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Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#381
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, 27.5 would be right down the middle. As others have suggested, likely he won't even serve the 25 though.

You should use a geometric mean for this sort of stuff. The difference between a one- and two-year sentence is much bigger than 25 and 26. So that would be 16 years, though obviously, it's foolish to use "right down the middle" as a heuristic for something like this. (The more severe a crime, the more incentive the defense has to pretend like it didn't happen at all.)

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#382
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insanely low? Insanely high? SBF hasn’t really accepted responsibility or apologized through the trial, and didn’t at sentencing either. Judge Kaplan seems to have taken a balanced view — far from the statutory maximum, less than the U.S. wanted, more than the defense wanted. There will of course be appeals — SBF has already indicated he will file one. There’s good coverage of what took place at sentencing today here…

High, generally. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and US sentences are an outlier in terms of how long they are (they’re not the longest, but the whole picture is kind of shocking).

A difference in philosophy on prison sentence length. The higher incarceration rate is almost 100% explained by sentences that are on average roughly twice what the UK imposes (as one example).

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#383
post #378
post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto doesn’t need quotes

Before the Bitcoin et al. scamming, some people said "crypto" to abbreviate terms like cryptography and cryptographic protocol . Scammer bros appropriated "crypto", and made it dirty.

True; unfortunately, that battle is lost.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#384

An uncle once commented about a cousin of ours that he demonstrated how it's possible to screw things up so badly that you can't possibly recover. I think that's true for Sam. I hope it's not true for the people in his orbit; I hope they can get out from under this and try to find meaning, ideally from repairing the harm they've done. As Rick Heicklen writes, "We are not ever going to be Sam. But we could be Caroline…

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#385

For those wondering, prosecutors asked for 50 years in prison, defense asked for 5 years. So this sentence is right down the middle. 50 years in prison would have been way too long IMO.

Stole 1% from the pension fund for Ontario's teachers. Stole unknown amounts of peoples retirement. Ruined many peoples lives. How is 50 years too long? The literal largest fraud case in history doesn't even have a life sentence... We are sending a clear message, grift and steal your way to the top and then get out just in time to retire with all your stolen goods. You know when he gets out he is gonna go unlock a de…

25 years is a long, long time. He's going to spend the best years of his life in federal prison and come out the other side in a world that's moved on without him. 25 years ago the World Trade Center buildings were still standing.

IMO, if we're thinking of sentencing someone to 50 years or life in prison, we should cut to the chase and execute them instead. It's faster and cheaper for the taxpayers, and arguably less cruel.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#386

To be honest, isn't 25 years too much? He didn't beat or kill anyone, he simply found dumb people and took little of their money. It is not like he was robbing poor people by increasing their utilities bill every year or raising rent. Why is such a small, non-violent crime so severely punished? Of course he deserves a punishment but maybe not that much?

> small

in what world is stealing ~$8bn a "small" crime?

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#387

"Wow jeez! 'Only' ten years! That's not so bad, I think I could live with that, now I think I'm gonna go pull a huge scam! But damn, if he would have got 20 or 25 years, then I'd have to reconsider my carefully thought out decision to commit fraud" -- Nobody, Ever. To most people, just the act of losing everything you have, losing your ability to provide for your family or yourself. Losing your reputation, your caree…

This was directly addressed by the judge during the sentencing, so you might be interested in finding a recording or transcript.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#388
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low? That's high! He didn't kill anyone. A sentence of 25 years completely destroys his life. He's been made an example of.

Yes. He's been made an example of. That's kind of the point: "Tempted to commit fraud on a huge scale and wreck thousands of lives? Consider what we did to this guy."

On a much more severe scale, this is clearly the message that the Kremlin lavishly displayed of the initial treatment of the suspects involved in the Moscow Crocus Hall shootings/bombing - the results of severe torture send an unmistakable message of "Do not be tempted to try this (terrorism/attempted revolution" to the citizenry, with the implicit message that their very-short remaining lifespan will be very painful.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

#389

"Wow jeez! 'Only' ten years! That's not so bad, I think I could live with that, now I think I'm gonna go pull a huge scam! But damn, if he would have got 20 or 25 years, then I'd have to reconsider my carefully thought out decision to commit fraud" -- Nobody, Ever. To most people, just the act of losing everything you have, losing your ability to provide for your family or yourself. Losing your reputation, your caree…

Prison is a way to get cheap labor, and some prisons are run by publicly traded companies.

Not the best sources but you get the point.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat... 2. https://www.dailyo.in/wallet/heard-of-prison-stocks-here-are...

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