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Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

cnn.com

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

#681

Post by dfxm12 »

publius_0xf3 wrote: post #449

It'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…

You should feel how you want to feel. However, I think certain politicians and most mass media outlets push you to have more compassion for white collar criminals and to think of others as less than human. When you hear them talk/print "tough on crime", they never seem to include white collar criminals in that. When the current admin expanded the IRS enforcement, they pushed back.

It's no surprise. After all, these politicians and the owners of such outlets are likely to be a little guilty of ripping people off a few thousand here and there as well...

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

#682

Post by itscodingtime »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #244

I love HN, it's one of the few places you can get reasoned conversation online. But this is one of those subjects where it gets weird. SBF was directly responsible for millions, if not billions, of direct monetary loss to identified individuals. Yet the top comments on HN are all discussing whether incarceration is retribution, spite, deterrence, or rehabilition. The USA incarcerates people for tiny financial damages…

It’s almost night and day compared to when Bob Lee was murdered and they thought vagrant or some other (insert stereotype here) was the culprit. Remember how tough on crime this crowd was then ? Remember the silence and lack of thought pieces when it turned out to be someone he knew instead of some brown person or drug addict ?

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

#683

Post by FireBeyond »

mrbonner wrote: post #400

I really don't understand the severity of criminal justice system punishment. SBF got sentenced to 25 years for a white collar financial crime while a guy in my hometown hit and killed 2 people, while DUI and ran over 100mph on a local street with 35mph limit got 26 months sentence forb2 vehicular homicide.

There is a saying, "If you want to kill someone and get away with it, do it with a car".

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

#684

Post by dfxm12 »

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…

I don't think it's a light sentence, but maybe it's not the right sentence. For the punishment to fit the crime, he shouldn't ever allowed to be rich again. I think that's more of a deterrent for this sort of thing.

I say this tongue in cheek, but mostly because I don't know what options judges have at their disposal in these situations.

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

#685

Post by AlexanderTheGr8 »

Reposting one of my comments that wasn't particularly liked when i originally submitted it but i think becomes more relevant now.

``` I find such white-collar crimes very interesting because of the math between crime and punishment. For the crime that SBF is alleged to have committed, we can reasonably expect 20 yrs (he will be out in 10-12). But if he had committed a murder, he would be in prison for life (no parole).

Mathematically speaking, this implies that a life is worth more than fraud worth 8 billion dollars. We can make a very reasonable assumption that the govt can save 1 additional life using a million dollars (giving necessary treatment to drug addicts / suicidal people / etc). Out of the 8 billion dollars from SBF, government would have got at least 50 million dollars from taxes (this is a lower bound). Out of that 50 million, maybe the govt puts 10-20 million back for public good. So the govt could have saved at least 10-20 people from the money that SBF is alleged to have defrauded.

Based on the above, can we say that SBF indirectly killed 10-20 people? What would be the punishment for someone who kills 10-20 people? Surely more than 20 years.

This balance between the scale of crime and the severity of punishment can be very interesting. Should someone defrauding 2 billion dollars suffer twice the punishment of someone defrauding 1 billion dollars? What about 2 murders to 1 murder? What about numbers on scale that can change an economy (what SBF did)?

More fundamentally, is our legal system scalable? ```

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

#686

Post by paulpauper »

FabHK wrote: post #276
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…

FWIW, I didn't find Lewis's book as bad (or amoral) as it's often made out to be. Yes, he didn't put his judgement in every paragraph, but his description of SBF was: a) absolutely damning! SBF's lack of empathy, his notion that (given that everyone else is stupid) he knew best and should basically ignore the advice of everyone else (particularly his elders), his naive utilitarianism without any deontological/virtue…

A good biography does not cast too many moral aspersions. Its job is to paint a portrait of the person's life, including the details and quirks that shed insight into the subject's character. If you want affirmations of the awfulness of SBF and his crimes, there is no shortage of that by media and pundits.

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

#687

Post by [deleted] »

AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: post #685

Reposting one of my comments that wasn't particularly liked when i originally submitted it but i think becomes more relevant now. ``` I find such white-collar crimes very interesting because of the math between crime and punishment. For the crime that SBF is alleged to have committed, we can reasonably expect 20 yrs (he will be out in 10-12). But if he had committed a murder, he would be in prison for life (no parole…

[deleted]

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

#688

Post by [deleted] »

realfeel78 wrote: post #617
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…

> 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. Lol they're all very well off. Why tf are you worried about them, of all people in the world?

[deleted]

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

#689

Post by maxclark »

vadansky wrote: post #211
maxclark wrote: post #195

SBF is 32 years old - 25 years isn't a death sentence for him Parole is available after 1/3 of term, realistically he won't serve 100% There's still a chance for him to get something out of his life post jail

It's been posted a thousand times already, there is no parole for federal sentences.

I'm not versed in this at all. What is the DOJ's US Parole Commission?

https://www.justice.gov/uspc

"The mission of the U.S. Parole Commission is to promote public safety and strive for justice and fairness in the exercise of its authority to release and revoke offenders under its jurisdiction."

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

#690

Post by goalonetwo »

publius_0xf3 wrote: post #449

It'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…

As someone who lost a little bit through this whole debacle I think it is because we willingly gave our money to FTX. We wanted to believe in this story that was too good to be true. We got fooled and we are slightly ashamed.

When you get mugged you have no choice on what is happening. The actions are being forced physically on you. With FTX We chose to go that way so it somehow feels like we are as much to blame as SBF (and to be honest, we are).

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