Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by SilasX » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:17 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #233

marcinzm wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping. I suspect the resulting number of shortened lives amongst all the people who lost $8 billion worth of their money due to the fraud is more than the number caused by a single murder.

I thought the “lost” money was simply due to poor accounting and actually found. > Kaplan said he had found that FTX customers lost $8 billion, FTX's equity investors lost $1.7 billion, and that lenders to the Alameda Research hedge fund Bankman-Fried founded lost $1.3 billion. https://www.reuters.com/technology/sam-bankman-fried-be-sent... Clearly the real crime is bilking investors out of their money. It’s also que…

You're not replying to the question of how much money/assets -- thought to be lost -- was later found, you're just copy-pasting random details about the case.

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

#552

Post by akaike » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:17 PM UTC

whatscooking wrote: post #439

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #159

To 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…

Yea let’s let fraudsters run amuck, he damaged the lives of millions of people, fuck him

Same opinion. He should rot in jail forever

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

#553

Post by YellowZeeZee » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:17 PM UTC

tdudhhu wrote: post #503

The 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…

The sentence is neither revenge nor correction. It's simply punishment for having broken the rules.

Society is not necessary interested in helping him. Ultimately he's not that important.

What is important is maintaining the rule of law and preserving faith in the justice system.

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

#554

Post by monocasa » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

shuckles wrote: post #473

brandonmenc wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $20 of theft? 5 years away Who in this day and age is going to jail for half a decade because they snuck a 20 dollar bill out of the cash register when no one was looking? There are almost always violent actions involved that are conveniently glossed over whenever someone bemoans “life in prison for stealing a loaf of bread!”

Nobody. Federal prisoners are almost entirely convicted of serious violent crime.

Which is why you saw this with relatively local and state level prosecutions from 90s tough on crime policies like three strikes laws.

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

#555

Post by quasarj » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

tracedddd wrote: post #513

tdudhhu wrote: post #503

The 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…

What do you think about it being a preventative measure against future SBFs?

Isn't there tons of evidence that this simply doesn't work?

I mean, I don't know this SBF guy, but do you think he thought there would be no punishment if he got caught stealing 8 billion dollars? I think his plan was not to get caught.

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

#556

Post by KenArrari » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

tdudhhu wrote: post #503

The 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…

The next potential SBF will look at this sentencing and realize "oh stealing money isn't worth the risk of spending my entire life in prison".

SBF probably assumed that if he got caught nothing would happen because he's witnessed that historically.

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

#557

Post by thedrbrian » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

setgree wrote: post #176

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…

>Not true for the people in his orbit

You mean the other people at FTX or Alameda who knew it was a scam?

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

#558

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:18 PM UTC

JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #275

bodiekane wrote: post #181

It's wild that 99% of the "point" of crypto and a Bahamas-based exchange was to avoid all the laws around securities trading, banking, money transferring (anti-money laundering, taxes, etc), etc and yet when things go south, people still expect the government to come in and enforce a tiny subset of the financial laws they've otherwise been operating outside of. This is a weird form of "privatize the profits, socializ…

> > This is a weird form of "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" but with the benefactors being the people intentionally avoiding all the financial laws. It was SBF who put it in the hands of the US by declaring bankruptcy in essentially 3 days instead of playing the long wait game Also SBF who put it in the hands of the US by staying in the Bahamas and essentially waiting to be arrested (and immediately ext…

[deleted]

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

#559

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:20 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #233

marcinzm wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping. I suspect the resulting number of shortened lives amongst all the people who lost $8 billion worth of their money due to the fraud is more than the number caused by a single murder.

I thought the “lost” money was simply due to poor accounting and actually found. > Kaplan said he had found that FTX customers lost $8 billion, FTX's equity investors lost $1.7 billion, and that lenders to the Alameda Research hedge fund Bankman-Fried founded lost $1.3 billion. https://www.reuters.com/technology/sam-bankman-fried-be-sent... Clearly the real crime is bilking investors out of their money. It’s also que…

> basically the traders did a bank run

Given that FTX is not a bank, and does not do any sort of (high regulated for a reason) fractional reserve lending ... how exactly can there be a run? All of the assets should still have been there.

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

#560

Post by adgjlsfhk1 » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 6:20 PM UTC

liendolucas wrote: post #440

tombert wrote: post #344

Earlier 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?

a lot of the answer is that Madoff wasn't trying for 25 years. When you're 71, they're both a life sentence.