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Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

nytimes.com

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Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#621
post #510

Reminds me of working for MCI-Worldcom. When you think you’re working for crooks, you probably are. Run away.

Tell a naive young guy more. What are the red flags?

1. When you cannot explain how, mechanically the business works 2. Management is elusive, opaque 3. Employees are lax about controls, compliance, even morality

If your gut says they might be criminals, they are probably criminals.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#622

I liked the article detailing how poorly he did on the stand: https://www.thefp.com/p/humiliating-cross-examination-sam-ba... “Did you say in private, ‘Fuck regulators?’ ” “Did you call some customers ‘dumb motherfuckers?’ ” “Did you fly to the Super Bowl in a private plane?” “Most FTX customers did not have a line of credit, correct?” “Do you deny that Alameda had a $65 billion line of credit?” And on, and on, and o…

>just as often, he chose to dance around the question, to quibble about the phrasing, or say that he couldn’t remember the details. And every time he did that—every single time

Which is exactly what representatives from Facebook, Google and Microsoft did on trials and when being questioned by congress

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#624

For anyone curious, Ken White has a good and entertaining article breaking down maximum sentences in print (here, 110 years) and what people actually serve. It's worth a read: https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc... A takeaway: "1. Maximum sentences have very little relation to actual sentences in federal law. When the government quotes the maximum sentence, they are trying to scare you. When…

But in some cases, especially novel cases where they want to set an example, they can/will actually throw the book at you.

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they do. To deter potential future-SBFs. I mean, the whole cryptocurrency space is filled to the brim with scammers, many will never face anything at all. But when you've nailed the biggest of them all, might as well set an example.

EDIT: I do not believe he will serve 110, or 50, or 20 years. But hopefully they will dole out the maximum of a realistic sentencing.

A couple of year behind the bars would be a complete joke. From all I've seen, I have zero faith that SBF will be "rehabilitated" by a year or two in prison.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#625
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's being debated in the bankruptcy court. Some creditors want to sell it off and others want to let it ride. Because this is crypto, some people want to issue a crypto token that represents claims on the estate.

Spoiler alert: it will be sold off to satisfy the debts of the bankrupt corporation. That's SOP for bankruptcy court, and it would take an extremely persuasive case to convince the court to do otherwise.

If there's a way to sell it at a fair price, yes. Otherwise, they have a fiduciary responsibility to hold it until a buyer can be found to pay a fair price. They won't hold it just to let it ride though - that's correct. IANAL :-)

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#626
post #393

> You’d think this MIT graduate would wise up, but he never did. The MIT campus has a major public road running through the middle of it, one of the busiest surface streets in the area. You don't have to stand there very long to see a crowd of students almost get hit by a car because they didn't look before they crossed the street. Point is, the old cliche is true, there really is such a thing as a person with a lot…

> there really is such a thing as a person with a lot of book-learning but less common sense than a sea slug I don't even think SBF had the book-learning, just intellectual arrogance. "I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. I think, if you wrote a book, you f---ed up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post."

If he read more, it's possible his spoken grammar might not be so atrocious.

Re: Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted

#627

I was reading the trial report by Inner City Press. The AUSAs were incredibly thorough and strategic. The evidences were air-tight, the cross-examination was masterfully controlled with precision and incisiveness, and of course the closing argument was forceful. It was a great joy to read the report, as if I was watching an extended episode of The Good Fight. On the other hand, the defense was really weak, quite hand…

Ah, the old "growing a business by buying your parents a mansion" investment.
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