FTX crypto-clown Sam Bankman-Fried couldn't even do house arrest. Now he's in jail Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), former chief executive of crypto-disaster FTX, who has been awaiting trial for his firm's failure while in home detention with his family, has been sent to jail for attempting to intimidate witnesses. On Friday, at a hearing in New York City, Judge Lewis Kaplan revoked SBF's bail based on American …
It is clear that this guy will do anything to get his way. He wanted easy money, he did whatever he could to get it. Now he's caught and he knows he's going to jail, so once again he'll do whatever he can to get out of this pickle.
Personally, I'm surprised he hasn't murdered anyone yet. Maybe because of house arrest.
In any case, I absolutely doubt that paying his debt to society will be lesson enough. I expect to hear about him again soon after his release, whenever that is.
Pretty sure that wouldn't help him at all. Forget that an insanity plea is almost impossible to pull off outside of comics and movies, having a disorder that affects your ability to concentrate for sustained periods of time wouldn't even come close to meeting the level of making for an insanity defense.
The guy's just an idiot who can't keep his mouth shut, sort of like a certain Florida Man who's been in the news a fair bit recently for his many legal woes.
No, ADHD and/or ASD would offer no real defence here. ASD might help if you're living in a box room, have no friends and lack the social skills and insight to fully understsnd the gravity of what you're doing. But this guy is obviously an expert in reading and manipulating people, he had the comprehension and insight required to perform extended and highly complex planning and was able to maintain a massive fraud worth billions. He fully understands what he's doing.
ADHD is a factor in a lot of crime, largely because it increases impulsivity, making it more likely you'll do something stupid that you might regret. The prevalence of ADHD in prison is many times higher than the general population. However, this guy planned his behaviour, it was repeated, consistent and directed towards a goal of ripping people off. There's no way ADHD would be seen as a legitimate offence.
However, the presence of one or both conditions could certainly be relevant in sentencing. His team could try this tactic to get him cushier detention conditions.
That said, the US legal system does not apply justice evenly or fairly. We have all seen rich, privileged criminals acquitted on ridiculous defences that would never work for Joe public. So who knows?
From what I have been reading, Trump may be heading that way as well.
The way the judge has phased it he has a choice, but we all know telling Trump to refrain from something makes it many times more likely he will do it, just to show he can.
Methinks the law and lawyers be in real and present danger of being recognised as an ass and justice a crooked delight corruptly servered if FTX crypto-clown Sam Bankman-Fried isn't worthily rewarded with the same prize as was awarded to Bernie Madoff.
On June 29, 2009, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum sentence allowed. ....... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Madoff
The thing with Madoff was that the name should have had people running away - he did make off with his customers' money.
And what of Bankman-Fried - well, if the alleged activities are proven, then he'd have literally fried the bank accounts of his customers
If he was such a finance whizz, he should have known that trying to stem the losses using an ever more desperate pyramid shuffle was going to get him there eventually. All the financial journalists who got dazzled by his seeming ability to generate money out of thin air, and helped the scam along by lending some sort of credibility to it, will of course just sail on with no consequences whatsoever.
My guess is that his thinking (using the term loosely) went something like this: "Cryptocurrencies are going to increase in value for ever. Therefore FTX depositors will rarely want to withdraw the. Therefore I can do what I like with them and nobody will every know. Also my parents work at Stanford and I went to MIT so I must be really clever."
Quote
"Cryptocurrencies are going to increase in value for ever. Therefore FTX depositors will rarely want to withdraw the. Therefore I can do what I like with them and nobody will every know. Also my parents work at Stanford and I went to MIT so I must be really clever."
At which point the banks, having turned down your application for a $300 000 loan for new equipment secured on your $10 000 000 and 30 yr old business at a 6% interest rate, invests 13 billion dollars with this crypto startup thats only been running 3 weeks.
<had a boss with a sense of humour failure friday afternoon after meeting the bank manager...
The fly in the ointment that all these schemes forget is that our friends at the Internal Revenue Service like to know about -- and share in -- our good fortune and unlike the rest of the financial services industry don't take dubious paper, they only accept folding green.
