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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

#851

Post by jojo100 »

tredre3 wrote: post #410
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…

I've noticed the same trend. HN (as a collective) doesn't believe in punishing white-collar crimes with incarceration. I guess it hits too close to home.

Yeah, it clearly does. Lot of sweating collars.

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

#852

Post by acdha »

runako wrote: post #511
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…

> So it should be really hard to argue that this is a "light" sentence. The well-considered federal sentencing guidelines put the sentence for this crime at over 100 years. That is, for an anonymous defendant at remove, our legal system believes that 100+ years is a fair sentence for this set of offenses. So another way of looking at this is because of who the specific defendant is here, the court shaved 80 years off…

That’s starting from misunderstanding how federal sentencing works - even the prosecutors only asked for half that. Ken White has a good explainer of how federal sentencing actually works and why the numbers people toss around are too high:

https://popehat.substack.com/p/beware-the-flood-of-trump-sen...

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

#853

Post by [deleted] »

thedrbrian wrote: post #557
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?

[deleted]

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

#854

Post by Supernaut »

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 got a laugh from the author's assertion that the Lewis book examines "the psychology of an impulsive, chaotic, misanthropic genius". I mean, "genius" has long been a ludicrously overused word, but even so, this is a new low.

Isaac Newton is an example of an actual genius, someone whose work changed the world. Sam Bankman-Fried is an epically hubristic confidence man who stole/lost eight billion dollars and will as a consequence be spending a long time in jail.

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

#855

Post by [deleted] »

jmyeet wrote: post #694
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…

Sorry for your loss. I'm actually surprised the sentence is this low. This is Bernie Madoff territory. This doesn't get you your money back. It doesn't even necessarily make you feel better so what's the point? This gets into the philosophy of a criminal justice system. The noble idea behind the criminal justice system is to be restorative . The offender is to be reformed so they don't repeat their crimes and can bec…

[deleted]

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

#856

Post by abaymado »

dinobones wrote: post #789
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…

You think a 25 year sentence is impossible to recover from? I think he can still leave a meaningful life coming out in his mid 50s.

I highly doubt he will serve all 25. There is no parole in a fed case, but could get reduced time for good behavior. Unlikely he will be in prison stabbing people.

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

#857

Post by cush »

AI_beffr wrote: post #768

prison is such an interesting concept. violent people need to be physically separated for the safety of the population. but for a crime like this maybe it would be better to just give him 5-10 years in prison but never let him deal in finance again. i would rather have him on a road crew tying re-bar than using up tax payer money in prison...

Or turn him white-hat and have SBF work for the SEC, using his skills to find other fraudsters

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

#858

Post by golergka »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #253
laidoffamazon wrote: post #95

I recall people very confidently saying he would never be prosecuted for his political ties.

The regime occasionally must sacrifice one of its own to grant the appearance of fairness to its politically-motivated prosecutions of its opponents.

Not a true Scotsman after all, eh?

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

#859

Post by headsupernova »

theragra wrote: post #751
uejfiweun wrote: post #358

Lol. "My useful life is over," he says. As if there was anything useful about setting up a fraudulent exchange to steal billions of dollars so he could go play animal house with Caroline in his penthouse.

Regardless of fraud, he donated a lot of money, some to noble causes. This is useful, even of it was not his money.

Only to be clawed back in bankruptcy court. The donations did more harm than good because of that

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

#860

Post by jasonfarnon »

jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #562
FabHK wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> kid He's a 32 year old man.

Well before the downfall they also referred to him as a wunderkind.
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