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Sam Bankman-Fried loses bid to appeal against fraud conviction in FTX case

theguardian.com

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried loses bid to appeal against fraud conviction in FTX case

#31

Post by tsunamifury »

gcheong wrote: post #25
tsunamifury wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except when you pay someone to manage your money. Remember this.

Clarify? I don't understand how whether or not I pay someone to manage my money makes a difference as to whether what they did was commit fraud. People paid Bernie Madoff to manage their money and early investors got promised returns but he still went to jail because he was running an illegal ponzi scheme.

They have far greater latitude to move it and do what they deem smartest with it. And take fees for themselves. And put you in deals that benefits other clients they prefer.

And on and on. And on.

Dumping, swapping, bag holding, fee based investments that are crap. All legal.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried loses bid to appeal against fraud conviction in FTX case

#33

Post by FireBeyond »

Lerc wrote: post #29
Analemma_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You SBF defenders have such a weird view of how the law works. If I embezzle money from my company and then bet it all on black in Vegas, intending to give it back if I win, your implication here is equivalent to saying I did commit a crime if the wheel comes up red, but I did not commit any crime if it comes up black.

Not a SBF defender, and at no point am I suggesting that a crime was not committed. I am saying that the crime is different to theft. Would you say that a misuse of funds with zero chance of the rightful owner losing their money is a less serious crime than a misuse of funds with a 50% or 100% chance of losing their money. I think it is, and penalties should be proportionate. That is a principle that I hold independe…

I would disagree, solely because one or more of the following reasons:

1. the person taking the money had no guarantee that the money, or some of it, would not be lost.

2. it wasn't their intention to give all or some of it back to its rightful owners.

3. the fact that some of it could repay some of the rightful owner's was often a matter of luck, not intent (there is some overlap between 1 and 3).

SBF hits all three of these. Your intent matters. At some point SBF intended by conscious acts to run and continue running a Ponzi scheme. He wasn't trying to bail himself out of the hole other than to the extent required to keep the Ponzi scheme going and enrich himself in the process.

So, respectfully, I disagree. May there be other cases that I agree with you on, depending on the particulars? Perhaps so. But not this one.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried loses bid to appeal against fraud conviction in FTX case

#34

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

Analemma_ wrote: post #22
Lerc wrote: post #8

> In appealing against the conviction, Bankman-Fried’s defense lawyers argued that US district judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the trial, improperly prevented Bankman-Fried from introducing evidence to back up his belief that FTX had enough funds to cover customer withdrawals. So it's been a few years now. Did people get their money in the end? That would presumably answer the question of whether they were stolen fro…

You SBF defenders have such a weird view of how the law works. If I embezzle money from my company and then bet it all on black in Vegas, intending to give it back if I win, your implication here is equivalent to saying I did commit a crime if the wheel comes up red, but I did not commit any crime if it comes up black.

This is how people who get to the top act, the ones you see at the top are the ones who correctly guessed the roulette number .

If you want to become successful sooner or later you'd have to do the same .

As I realized this I am slowly but steadily abandoning the race for money and I am trying to approach it by finding the best deals for the stuff that I like as money saved is money earned and there is very little difference between experiencing a top 85 percentile thing and a top 99.999 percentile thing , but that last 15% man that is what the money exonential really goes crazy

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried loses bid to appeal against fraud conviction in FTX case

#35

Post by dkersten »

sbstp wrote: post #19
Lerc wrote: post #8

> In appealing against the conviction, Bankman-Fried’s defense lawyers argued that US district judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the trial, improperly prevented Bankman-Fried from introducing evidence to back up his belief that FTX had enough funds to cover customer withdrawals. So it's been a few years now. Did people get their money in the end? That would presumably answer the question of whether they were stolen fro…

I think Kraken has been selected to redistribute the funds, but not sure if it has happened yet. These things take time, I think Mt. Gox took like a decade to be distributed

They did, I had something like $50 in FTX and I got it back. I don’t remember when, I think it was about a year ago.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried loses bid to appeal against fraud conviction in FTX case

#36

Post by GolfPopper »

3stacks wrote: post #6

Scam Bankman-Fraud is just one of the few highly publicised cases they will use to pretend they are actually serious about tackling these issues. Wake me when someone gets prosecuted for front-running Axios' "Iran deal is imminent" articles in the oil market.

He committed the one crime you can't buy your way out of: scamming the ruling finance class.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried loses bid to appeal against fraud conviction in FTX case

#37

Post by SoftTalker »

tdb7893 wrote: post #21
jmyeet wrote: post #7

Waste of time. Just buy a pardon [1][2][3][4][5]. [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/04/donald-trumps- ... [2]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/04/donald-trumps-... [3]: https://apnews.com/article/nikola-trevor-milton-fraud-trump-... [4]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7e0jve875o [5]: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/trump-pardon-bitmex-crypto-e...

He was a top Democrat donor (the article says he was their number 2 individual donor in 2022) so I doubt he could buy one. Not that he seemed particularly left leaning himself and he also donated to Republicans but 5.2 million publicly to Biden seems like a dealbreaker. https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...

Not until 2028 anyway, depending on outcomes...

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried loses bid to appeal against fraud conviction in FTX case

#38

Post by ourmandave »

watersb wrote: post #32

He will hold a Cabinet-level position before 2029.

Trump already chose the Binance money-launderer Zhao which was a competitor of FTX.

But the administration loves frauds, so maybe if Bankman can come up with a bribe.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried loses bid to appeal against fraud conviction in FTX case

#39

Post by SoftTalker »

vessenes wrote: post #14
jmyeet wrote: post #7

Waste of time. Just buy a pardon [1][2][3][4][5]. [1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/04/donald-trumps- ... [2]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/04/donald-trumps-... [3]: https://apnews.com/article/nikola-trevor-milton-fraud-trump-... [4]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7e0jve875o [5]: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/trump-pardon-bitmex-crypto-e...

Trump reportedly was disinterested in SBF money. During his tenure, SBF leaned left - with Clinton and others as paid speakers for events.

Trump himself supported Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2008.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried loses bid to appeal against fraud conviction in FTX case

#40

Post by porkchoppers »

dylan604 wrote: post #18
matwood wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's odd he can't scrape together a couple million and just get a pardon. It seems like the people who were able to pick up FTX claims for .50-.60 on the dollar, and have now made a killing, would toss Sam a tip.

Why would they? What would be the return for them?

On the same basis as phishing emails having spelling mistakes a smart pyramid scheme would hire him as a mascot to keep the idiots buying and the critical analysis hard to separate from jokes.
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