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SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities

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Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities

#671

Post by [deleted] »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #652
mikeyouse wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holmes got 11 years in Federal prison for her first offense for financial crimes.. that is a long sentence. SBF obviously won’t get life behind bars, nor should he.

> SBF obviously won’t get life behind bars, nor should he. Is it really that obvious? I know the Federal Sentencing Guidelines have some wiggle room and gray areas, but I do know for financial crimes the length of sentence is largely proportional to the amount of money involved - not linearly proportional, mind you, but given that around 8 billion was stolen, definitely seems like life is on the table. That said, I a…

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Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities

#672

Post by mikeyouse »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #652
mikeyouse wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holmes got 11 years in Federal prison for her first offense for financial crimes.. that is a long sentence. SBF obviously won’t get life behind bars, nor should he.

> SBF obviously won’t get life behind bars, nor should he. Is it really that obvious? I know the Federal Sentencing Guidelines have some wiggle room and gray areas, but I do know for financial crimes the length of sentence is largely proportional to the amount of money involved - not linearly proportional, mind you, but given that around 8 billion was stolen, definitely seems like life is on the table. That said, I a…

We'll know for sure when the charges are unsealed tomorrow, but for now, it's likely he's only been charged with a few counts of wire fraud and money laundering. Bank fraud has a max sentence of 30 years, wire fraud 20 years, and like Holmes found out (fortunately for her) - the amount isn't the total amount that was lost, but the smaller amount implicated directly in the fraud charges.

If you squint, you can maybe get to 37-40 points if they do get him for over $1 billion -- which is a serious sentence! But more on the order of 19-24 years.

Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities

#673

Post by russdill »

bdhe wrote: post #348
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People here love to hate the press for some reason.

No, sadly there is a decidedly right-wing mind virus around how SBF is treated with kid gloves because he heavily donated to democrats. Ignoring that he also donated to Republicans. This is all part of that narrative - substantiated or otherwise.

People are angry and they aren't seeing the immediate consequences they want. It's not just an SBF thing though, I suspect that various police dramas have given people a very skewed view.

Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities

#675

Post by landemva »

briHass wrote: post #630
vkou wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strange how as soon as criminal money starts going into campaign funds, we all get up in arms about how corrupt and awful pay-to-play politics is. The same political conflicts of interest exist, regardless of whether the funding comes from a carbon Super-PAC, or a crypto con man... But you wouldn't be able to tell that from any of the blatantly partisan rhetoric around it. It's all very "We're not mad that campa…

Sure, but what do you do about it? I've never been able to formulate any rules that wouldn't have worse, unintended consequences. Running for a political office is essentially advertising yourself, and that takes gobs of money, existing fame, connections, or all of the above. Trying to limit 'who' can contribute is fraught with violations of free speech or picking and choosing the definition of what a 'company' vs an…

I would go back to the Constitution that has a census to enumerate the people and expand the federal House of Reps, as intended. It would be so representative and so big they would meet on zoom or regionally. There would be way too many for the lobbyists to control them.

'The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative…” — U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 2, clause 3'

As it is now, they decided to stop.growing the House because ... big bribes to the controlled-by-lobbyists Reps.

Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities

#676

Post by guelo »

Semaphor wrote: post #632
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted a Twitter thread about this in an early story that I can look up that was super informative with a lot of detail, but the short of it is that it was all a house of cards based on FTT. If Alameda died, it would have tanked the value of FTT, which would have in turn killed FTX, because they were assigning huge value to FTT on their balance sheet (which is, in and of itself, insane because FTT worked more like…

Sidebar > which is, in and of itself, insane because FTT worked more like a stock of FTX itself - a company doesn't put its own stock on the asset side of the balance sheet Thinking about it, it makes sense. But I never did before. So where does a company’s own stock normally end up at, balance-wise?

I've always been confused about this point. In the stock buyback world apparently they just vaporize the stock when it's acquired, they don't hold it on the books because if they need to issue more they can always dilute and create new shares when they need it.

Though I would disagree that FTT really functioned equivalently to ownership shares.

Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities

#677

Post by object-a »

adasdasdas wrote: post #628
jhugo wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It uses the same tone that SBF uses when characterizing the situation as a complicate mixup instead of what it really is, deliberate fraud using customer funds to increase leverage. That's because describing it as "deliberate fraud" would require evidence of intent that they don't have. I agree that it's likely the case, but I wouldn't expect a journalist to state it as fact at this point.

Here is a better title. FTX firm headed by SBF collapses after failing to process user withdrawals. Mismanaged funds and risky trades are to blame. Victims and prominent figures within the crytposphere allege fraud. Funny how when it comes to most stories, "Business is killing babies... says person (random person on twitter)" is good enough.

Funnily enough, this is a pretty succinct description of the article that's being called a puff piece.

Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities

#678

Post by aaronbrethorst »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #649
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #170

My only regret about this is that we won’t be treated to an absolutely bonkers House committee hearing with Sam this week.

I still think it will be pretty bonkers. Someone else posted FTX's restructuring CEO's opening statement for tomorrow morning, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33962193 . With comments like the one below, I'm interested to see how many bombshells are dropped: > Nearly all of these situations share common characteristics, ranging from gross mismanagement, excessive leverage, failures of internal controls, failures…

That opening statement is remarkable. Thanks for sharing the link.

Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities

#679

Post by RC_ITR »

dmix wrote: post #155
favflam wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Someone took a picture of her in a coffee shop down the street from the Manhattan FBI/US attorney office a few weeks ago (last week?). She is supposed to be in Hong Kong as that is where she was based. 2. BBG news article recently speculated some hot-shot lawyers have begun representing Caroline.

She was spotted in NYC with another Alameda employee too. Maybe the Alameda execs are trying to say they just made irresponsible gambles (like a shitty Wall St investor) but SBF is the one who secretly covered the massive losses with FTX customer assets without telling the public and was responsible for the "dual accounting" issue where deposits were counted twice. Among all the other things that they did wrong. Or m…

> Maybe the Alameda execs are trying to say they just made irresponsible gambles (like a shitty Wall St investor) but SBF is the one who secretly covered the massive losses with FTX customer assets without telling the public and was responsible for the "dual accounting" issue where deposits were counted twice. Among all the other things that they did wrong.

Here’s the crazy thing. Maybe they pierce the veil and say the two companies acted as one, but hedge funds fail all the time. The fraud was SBF using FTX to prop up Alameda…

Re: SBF Arrested by Bahamian Authorities

#680

Post by [deleted] »

skullone wrote: post #555
ilteris wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern banking is not 2500 years old...more like 500 years old.

You'd be surprised. Lots of evidence and some writings on banks in the Babylonian times, with similar concepts dating back well over 2500 years. Obviously much has changed. Oddly, SBF seems to have perpetuated an early form of fraud, "confidence men"

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