The moral of the story is to always accept a plea deal if there is some chance of your being seen as guilty.
Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I broke into a person's house and stole $1000, even if I didn't directly hurt that person, I could expect to get several years in prison, basically regardless of the state. Lets say three years to be conservative on this? Sam Bankman Fried stole billions of dollars [1], probably often around $1000 at a time from tens of thousands of people. If going with my logic, he should be getting a lot longer than 25 years, u…
> Sam Bankman Fried stole billions of dollars [1], probably often around $1000 at a time from tens of thousands of people. If going with my logic, he should be getting a lot longer than 25 years, upwards of hundreds or thousands of years. Apparently that logic applied to Bernie Madoff. He got 150 years. How are these cases so similar and yet got radically different sentences?
Even more, Madoff actually turned himself in. I doubt he was "remorseful", mostly just realizing how insolvent he was, but it demonstrates at least some accountability on his end.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#503The difference between opinions in this thread is interesting.
I think it's mainly because some see a punishment as revenge and others as correction.
But, as user publius_0xf3 is showing, revenge does not work. The victims don't get their money back.
If this sentence is used as correction I also think it does not work. Would such a correction really take 25 years? His life is over. I don't see how such a long time is helpful to him, to his victims and to society.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#504It's funny. I lost tens of thousands of dollars thanks to this individual, yet his sentence brings me no joy or arouses any emotion at all. I'm utterly indifferent to his fate for some reason and I don't know why. Yet if he had been a mugger who stole a much smaller amount of money from me on the street, I think I would've been far more vengeful. Should I feel vindictive? Or is it healthy to forget about it and move…
Purely speculation on my part, but I tend to feel similarly, and I think the reason is that the mugger includes a physical threat of violence.
Evolutionarily, the emergence of an economy with capital at modern-day scales are so new that we haven't had time to really adjust emotionally. It kind of reminds me of the various birds on previously untouched-by-humanity islands that had no fear of humans and would just sit there and allow a human to club them to death, until their species went extinct. They had no time evolutionarily to develop an innate (emotional) fear of humans.
Physical violence/robbery on the other hand is a long-standing human tradition, and something we are hardwired to react to emotionally (Amygdala vs. PFC, etc). We can of course override our Amygdalas with our PFCs to some extent (in the medium to long-term), but the "gut reaction" core is still there.
Another possible reason (for me at least) is that ethically I have a lot of inner turmoil over violent punishments (which physical incarceration absolutely is IMHO) for nonviolent crimes. Of course reality is much more grayscale than that given that crimes like SBFs could leave a family destitute and starving, which is violence-adjacent if not outrightly violent. A violent sentence for a violent crime intuitively feels a lot more "let the punishment fit the crime" than a violent sentence for a nonviolent crime.
Anyway, I don't have answers, but throwing some speculation onto the pile.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#505For 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…
Wait...why did a public pension fund invest in crypto-related ?
(I still don't know what FTXes product was, but clearly it wasn't bare BTC or ETH, implying it was a risky derivative of a risky underlying asset).
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#506When money and politics is involved at this scale I believe nothing I read and half of what I see.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#507Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#508The difference between opinions in this thread is interesting. I think it's mainly because some see a punishment as revenge and others as correction. But, as user publius_0xf3 is showing, revenge does not work. The victims don't get their money back. If this sentence is used as correction I also think it does not work. Would such a correction really take 25 years? His life is over. I don't see how such a long time is…
If you think it’s “revenge” then yeah, you can say it doesn’t work. In reality it is a punishment and deterrent to future victimizers.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#509It's funny. I lost tens of thousands of dollars thanks to this individual, yet his sentence brings me no joy or arouses any emotion at all. I'm utterly indifferent to his fate for some reason and I don't know why. Yet if he had been a mugger who stole a much smaller amount of money from me on the street, I think I would've been far more vengeful. Should I feel vindictive? Or is it healthy to forget about it and move…
I didn't lose a penny and I'm giddy about it. Justice has been done.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#510To put this into its proper perspective, see table 7 here: https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu... In 2022, the average murderer in the Federal Southern District of New York (N = 58) was sentenced to a median of 231 months, which comes out to 19 years and change. No crime of any type had an mean or median sentence higher than 25 years; most were far less than half. So it should be really hard…
All this proves is that murderers get off way too easy.