This caught out numerous crypto 'investors' -- they all seemed to make huge paper profits but when they tried to realize any of those profits, even if it was to diversify into other dubious paper, they created taxable events. No problem, of course, you just have to convert a little bit of crypto into hard money to keep them happy......
The fly in the ointment that all these schemes forget is that our friends at the Internal Revenue Service like to know about -- and share in -- our good fortune and unlike the rest of the financial services industry don't take dubious paper, they only accept folding green. ....... martinusher
Just love that sense of humour of yours, martinusher, for as we all surely know, is there nothing as dodgy and dubious as the folding green which is having a hard present time trying to preserve its ponzi worth in these post ignorant days of escaping disruptive intelligence and greater common sense, constantly rapidly increasing national debt and compounding interest on profligate deficit spending.
In the race to the rock bankrupt bottom and universal default on obliged operations, has the dollar established a stellar lead.
It brings back memories of the life and times and fate of Vivian “Spend, Spend, Spend” Nicholson albeit on an exponentially much bigger scale to result in a correspondingly much greater crash/fall from grace and favours to no longer savour or flavour.
Such is a sure fire certain inevitability you can bet your shirts on. Just take a look at the markets chasing ambulances and windfalls offering nothing novel of value and worthy of angel seeding and venture capital investment to know the unicorn bubble is horrendously burst and an extremely damaging future drain on future partner confidence on Uncle Sam’s competence to be a leading light in any speculative monetary venture.
When the magic which drivers the money tree is gone, does the money disappear with it too to end up leading everything somewhere else foreign and alien to boot and tend and watch grow with new roots ..... AIMentor and Remote Virtually Monitor.
:-) I suppose to some that sounds as strange as if it was translated from Non-Traditional Chinese. I wonder how good and accurate Google Translate would transcribe and present that view to the PRC or the website of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China, 49-51 Portland Place W1B 1JL, London.
Methinks that would be quite a stern test and a great challenge to succeed in completing effectively and unambiguously accurately.
There is a simple fix to the idiocy in financial markets: create accountability.
As long as bankers receive bonuses for risk taking that went well but not have to pay those back when they screw up (which in a number of cases had global consequences), they will trend towards taking risk - it's inevitable.
Ditto with politicians: where are the people that pushed Brexit now?
There is a simple fix to the idiocy in financial markets: create accountability. .... Anonymous Coward
A much simpler fix with almighty rewards and a great deal more fun and games to had, AC, is to crash their markets and pwn their systems ...... for you know they would never admit and submit and surrender themselves to worthy punitive accountability.
I think it was what you say plus an element of "since there is no regulation around crypto I can can pretty much do whatever I want and worse comes to worse with expensive lawyers mommy and daddy will pay for be able to wriggle out of any legal issues".
Its the same sort of rich person entitlement and being above the law as Trump had for his whole life up until now. Trump is a good example of why someone who has never been held accountable for anything their entire life believes they can get away with absolutely anything, even overthrowing the government to keep himself in power!
And, of course, mommy and daddy had no knowledge of and took no part in his unlawful shenanigans whilst he was doing house arrest and living so graciously under the roof of their home, for they would certainly be bound to know of everything he shouldn’t be doing ......given what they do for living and the education they have received .... and that can be extremely costly if it breaks the conditions of a bond too.
so I must be really clever
As ever, I remark on the difference between intelligence and wisdon:
Intelligence is knowing *how* to do something. Wisdom is knowing why it's a bad idea.
SBF obviously has a fairly high INT and a remarkably low WIS.
Whoops Apocalypse
"Bankman-Fried planned to buy Nauru and build apocalypse bunker – lawsuit"
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/21/sam-bankman-fried-nauru-bunker-ftx
Well, the apocalypse has dawned as far as SBF and his operation is concerned
And the beat and the beef goes on ..... https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/14/sam-bankman-fried-latest-charges-campaign-donation-ftx
I don’t imagine there is any real protection in one thinking you are one of the chosen few and/or having a god complex is worthy and likely to be successful in any kind of a defence strategy supporting criminal acts.
He [SBF] is not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy! ..... https://youtu.be/plZRe1kPWZw
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