Live data from Hacker News

Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

nytimes.com

291–300 of 1001 posts

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#291

> A high school librarian, a retired investment banker and a Metro North train conductor: Sam Bankman-Fried’s fate is in the hands of a diverse group of jurors who sat through weeks of scathing testimony against the former cryptocurrency mogul. Maybe I watch too much TV, but I wonder how the investment banker was allowed to stay on Jury. I've heard mostly anecdotes that lawyers do everything in their power to get exp…

They only have so many peremptory challenges in the jury selection process. Maybe there were others who were even more problematic, or he was challenged for cause and the judge denied it.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#293

In under five hours! The jury was home in time for dinner. One question for legal people—why is there such a long gap between conviction and sentencing? In this case, the sentence won't be set until March of next year.

Because there's essentially a whole second sentencing trial. After the verdict, the Parole Office prepares a Presentence Report (I'm not sure if these are public? I'm always looking for them and never finding them on PACER†), the "PSR", which is like the opening bid for the recommended offense levels and grouping. The prosecution and defense then respond to the PSR with exculpatory, mitigating, or aggravating claims,…

A guy named Lev Dermen just got 40 years with a guidelines score of 47 (the table doesn't even go that high). He was charged with defrauding the government out of half a billion dollars in biodiesel tax credits, went to trial and kind of like SBF all the other conspirators testified against him. That case also had destruction of evidence, witness intimidation, and at the time of sentencing the government was still trying to recover a Bugatti and a bunch of money in Turkey from him.

But the number of victims and the hardship element probably means he's looking at life.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#295

He's a lesser evil. The only reasons why he went down were: 1. because he's not a greater evil, he didn't get dirt on people who can bring you down is a great way to never be brought down (Epstein is an anomaly); and 2. he did it publicly, there are about 2500 known billionaires in the world and estimated another 1000 that have assets that cannot be accounted for determine net worth accurately; he should worked on ge…

[deleted]

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#297

No, they had pizza: https://twitter.com/tolstoybb/status/1720228218672988667?t=t...

I'm assuming it went like this: "So this guy is guilty right?" (10x other Jurors) "Agreed". (That one "For Fairness" Juror) "I dunno, we're sending this guy to jail for an awfully long time. I think we need to think it over a bit longer." "Fine, Lets get pizza". * 4 hours later * "Okay, we thought about it some more. He's guilty right?" (11x other Jurors) Guilty. ----------- At least, I'm amused by the thought of a "…

12 Hungry Men

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#299
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on a jury recently. Deliberations began after closing statements Friday morning. First thing we all agreed we would not be coming back on Monday…

> First thing we all agreed we would not be coming back on Monday… Kind of scary that this is the rigor our justice system hinges on.

It was a pretty boring civil case. I suspect we were just deciding how much one insurance company was paying the other…

It was also a pretty one sided case.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#300

Impressively fast response. Would Travis Kalanick be found guilty for Greyballing and more had Uber had a "run on the bank"? Would Adam Neumann be found guilty for fraud if WeWork's current Chapter 11 was more than just a real estate lease re-negotiation? If the FTX recovery rate gets up to 80-90%, SBF's net fraud might be reduced in scale. In which case, why aren't others like TK going to jail?

While I agree that SBF was, to a certain extent, doing the promise-a-lot-and-stall-for-time method that a lot of overhyped founders do, there were two key differences:

1) he lied about key details of what would be done with the money people gave him, which is a specifically bad kind of lying because there are special laws for it

2) it wasn't just VC funds that lost money

Post reply on HN