Mark Karpelès did nothing wrong!
Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#392Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#393> You’d think this MIT graduate would wise up, but he never did.
The MIT campus has a major public road running through the middle of it, one of the busiest surface streets in the area. You don't have to stand there very long to see a crowd of students almost get hit by a car because they didn't look before they crossed the street.
Point is, the old cliche is true, there really is such a thing as a person with a lot of book-learning but less common sense than a sea slug. I think we saw one such get convicted today.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#394I liked the article detailing how poorly he did on the stand: https://www.thefp.com/p/humiliating-cross-examination-sam-ba... “Did you say in private, ‘Fuck regulators?’ ” “Did you call some customers ‘dumb motherfuckers?’ ” “Did you fly to the Super Bowl in a private plane?” “Most FTX customers did not have a line of credit, correct?” “Do you deny that Alameda had a $65 billion line of credit?” And on, and on, and o…
With or without testifying he cut a remarkably unlikeable figure. Smug, aloof, arrogant and condescending, honestly much more so than a typical white collar defendant. I suppose his fatal flaw, though was not having anyone else to blame.
Where is Dan Friedberg during all this?
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
The opposite thing is going to happen in this case, and I'm sure you'll hear Ken on Serious Trouble saying the same thing next week (you can get Andrew McCarthy, another former AUSA, saying the same thing in the National Review today if you want that with a dash of anti-woke conservative racial politics). In basic economic crimes, sentences scale primarily with dollar losses, and FTX lost billions. He's going to do s…
It's worth noting that the mechanism is still different. In this case, "the upper end of the range when you math out the sentencing guidelines" and "the amount you get if you take all the base charges and add them up and assume they're sequential" start to blend together because of the sheer scale. But it's not like when the scale gets big enough, the whale sushi hypothetical math starts becoming the real way we calc…
That's true, and a good point.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#396I liked the article detailing how poorly he did on the stand: https://www.thefp.com/p/humiliating-cross-examination-sam-ba... “Did you say in private, ‘Fuck regulators?’ ” “Did you call some customers ‘dumb motherfuckers?’ ” “Did you fly to the Super Bowl in a private plane?” “Most FTX customers did not have a line of credit, correct?” “Do you deny that Alameda had a $65 billion line of credit?” And on, and on, and o…
I guess he didn't have the money to pay for a good defense team, or didn't listen. Pretty amateur hour what he did. Made it very easy and quick for the jurors.
Some of the stuff he was doing and saying before the trial, even Barry Zuckerkorn or Lionel Hutz would have told him to shut the hell up. He just could not stay out of his own way.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#397I liked the article detailing how poorly he did on the stand: https://www.thefp.com/p/humiliating-cross-examination-sam-ba... “Did you say in private, ‘Fuck regulators?’ ” “Did you call some customers ‘dumb motherfuckers?’ ” “Did you fly to the Super Bowl in a private plane?” “Most FTX customers did not have a line of credit, correct?” “Do you deny that Alameda had a $65 billion line of credit?” And on, and on, and o…
Yeah. And I find it quite contemptuous for SBF to often use "Yup" instead of yes.
That's how he talks. Watch any interview with him.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#398I liked the article detailing how poorly he did on the stand: https://www.thefp.com/p/humiliating-cross-examination-sam-ba... “Did you say in private, ‘Fuck regulators?’ ” “Did you call some customers ‘dumb motherfuckers?’ ” “Did you fly to the Super Bowl in a private plane?” “Most FTX customers did not have a line of credit, correct?” “Do you deny that Alameda had a $65 billion line of credit?” And on, and on, and o…
The most unbelievable behavior on cross was described by Tiffany Fong. The prosecutor asked Sam to read a section on "preventing clawbacks", which was a head and then some text underneath. Sam read the text underneath out loud. Then she asked him to read the headline, "Preventing Clawbacks", too. So he said the following: "The first word is 'preventing'. The second word is 'clawbacks'."
If I was on a jury where the defendant pulled that, I would want to go up and punch him in the face. Tiffany was restrained. Her notes said she only wanted to slap him.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#399I'm curious how the sentencing goes, not only for SBF but those around him that took deals. In my limited view of US cases, it often seems prosecutors let off lightly anyone that will testify in return for their whale. Sometimes feels it's more symbolic justice that way than real.
I'm not American, but it's my understanding that there's more scrutiny on prosecutors to "nail" and close cases due to the stupid double jeopardy rule.
You lose the chance to convict a criminal, you lose your face and the chance to see him behind bars.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted
#400https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/statement-us-attorney-d...
"This case is also a warning to every fraudster who thinks they're untouchable, that their crimes are too complex for us to catch, that they are too powerful to prosecute, or that they are clever enough to talk their way out of it if caught."