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Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

nytimes.com

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#941

Post by shadowgovt »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #906
hoschicz wrote: post #740

[flagged]

> Do we really, as a society, need revenge? "Yes" in the sense it's a deterrent in place of revenge. It's on purpose and codified in the law for that reason.

This is one of those philosophical points I don't think everyone realizes about the law, possibly because not everyone has felt the feelings that underpin the philosophy.

The revenge part of justice isn't there because it benefits the convicted's rehabilitation. It's there because it increases the ambient peace of society to have the state take upon itself (and codify, and normalize) the very human desire to seek a balancing of the scales by bringing someone low who brought you low.

We punish criminals with discomfort, constraint, and loss of freedom so that their victims don't hunt them down and cave in their skulls with a two-by-four. We give them what's coming to them so they don't get what's coming to them directly from those they've wronged.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#942

Post by hintymad »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #720
hintymad wrote: post #243

I was reading the trial report by Inner City Press. The AUSAs were incredibly thorough and strategic. The evidences were air-tight, the cross-examination was masterfully controlled with precision and incisiveness, and of course the closing argument was forceful. It was a great joy to read the report, as if I was watching an extended episode of The Good Fight. On the other hand, the defense was really weak, quite hand…

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the AUSA's performance here was not particularly impressive. Yes, they constructed an airtight case, but to do that, they handed out immunity deals like candy to all of SBF's co-conspirators. Sure, they got their guy, but it almost looks like they wanted to craft a narrative that puts all of the blame on him. Because of that, several other huge fraudsters here (eg Carol…

Carolin pleads guilty on multiple counts of charges, and per her words on the witness stand, her corporation with the AUSA would get her a letter to the judge from the AUSA that acknowledges her corporation.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#944

Post by evancox100 »

mattmaroon wrote: post #723
vishnugupta wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair SBF convicted himself on a platter. Only he knows what made him think he'd get away by facing trial. Maybe he was just dumb, overconfident, ill-advised, or a combination of everything.

A 100 yr and a 70 yr jail sentence are basically the same thing. My guess is they knew they could win at trial pretty easily so they just didn’t offer him much of a deal, and from his perspective it was all or nothing so he might as well give trial a shot.

Why would they have offered him ANY deal? (Do we know they did?) All the co-conspirators agreed to testify, and it was a slam dunk case. He could have plead guilty of his own conscience, of course, but no reason for the prosecution to offer any incentives in this case.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#945

Post by somenameforme »

jahnu wrote: post #904
MacsHeadroom wrote: post #898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto is rallying. Bitcoin is higher than it has been in over a year. It's been trending up for a while though.

I would love to know why. I don’t see any new great thing it can do. Who are these people pouring in billions in a world with real interest rates. Criminals moving money?

Different world views than you probably have. A person who thinks the USD is stable and the stock market is priced reasonably is going to have a different attitude than one who thinks the USD is going through its riskiest in modern history and that the stock market is looking more and more like an astronomically sized bubble, all with WW3 looming. And then there's the guy in the middle who's just diversifying to try to maximize his gain (or minimize his risk) across all possible outcomes.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#947

Post by dsakjhsdfalkj »

hoschicz wrote: post #740

[flagged]

1. How people forget King Solomon after just a few thousand years. Put yourself in somebody who lost their life savings to SBF. What do you think happens? Prison serves a primal need-- it punishes the perpetrator so the wronged don't kill him and then the family of the wronged don't escalate from there.

2. Prison makes SBF a spectacle-- commit fraud, go to jail and be miserable.

3. How the hell are you going to ban "white-collar" work?

4. How many tens of millions of $$ do you think SBF has hidden? How many favors are owed to him? He's never going to have to work another day in his life.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#949

Post by phone8675309 »

bspammer wrote: post #774
hoschicz wrote: post #740

[flagged]

At some number of 0s, white collar crimes are more damaging to society than violent ones. $10 billion definitely meets that threshold, there has to be a deterrent.

The number of years of savings he stole from people is less than the maximum time he can get in prison, so if anything, he's getting off light.

If there were justice in this world his mind would be put in a simulation and he'd be forced to do all of the things that the people who lost money did to get theirs in real time. Let him feel that loss before you then wake him up and make him spend the rest of his time in prison.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#950

Post by P_I_Staker »

zztop44 wrote: post #750
lubesGordi wrote: post #739

Sequoia invested $200M in this guy. Has anyone looked at whether SBF could've done as much damage without that investment? Has anyone looked at if Sequoia did their due diligence? Seems like Sequoia could've seen red flags just from knowing Alameda existed. The potential abuse there was completely obvious.

The whole Sequoia thing is so interesting. Here is an excerpt from their (now taken down) profile of SBF, highlighting the moment he convinced them to invest: > That’s when SBF told Sequoia about the so-called super-app: “I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. You can buy bitcoin. You can send money in whatever currency to any friend anywhere in the world. You can buy a ban…

This just goes to show all the critiques of this kind of investing were very true. FTX and Theranos are examples of how this can all go very wrong.

I've gotten in a number arguments with people who don't understand white collar crime, think these guys are "smart", and are so surprised by how basic their scheme is, and how they thought they'd get away with it.

These people aren't smart, any more than your local gang banger, or small time fraudster... the stories are remarkably similar.

There's lots of white collar criminals that have cloaked their schemes as part of "altruism". This isn't even new.

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