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Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

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

#891

An uncle once commented about a cousin of ours that he demonstrated how it's possible to screw things up so badly that you can't possibly recover. I think that's true for Sam. I hope it's not true for the people in his orbit; I hope they can get out from under this and try to find meaning, ideally from repairing the harm they've done. As Rick Heicklen writes, "We are not ever going to be Sam. But we could be Caroline…

>We could easily make the same mistakes they do.

Could we really all watch a friend spend hundreds of millions of dollars, getting into a questionable business, and not ask a single question about what’s going on?

Because I’m really, really confident I would never find myself in that situation.

It’s like comparing helping a serial killer bury 25 bodies to being a wingman to your buddy in a bar and backing him up when he claims to be 6’ when you know he’s really 5’10”.

Only one of these situations I can picture myself in.

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

#892

An uncle once commented about a cousin of ours that he demonstrated how it's possible to screw things up so badly that you can't possibly recover. I think that's true for Sam. I hope it's not true for the people in his orbit; I hope they can get out from under this and try to find meaning, ideally from repairing the harm they've done. As Rick Heicklen writes, "We are not ever going to be Sam. But we could be Caroline…

> I hope they can get out from under this and try to find meaning, ideally from repairing the harm they've done.

After they do their time, of course.

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

#893

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…

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

#894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I don't think I feel the same way as you (my loss was small). There have been many cases where white collar crime which has similar (or greater) financial ramifications as the example of mugging you give, but the punishment is generally significantly lower (if at all). Granted a mugging could have differing levels of direct emotional impact, but white collar crime generally ends in lighter sentences. SBF and…

I think “violence” is at times such a silly measuring stick for modern justice. Instead, we should see it as lost/ruined human potential. What is worse, violently robbing one bank of $10k, or “peacefully” robbing a massive number of people for billions of dollars? I sure as hell know what I think, and it’s absolutely not in line with SBF’s sentence. He should rot in Ryker’s with people who have, unfortunately, done l…

similarly, more assets are seized by the police through asset forfeiture compared to total dollars stolen through theft.

Scammers deal many times the damage economically than shady car sales man

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

#895
post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for your loss. I'm actually surprised the sentence is this low. This is Bernie Madoff territory. This doesn't get you your money back. It doesn't even necessarily make you feel better so what's the point? This gets into the philosophy of a criminal justice system. The noble idea behind the criminal justice system is to be restorative . The offender is to be reformed so they don't repeat their crimes and can bec…

The point of the system is to remove threats from society. It should be long enough such that the person will never pose a threat to society again. Justice was served in this case.

thats one of the purposes. As usual Judges are not as dumb as people think. There are plenty of people who have commited crime who are exceedingly unlikely to commit it again (most murderers have a lifetime average of 1). There are more factors, punishment being one.

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

#896

I really don't understand the severity of criminal justice system punishment. SBF got sentenced to 25 years for a white collar financial crime while a guy in my hometown hit and killed 2 people, while DUI and ran over 100mph on a local street with 35mph limit got 26 months sentence forb2 vehicular homicide.

There is a saying, "If you want to kill someone and get away with it, do it with a car".

True but disturbing to hear

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

#897
post #813

What happened to Caroline Ellison? Did she really escape charges of billions of dollars of fraud by rolling over on SBF?

She pled guilty and will be sentenced at some point.

We'll see how blind lady justice is then.

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

#898

It's funny. I lost tens of thousands of dollars thanks to this individual, yet his sentence brings me no joy or arouses any emotion at all. I'm utterly indifferent to his fate for some reason and I don't know why. Yet if he had been a mugger who stole a much smaller amount of money from me on the street, I think I would've been far more vengeful. Should I feel vindictive? Or is it healthy to forget about it and move…

Because is remote/digital vs physical, much less/more visceral

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

#899

It's funny. I lost tens of thousands of dollars thanks to this individual, yet his sentence brings me no joy or arouses any emotion at all. I'm utterly indifferent to his fate for some reason and I don't know why. Yet if he had been a mugger who stole a much smaller amount of money from me on the street, I think I would've been far more vengeful. Should I feel vindictive? Or is it healthy to forget about it and move…

[dead]

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

#900

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.

Yeah, there are almost certainly suicides from this.

This stuff can ruin multiple generations. Poverty is (obviously) correlated with violence, abuse, depression, various forms of trauma, exposure to/victimization by crime, addiction— basically anything that increases despair.

Just because you put on a suit and mask doesn't make it okay.

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