid to an arms-length bail agent is a finance charge on a loan, which is (1) not strictly true, because bail agents don't deposit the full bail with the court and get it back, (2) to the extent it is, while not accurate, a not-too-bad loose approximation of how doing business with a bail agent works, since a bail agent is a for-profit business weighing the risk of flight and the cost of recovery and/or bail forfeiture, within state regulations.

But that's not what courts are trying to do with bail, so when you have a bond that isn't from a bail agent, the model that is tolerably-incorrect in the bail agent case becomes wildly inapplicable.

Re: Bankman-Fried's Shrinking ‘$250M Bond’

#113

Post by rootusrootus »

moralestapia wrote: post #32

"Yes, you read that right. Bankman-Fried walked out of court a free man by signing a piece of paper where he promised to pay the court $250 million if he decides to flee to another country with no extradition. This, of course, is totally absurd." Whew! This ought to piss off a LOT of people who couldn't afford to pay bails in the range of 1,000s-10,000s of dollars. 250M on a written IOU with (almost) no collateral to…

I expect that's because people keep thinking it's some kind of loan. If you can let go of that misunderstanding, then the process does start to make more sense.

Re: Bankman-Fried's Shrinking ‘$250M Bond’

#114

Post by anonymoushn »

mise_en_place wrote: post #96
ethanbond wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did he destroy billions in wealth? Seems to me that he made chart go up for no reason and everyone was perfectly happy with that, and when chart went down for the same reasons (i.e. fraud/no legitimate reason) then everyone is upset about it. If people are upset about lesser offenses getting handled more aggressively, they should spend some time lobbying for lesser offenses to get handled less aggressively.

He operated a Ponzi scheme, so yes, he did in fact destroy billions in wealth. What is the evidence to the contrary? The fact that FTX destroyed billions in wealth is not relevant to this trial at all. It’s whether or not he intentionally and maliciously defrauded his customers.

It's not correct that he operated a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme involves selling people equity, then not actually having the underlying business, lying about returns and paying redeemers using money from other depositors. If I open a bank or "fintech" and let people deposit dollars and just steal their dollars without ever claiming that their balance of dollars has increased, it's not a Ponzi scheme.

Re: Bankman-Fried's Shrinking ‘$250M Bond’

#115

Post by lbwtaylor »

jmyeet wrote: post #64

I want to contrast SBF's treatment at the hands of the government to that of Carl Nelson. This is a name you probably don't know but let me summarize [1]. Nelson was an Amazon employee who worked on securing real estate deals for data centers. Based on an anonymous email sent to Jeff Bezos that Nelson was getting kickbacks on these deals where Amazon was being charged exorbitant leasing fees. In 2020, the FBI showed…

>law firm named Gibson Dunn (who have been at the center of many controversies)

Gibson is one of the most respect law firms in the United States. It is certainly possible that they took some sort of nefarious action, but I find that unlikely, and see no suggestion of proof here.

An article quotes this:

>>Carleton Nelson denies the allegations. His lawyers have said in court that broad allowances for outside work in his Amazon employment contract gave him leeway to do business with Amazon clients and customers.

Well, sounds to me like Nelson took the kickbacks and the argument is whether he did a good enough job papering them to look like real transactions.

https://www.geekwire.com/2022/former-seattle-entrepreneur-an...

As for no damages:

>> Amazon notes that its initial calculation of damages included damages attributable to inflated rents and fees it had agreed to pay to lessors that were controlled by the defendants.... Amazon has now been able to negotiate amendments to the leases, which has mitigated, but not completely eliminated these damages

So seems like the problem was resolved because the fraud was discovered and remedied, not that there was no fraud to begin with.

https://twitter.com/Amy_K_Nelson/status/1489227415108919297/...

Re: Bankman-Fried's Shrinking ‘$250M Bond’

#116

Post by maxbond »

loeg wrote: post #110
dragonwriter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just clearly not a $250M bond. It is, in fact, a $250M bail bond, people just have a very wrong mental model, based on a bad generalization from an already slightly wrong mental model of the terms when an arms-length bail agent provides surety to the court for the defendant, of what that means.

> people just have a very wrong mental model, based on a bad generalization from an already slightly wrong mental model of the terms when an arms-length bail agent provides surety to the court for the defendant, of what that means. Are you familiar with the "please don't sneer" guideline?

I don't think "please don't sneer" means "forego all metacommentary," and I didn't interpret this as particularly sneering or mean or rude. Cursory inspection of dang's citing this rule seems to be really broad, really rude snark, I don't think this comment fits the pattern I'm seeing there.

I'd propose our discourse would be hobbled if we couldn't make comments like, "many people in this discussion have misconception X". But perhaps "very wrong mental model" was too many superlatives and "misunderstanding" would've been sufficient.

