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FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried Should Serve 40 to 50 Years in Prison, Prosecutors Say

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111–120 of 132 posts

Re: FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried Should Serve 40 to 50 Years in Prison, Prosecutors Say

#111
post #94

This is predictable; he's been convicted of 2B1.1 crimes, which scale with monetary losses, which top out (in the tables) at, like, 500MM, and put you (by themselves) near the bottom of the sentencing table. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38123281

From the article:

> The federal probation department separately recommended a 100-year sentence for Mr. Bankman-Fried, 32, effectively a life sentence. But prosecutors said in the filing that sending him to prison for the rest of his life was not warranted, despite the severity of his crime, because of his relative youth.

So it looks like the prosecutors are coming in below the sentencing guidelines.

Re: FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried Should Serve 40 to 50 Years in Prison, Prosecutors Say

#112

Based on how he was acting during trial, I assume he still thinks he's somehow getting out of this.

I am so confused by his weird persona. Obviously he has to be smart, you don't make a multi-billion dollar company/fraud without being incredibly smart, but doesn't that generally mean an acceptance of reality? He seems so disconnected from reality most of the time, like he is mentally ill almost.

I think that he's just more criminally minded than most. This wasn't an overnight thing and he seemed to do quite a bit of press, lying through his teeth the whole time.

Also, he doesn't read books.

Re: FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried Should Serve 40 to 50 Years in Prison, Prosecutors Say

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His crimes are closer to those of Bernie Madoff than, say, Jamie Dimon. Madoff was sentenced to 150 years.

That one's silly too. Unless someone is so damaged they're not capable of ever not harming others, (think psychopathic murderers) what's the point of sentences that long? Anything past 15 years or so effectively destroys their existing lives anyway. I think that crosses from punishment to unnecessary cruelty and stuffing prisons.

> what's the point of sentences that long?

Because FUCK this guy.

Re: FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried Should Serve 40 to 50 Years in Prison, Prosecutors Say

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>20 years is as much a deterrent as 50 years, but at a lower cost to the tax payer. The number of wealthy people getting those kinds of sentences is basically 0, so the cost to the taxpayer is a moot point.

but let's say we had a habit of locking up corrupt billionaires for 20 years

There's only about 3000 billionaires in the world. Again, cost is a moot point.

Re: FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried Should Serve 40 to 50 Years in Prison, Prosecutors Say

#118
post #13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a multitude of reasons, Lewis is an unreliable narrator...

Yes, leave only an accusation without supporting facts or ideas.

Just ask nicely. "Could you provide a source for that claim?" No one is owed a citation in casual conversation; you're not holding them to an agreed upon standard, you're asking for a favor. So it's better to be polite and not escalate from a conversation to a debate or argument.

Re: FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried Should Serve 40 to 50 Years in Prison, Prosecutors Say

#119
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jamie Dimon should be in prison right now, for one.

Half of the big bank CEOS, and major wall street players should be in jail... they just have more money then Sam Bankman-Fried had, because he lost it all. If he had substantial resources outside FTC, do you think he would be in jail?

The problem is proving the culpability of a particular individual, because it is the organizational structure that drives criminal acts. That's why big organizations have lawyers on their payrolls in order to provide policies to shield individuals. The only way to get around that is to use RICO. I don't think any US attorney wants to use RICO against any big business in the states, thanks to the revolving door.

Re: FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried Should Serve 40 to 50 Years in Prison, Prosecutors Say

#120

Hard to square with the lack of consequences (for those responsible) for the 2009 financial crisis.

Came here to say exactly this. That financial crisis ruined countless lives. The dominos fell all around the world. Across the Atlantic in Ireland I knew of several suicides. Most of my friends were at the age where they had paired off, and got onto the property ladder with tiny, overpriced "starter homes". Why? For one, to get out of the rent trap. But mainly because they wanted to start a family. Most of my college buddies ended up sentenced to 15+ years of negative equity. People blamed them for making unsound investments, but they had already delayed having kids well into their late 30s, and had no choice. I know families with several teenage kids who never recovered financially. The big banks repackaged bullshit subprime mortgages into CDOs that the ratings agencies gave AAA+ ratings to.

Frankly, I think that the perpetrators didn't go to jail for the same reason that a huge number of Nazis avoided consequences after WWII: there were simply too many people complicit in it, but no chief architect. There was a simple choice: prosecute them all and lose the whole banking sector, or bail them out. So the government decided that the taxpayer would bail them out. The same tax players who lost homes and livelihoods. And they weren't just bailed out financially, the slate was scrubbed clean.

What Bankman Fried did was nothing in comparison. I believe should go to jail, but 50 years? That's probably more than first degree murder in most states.

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