The US prison sentence lengths are insane.
[deleted]
Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
291–300 of 1001 posts
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#292It'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, socializ…
Yeah, I agree. This should fall under “caveat emptor”. Everyone using unregulated exchanges (which IMO should be an option for everyone) should recognize that they are subject to additional risks (and benefits). The government shouldn’t outlaw free climbing either. It’s your own fault if you treat a bunch of foolish kids with millions of dollars the same way you would an onshore FDIC-insured regulated bank. Canada Bi…
It's worth noting that a huge amount of the government's case involved evidence that SBF and team were buying lavish oceanfront condos, paying superstar athletes for weird TV commercials, etc.
This was actually a tiny slice of the overall financial mischief at FTX. But it told well in front of a jury. And it reinforced a big point that prosecutors keep wanting to make, as publicly as possible. "Don't take the customers' money to live large on your thefts!" That's a message that they want countless bookkeepers, financial planners, etc. to hear, again and again.
So, yes, they wanted to make an example out of SBF. The intricacies of FTX's full financial gyrations were sometimes too complicated to put in front of a jury. But the clueless or duped crypto-trading clients got a free bailout anyway. It came on the back of a prosecution that was largely intended to be a public slapdown of a guy committing lifestyle offenses with other people's money.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#293I met a nice Israeli filmography couple (somewhat known in Israel, I think) in Tulum last summer. After conducting important business, they were telling me about how they were vacating on the back of a nice windfall -- they got paid upfront for an editting/production job which was unprecedented and generous. Implications of lots of money and some "image rehabilitation". They're acting a bit coy about it, and I'm feeling perfectly fine to be nosy.
So they ask if I've ever heard of "S.B.F.". After my mouth fell open and I gasped for air a few times, and demanded some proof, I got to see a not-public interview of SBF. Nothing particularly juicy, but still. I'm a nerd and I love gossip.
Apropos of nothing, other than the world is small, and weird; I guess.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#294Earlier 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.
> 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. This unfortunately widely held belief is measurably wrong and reeks of all kinds of biases. White collar criminals are one of the categories most likely to reoffend. Recidivism is much higher in white collar criminals precisely due to the leniency they often experience and the powerful…
> In analyzing recidivism of violent criminals, the
criteria used were any prisoner with two or fewer prior arrests, who
had been convicted of rape, homicide, assault, other sexual abuse, or
other violent crime.
> In examining at white collar criminals, the criteria used were any prisoner with two or fewer prior arrests, who had been convicted of larceny, theft, motor vehicle theft, or other property crime (which included types of fraud, embezzlement, etc.).
I wonder if you removed the "two or fewer" if you'd get a different result.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#295SBF was a top political donor in Washington. I expect a pardon by the end of this year.
It's an election year for a first term incumbent, there is no chance of a pardon.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#296It'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, socializ…
I'm not aware if any cryptobros advocating to decriminalize fraud. Fraud is always going to be illegal. This isn't some regulatory compliance thing.
I've definitely heard variants of "the market will decide what is fraud" from people that I know in real life.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#297To 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. I suspect the resulting number of shortened lives amongst all the people who lost $8 billion worth of their money due to the fraud is more than the number caused by a single murder.
Hopefully no-one bet their life on unregulated extremely risky investments.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#298For those wondering, prosecutors asked for 50 years in prison, defense asked for 5 years. So this sentence is right down the middle. 50 years in prison would have been way too long IMO.
Well, 27.5 would be right down the middle. As others have suggested, likely he won't even serve the 25 though.
You should use a geometric mean for this sort of stuff. The difference between a one- and two-year sentence is much bigger than 25 and 26.
So that would be 16 years, though obviously, it's foolish to use "right down the middle" as a heuristic for something like this. (The more severe a crime, the more incentive the defense has to pretend like it didn't happen at all.)
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you conduct criminal activity while employed, you conducted criminal activity. You can't just walk into work at 8am, kill someone at 9am, and go home at 5. You still did the crime, and can be prosecuted for it. So let me rephrase your question: can a US citizen file some papers internationally that would permit them to conduct criminal activities in the US against other US citizens. The answer should not be surpri…
That's not at all how I interpreted the comment you are responding to. That is, FTX's customers knew, or most definitely should have known, that FTX (and crypto at large - that is essentially the primary selling point of crypto) was "outside the regulatory financial framework". Yet when things blew up and all these FTX customers lost all their money, there was very little reflection of "Hey, perhaps these financial r…
SBF wasn't convicted for violating financial regulations (such as maintaining capital liquidity, reporting transactions or meeting KYC requirements). He was convicted of fraud and conspiracy.
Re: Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
#300Seems 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...
Low? That's high! He didn't kill anyone. A sentence of 25 years completely destroys his life. He's been made an example of.
Go read the victim impact statements sometime. He destroyed lots of people's lives.