Re: Bankman-Fried's Shrinking ‘$250M Bond’

#117

Post by jmyeet »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #100
jmyeet wrote: post #64

I want to contrast SBF's treatment at the hands of the government to that of Carl Nelson. This is a name you probably don't know but let me summarize [1]. Nelson was an Amazon employee who worked on securing real estate deals for data centers. Based on an anonymous email sent to Jeff Bezos that Nelson was getting kickbacks on these deals where Amazon was being charged exorbitant leasing fees. In 2020, the FBI showed…

>Why exactly is the government not seizing every asset he owns I find it utterly strange that people respond to injustice by asking why isn't more injustice being done, you know for equity?

I clearly stated I don't support the legal basis for civil asset forfeiture, particularly as its used in the US, specifically without filing charges or that the asset is the defendant so the government can launch a civil action against an asset for being suspected of being the result of a criminal action by its alleged owner.

It's even worse that law enforcement gets to keep the proceeds of seizing assets where there are no charges (let alone convictions) so we've added a profit motive for what should be unlawful search and seizure. Yay capitalism.

But that is the legal doctrine we operated under.

Unlike the Amazon case, there is a mountain of evidence against SBF, the new CEO has no doubt coopearted and provided ample docuemntation, there are 2 cooperating witnesses and charges have been filed. Through ownership of Bahamanian property (and who knows what else) there is a clearly evidence trail between FTX customer assets to SBF and SBF's parents and associates. It is all quite plausibly the proceeds of crime.

Basically, SBF walked into a bank, robbed it and then used the money he stole to post his bond.

Re: Bankman-Fried's Shrinking ‘$250M Bond’

#118

Post by anonymoushn »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #100
jmyeet wrote: post #64

I want to contrast SBF's treatment at the hands of the government to that of Carl Nelson. This is a name you probably don't know but let me summarize [1]. Nelson was an Amazon employee who worked on securing real estate deals for data centers. Based on an anonymous email sent to Jeff Bezos that Nelson was getting kickbacks on these deals where Amazon was being charged exorbitant leasing fees. In 2020, the FBI showed…

>Why exactly is the government not seizing every asset he owns I find it utterly strange that people respond to injustice by asking why isn't more injustice being done, you know for equity?

Presumably the government would then return the assets to the creditors. Do you think this is unjust?

Re: Bankman-Fried's Shrinking ‘$250M Bond’

#119

Post by nkurz »

dragonwriter wrote: post #76
nkurz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is wrong, a signed surety bond is not collateral, its a binding commitment to liability. Security/collateral for that liability is a separate thing, abd the only security provided is the house. Thanks for the detail. I wasn't sure if the "bonds in lesser amounts" were clearly just signed promises to pay, or might also include additional property bonds. It's the "lesser amounts" that confuses me. Does this mean…

> this would seem to imply that the court has decided that Sam and his parents have non-tainted assets worth more than $250M, What I think it actually implies is that the surety given is a condition described by 18 USC § 3142(c)(1)(B)(xiv) and not 18 USC § 3142(c)(1)(B)(xii), and that people forget that (i)-(xiii) are examples of options, but do not limit the discretion provided by (xiv). https://www.law.cornell.edu/…

Thanks for the link, and for your patience.

Unpacking that, (xii) says that "such surety shall have a net worth which shall have sufficient unencumbered value to pay the amount of the bail bond", while (xiv) says that they can instead "satisfy any other condition".

Does this mean that in your interpretation the headline $250M bail bond number is indeed nominal, and likely no one was required to show that they can actually afford to pay this amount? That if Sam does flee, the court accepts that it will likely collect less than this amount from the signees? And that bail could have just as easily been set at $1B, or $1T with no difference to the court as to his parents' ability to sign for it?

(I added an edit to the thread starter mentioning your correction)

Re: Bankman-Fried's Shrinking ‘$250M Bond’

#120

Post by sirwhinesalot »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #100
jmyeet wrote: post #64

I want to contrast SBF's treatment at the hands of the government to that of Carl Nelson. This is a name you probably don't know but let me summarize [1]. Nelson was an Amazon employee who worked on securing real estate deals for data centers. Based on an anonymous email sent to Jeff Bezos that Nelson was getting kickbacks on these deals where Amazon was being charged exorbitant leasing fees. In 2020, the FBI showed…

>Why exactly is the government not seizing every asset he owns I find it utterly strange that people respond to injustice by asking why isn't more injustice being done, you know for equity?

It's not that they want the same injustice happening both ways, it's that injustice seems to only happen to poorer less well-connected folk. The justice system is not supposed to favour people based on connections and/or wealth.

There's a reason people say crimes that are punished with a fine are laws that only apply to poor people.

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