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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

#181

Post by bodiekane »

It's wild that 99% of the "point" of crypto and a Bahamas-based exchange was to avoid all the laws around securities trading, banking, money transferring (anti-money laundering, taxes, etc), etc and yet when things go south, people still expect the government to come in and enforce a tiny subset of the financial laws they've otherwise been operating outside of.

This is a weird form of "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" but with the benefactors being the people intentionally avoiding all the financial laws.

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

#182

Post by SoftTalker »

klodolph wrote: post #48
tithe wrote: post #2

Seems low for what prosecutors consider "one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history." https://www.reuters.com/technology/sam-bankman-fried-be-sent...

25 years is a damn long time. I don’t know how that can “seem low”.

Part of it is that he took it to trial. He likely could have negotiated a deal for single-digit years if he had admitted guilt and cooperated.

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

#183

Post by batch12 »

zug_zug wrote: post #164
PokedBear wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone isn't a violent threat to society, there isn't much social benefit to keeping folks locked up longer then 20-ish years. 20-25 (assuming he gets the 15% off for good behavior the feds allow) is plenty.

Feels low to me too. I think the distinction between "violent" is completely irrelevant. I think taking money from people does just as much harm as physically injuring them -- many people would rather have several bones broken than lose their pension. The benefit is the deterrent. It's especially important for wealthy people who we may wonder if they greased wheels behind the scenes. If you want somebody to cry about…

I think it's okay to consider both to be too long.

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

#184

Post by sneak »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #149

It blows my mind that we let sex offenders off for less. Is it just me or does that seem backwards? Brian Peck got 16 months of prison and it seems to be that he caused a lot more harm to society than ol SBF here.

Yes, it is extremely backwards. The prison system in the US (like vehicle and environmental regulations in the US) exemplifies how little the culture there values human lives and lifespan.

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

#187

Post by AlchemistCamp »

tithe wrote: post #2

Seems low for what prosecutors consider "one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history." https://www.reuters.com/technology/sam-bankman-fried-be-sent...

He was playing fast and loose with clients' money (and ultimately made profitable investments). Elizabeth Holmes played fast and loose with medical testing and people's very lives. She got less than half this sentence.

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

#189

Post by FireBeyond »

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…

> If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping.

It also affected tens of thousands of people more than a murder or kidnapping.

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

#190

Post by serjester »

nemo44x wrote: post #79
sgt101 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this fedral? I thought it was Manhattan DA?

Nope, it's Federal. He has appeals coming up though. I have no idea what the outcome could be but there's an opportunity for the sentence to be reduced on appeal. Honestly, this sentence doesn't appear egregious or "being made an example of" so IMO he doesn't get a reduction. But, sometimes you get a sympathetic judge?

If the same court put Ross Ulbricht (a way more sympathetic case) for 40 years, no way they're lenient on SBF.
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