https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-97...
> "No senior Wall Street executives were imprisoned for actions that contributed to the global financial crisis."
Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
971–980 of 1001 posts
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#972To 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 haven't gone through that source in detail, but I would assume that includes people who pled guilty, felony murder (ie they didn't directly kill someone, were just involved in a different felony that resulted in someone's death), crimes of passion and other cases where lighter sentences are justified.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#973It'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…
> As someone who lost a little bit through this whole debacle I think it is because we willingly gave our money to FTX.
That's not the whole picture though. If I invest in some risky stock (or even what I thought was not a risky one) and it tanks, sure I feel bad but it's part of the deal so it's ok.
But if I invest in something risky and I lose the money not through investment risk but simply because the fund manager outright stole my money, I'd be very angry.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#974Earlier quoted context omitted.
I deposited some money with FTX and expected them not to steal it in the same way you expect a bank not to steal your deposits. I didn't gift to them or expect anything too good to be true. If a bank manager steals customer deposits to pay his gambling debts I put the blame 100% on the manager 0% on the customers.
That’s strange. If I invest my money into any form of securities it’s pretty clear to me that the value of that capital might go to zero overnight. If I invested it in crypto? I would value it at zero for the rest of eternity.
> That’s strange. If I invest my money into any form of securities it’s pretty clear to me that the value of that capital might go to zero overnight.
What is strange about it? Losing money through investment risk is part of the deal when you invest, losing money because the fund manager decides to steal it is not part of the deal.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#975Earlier quoted context omitted.
Statistical value of a human life in the US is around $7.5 million. Stealing $10 billion is therefore statistically equivalent to killing 1300 people, or pretty close to half of 9/11. That seems like a pretty light sentence to me.
This equivalency of cash to bodies is ghoulish. Does anyone actually think like this?
When it's your job to decide which safety equipment to install on highways or whether to install scrubbers on coal power plants, you have to think like this.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#976I haven't lost any money because of this guy's doing but I feel it is the right thing that this person is punished severely.
You can say maybe, the people investing in crypto have been 'playing' with money and knew there was risk involved, but stealing is still stealing and governments/juridical systems indeed need to prove that this cannot be tolerated.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#977I sincerely hope more crypto crooks end up in prison as well! I can't stand the noise around crypto. It's a Rube Goldberg machine presented as the next big thing when it's nothing but a magnet for greedy speculators and nothing more.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#978> US Attorney Williams: SBF's sentence is a warning to others
Why do they alway say that enforcing the law is a warning? Why isn't it a known fact that if you break these rules you go to prison. Is it that sometimes they let you off the hook and now they're taking the law more seriously?
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#979An 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 they can get out from under this and try to find meaning, ideally from repairing the harm they've done."
How exactly would they do this? Have you read the victim impact statements?
Mistakes are errors. Like typing "Rick Heicklen" instead of "Ricki Heicklen".
But intentionally breaking the law in order to profit, is that a "mistake"?
A error in judgment perhaps.
SBF claimed he made "mistakes" but he never admitted guilt and he never apologised for breaking the law. He perjured himself while expecting the audience to believe he was "brilliant", competent and trustworthy to handle other peoples' money.
If what Heicklen calls "smart people" can work for a company with no organizational chart, no board of directors, no CFO, no need to use more than QuickBooks for handling millions of dollars in customer deposits, then perhaps these people are not "smart".
And it would be a "mistake" to believe otherwise. (Heicklen may still be disillusioned.)
We are living in a time when it is not safe to assume that because there is large amounts of money behind something that this something is in fact legitimate.
These people named in the comment all come from privileged backgrounds. Many of the victims of the FTX collapse, the ones who wrote to Judge Kaplan before the trial and the ones who submitted impact statements before sentencing, do not. Call me cynical but I do not forsee any of those named in Heicklen's blog post going to work to serve (cf. exploit) people from non-privileged backgrounds.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#980Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do enjoy the idea that he'll create a prison super economy based on promissory notes for ramen packets and cigarettes that are tracked in some sort of hand-written block chain kept under their bunk bed and shared between toilet water pipes. Or maybe he'll just start making yogurt. https://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/magazine/yoghurt-mafia-unexp...
US prison currency is mack: https://cointelegraph.com/news/sam-bankman-fried-mackerel-fi...
Vegans don't eat mackerel, but can they ethically use mackerel as currency?
The mind boggles.