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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

#341

Post by ddtaylor »

vlovich123 wrote: post #233
marcinzm wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I thought the “lost” money was simply due to poor accounting and actually found. > Kaplan said he had found that FTX customers lost $8 billion, FTX's equity investors lost $1.7 billion, and that lenders to the Alameda Research hedge fund Bankman-Fried founded lost $1.3 billion. https://www.reuters.com/technology/sam-bankman-fried-be-sent... Clearly the real crime is bilking investors out of their money. It’s also que…

> Clearly the real crime is bilking investors out of their money. It’s also questionable whether they even ended up losing money given the rising price of crypto in the past year. It’s also interesting how this happened:

That's not how that works. Whatever purchasing power they were supposed to have that they were deprived of because of his actions results in damages - obviously equal at least to the crypto gains they would have.

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

#342

Post by pierat »

This type of punishment is actually pretty terrible for all parties.

I could easily see a different, harsher, but more fair punishment...

1. All assets are sold off to pay victims

2. Prison for a few years. 5?

3. can only work jobs where nobody reports to them (no management, C levels, etc). Also cannot make companies.

4. Cannot own more than 2 properties, one of which is his place of residence.

5. Cannot rent out any property.

6. 25% of what he makes goes into restitution for the rest of his life.

7. Investments into any wealth instrument is to be confiscated, with exception to a 401k.

Basically, this person cannot be trusted with making money other than by working for someone else. This still allows him to make a life, but severely limits the similar path he used to defraud people.

Sending this guy to prison for 25 years is a waste for everyone involved.

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

#343

Post by zulban »

ghnws wrote: post #297
marcinzm wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's not the point being made. However if 10,000 people lose 2000$ due to mysterious market forces, you bet this will contribute to some losing their lives.

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

#344

Post by tombert »

bambax wrote: post #62

I think that's about fair and reasonable. It's been said in Europe he would not have gotten more than years and it's probably true. 25 years is a really long time and even if he does only 20, still super long. Here's a live tweeting of the sentencing hearing; some of Judge Kaplan's remarks are really interesting. https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/177334004374401064...

If I broke into a person's house and stole $1000, even if I didn't directly hurt that person, I could expect to get several years in prison, basically regardless of the state. Lets say three years to be conservative on this?

Sam Bankman Fried stole billions of dollars [1], probably often around $1000 at a time from tens of thousands of people. If going with my logic, he should be getting a lot longer than 25 years, upwards of hundreds or thousands of years. Obviously, it's not a linear relationship, the crime was non-violent, first-time-offender, etc. I'm just saying that 25 years seems pretty fair to me considering the magnitude of the crime.

I am one of the victims (well, of Gemini Earn anyway), and I think if I were given the choice, I'd probably sentence him to 20-25 years.

[1] Or at least so grossly mismanaged that there's no real purpose in drawing a distinction.

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

#345

Post by ufo »

compiler-guy wrote: post #290
rootusrootus wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parole is available after 1/3 of term IIRC it's 85%. Federal prison does not have parole, but they do give some credit for good behavior, up to 15%.

This was true for a long time, but the "First Step" act, passed I think in 2021, increased the good behavior credit maximum to 50%. Realistically then, SBF is looking at 11.5 years if he can stay out of trouble, which is relatively easy for white-collar criminals in relatively low security prisons. Federal rules still don't have parole.

(as described in the linked article)

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

#346

Post by laidoffamazon »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #253
laidoffamazon wrote: post #95

I recall people very confidently saying he would never be prosecuted for his political ties.

The regime occasionally must sacrifice one of its own to grant the appearance of fairness to its politically-motivated prosecutions of its opponents.

Sounds unfalsifiable

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

#349

Post by unregistereddev »

JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #126

How much did Jordan Belfort get? Elizabeth Holmes? Mt.Gox guy? 25 years is an exageration to be honest, there was never criminal intent, if anything there was too much belief in their creature, less like Madoff and more like the Long Term Capital Management guys. I don't remember them serving a single day in jail. It goes to show that judges and prosecutors are just trophy hunters for media attention these days, as p…

I don't know if your questions are rhetorical, but they are easy to answer so I looked them up for you. These are only the prison sentences and do not include court-mandated restitution.

Jordan Belfort: 4 years (served 22 months)

Elizabeth Holmes: 11 years

Mt. Gox guy: I do not know which guy you refer to. Two Russian men were indicted for the actual Mt Gox hack. Separately Mark Karpeles was sentenced to 2 1/2 years, suspended sentence, in Japan - but only for record tampering. He was found not guilty of embezzlement. This entire saga seems very very far removed from what SBF did.

Bernie Madoff: 150 years

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

#350

Post by petertodd »

ceejayoz wrote: post #264
petertodd wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and enough people pointing that out, and making it clear that they are outraged by the possibility of that happening, makes it harder to get away with him avoiding prosecution because of his political ties. This is likely an example of free speech and free press working to overcome corruption to achieve justice.

So, any result would've been evidence of corruption? ("This is good news for Bitcoin.")

I think we can look at SBF's political ties and make a reasonable guess at how likely it was that there were people trying to get him a deal with minimal jail time. You don't need specific evidence of that to say it was likely happening; the outcome is obvious evidence that if that was happening, the attempts failed.

Not sure why you are bringing up Bitcoin; SBF's business didn't have much to do with Bitcoin, beyond it being one of many methods used to deposit and withdraw funds.

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