FTX crypto-crook Sam Bankman-Fried gets 25 years in prison Fallen crypto-king Sam Bankman-Fried has been jailed for 25 years after New York federal judge Lewis Kaplan expressed disbelief at almost every argument from his legal team. The mastermind behind one of the largest cases of corporate fraud in US history was convicted on seven charges (conspiracy to commit wire fraud on …
I'd happily do a week inside if it meant I could have over $6 million to burn through
When sent to prison for fraud/theft you don't get to keep what you stole. His sentence also includes the requirement to forfeit more than $11 billion.
You'd spend the rest of your life trying to repay that $6 million.
Crypto-currency disciples can't stop hyping their scam, even when prison time is staring them in the face. It's so deeply engrained in their psyche that hype is how it functions, this is what you do, that they can't see that it is not how real investments and real currencies work. The ponzi scheme at the root of it totally eludes them.
There are still people trying to sell them! I recently saw a hotel showing NFTs on a wall, and apparently all you had to do to buy them was scan a QR code.
I know a guy who claims he made money on every NFT he's bought and sold. He carefully neglects to mention that there's some he's bought, but never sold...
I concluded they were a vaguely legal 'scam' in that you seemed to 'own' something, but that it had no actual physical form or value. I did not buy any, and have not regretted that. Certainly not in the same way I regret not buying bitcoins when they were less than US$100 each ...
If he been able to postpone his court case maybe we'd see; "A politician who takes his loot to Florida and successfully bets the stolen money is entitled to a full discount on every sentence by using his New York City winnings to pay back what he recorded" after Tuesday, November 5, 2024 in the USA.
Are his parents to be prosecuted for aiding and abetting his shenanigans? By all accounts have they not a lifetime of experience and no little professional knowledge of what one should definitely not be doing in such business as SBF thought he was god’s gift and aceing it?
I don't think they can be held liable for the actions of another adult. Their background does, however, completely nail any idea that their son couldn't be expected to understand the consequences of his actions. He appears to have taken several billion dollars of other people's money and just spent it on himself and his friends with no realistic prospect of ever being able to pay it back. The rest of us need to be protected from people like that.
"Does that render them as willing accessories before, during and after the fact, AC, and thus complicit co-conspirators??"
It would be difficult to prove his parents as co-conspirators unless there's some very damning evidence. The parents don't seem all that bright (also never married due to some strange reasons) so it may be that they never suspected their clever little boy was ripping people off rather than being a first-in genius when it came to crypto.
How did they "have to know" it was stolen? Parents are usually the last to believe their child is doing anything illegal. How often have we seen the parents of a murderer trying to make excuses for them claiming it was others who were truly responsible to saying "I believe in my heart he's not guilty"
In the context of SBF's trial, of course his parents are not defendants, and what they knew is irrelevant.
Now we have a civil case pending against them, and it may well be that criminal charges follow, since evidence is being presented that they were materially involved in FTX and Alameda and knew of wrongdoing.
As you say, whether they knew the money was stolen needs to be proven in court, not just assumed. And bad-parenting laws are often problematic (aside from the criminalization of abuse, of course), as in the Crumbley case, since they do not have a scientific foundation and are effectively guilt by association. Let's see Bankman and Fried tried for things they did, not what their son did.
"(Joseph) Bankman, according to FTX, was right in the thick of a whole bunch of FTX business—what sounds like just about everything that did not involve the actual trading of crypto and minting of coins. The suit says that SBF’s father directed where company payments would go, picked out charities to benefit from his son’s largesse, entered into and terminated contracts, hand-picked the company’s outside counsel, made hiring recommendations, and authorized expenses. The suit also says that some of FTX’s expenses wound up paying for really nice things for him and Fried."
"FTX’s new management says that Fried, SBF’s mother, used ill-gotten funds from her son’s businesses as a piggy bank for her political action committee. The PAC, an operation called Mind the Gap that tries to get Democrats elected to office, and its supported causes received “tens of millions” of dollars from Bankman-Fried and FTX executive Nishad Singh, the complaint says. (According to the Federal Election Commission, Singh’s portion amounted to $1 million.) Singh’s contributions, it notes, came directly out of FTX’s coffers. It details a money-in, money-out cadence in which Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund sent money to Singh and then, within a day, Singh sent similar (or even identical) amounts directly to Bankman-Fried’s mom’s PAC. Singh has admitted to campaign finance violations. Maybe Fried, SBF’s mother, was entirely unaware of and disconnected from this operation. But an August 2022 email cited in the lawsuit includes Fried explicitly explaining to her son that he could use another FTX executive to make PAC contributions in his name, “but that has its own costs and risks.” Not a great thing to have in writing!"
"Other parts of the lawsuit sit somewhere between outrageous and very funny. The suit says that Bankman, SBF’s father, was at one point drawing a $200,000 annual salary from FTX but that he thought he was “supposed to” be getting a nice, round $1 million. He emailed his son, according to the suit, “Gee, Sam I don’t know what to say here. This is the first [I] have heard of the 200K a year salary! Putting Barbara on this,” he added, calling in the boss’s mother. The suit says that shortly thereafter, Bankman-Fried made a $10 million gift to his parents out of funds from Alameda Research (FTX’s sister hedge fund), then had the couple put on the deed to a $16.4 million Bahamas property with funds “ultimately provided” by FTX."
A statement from the new management is hardly credible without actual proof of their claims. Note that there is no direct evidence the the parents knew the funds were *embezelled*
If those docs existed, the prosecutors would have them along with new charges to file.
It's not just a statement from FTX's new management—it's a lawsuit.
BBC: FTX: 'King of Crypto' parents sued over missing millions
SBF's parents will be deposed by FTX's lawyers before the court case, at which point we'll find out exactly what they knew. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that one.
Apart from the 'crypto' thing there's nothing new here, its just a classic case of confusing cash flow with income. The suckers come from the need to get in quick to make a killing, the stereotypical con artist victim.
Obviously there's a line between a 'legal' con and an 'illegal' con. I wonder if its just in the small print of the prospectus?
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FTX itself was an exchange. The way it is supposed to be is: You give them money, they hold that money on your behalf. You tell them "buy Bitcoin", they now hold less dollars on your behalf, and they buy Bitcoin to hold on your behalf. You tell them "I want my stuff", they give you your dollars and Bitcoin back. And at every step, they charge a small fee (or give you a slightly worse exchange rate) to make money from you.
FTX itself was not supposed to be an investment at all. They claimed to be just holding your stuff on your behalf. They were middlemen. The Bitcoin or other coin was the investment.
Brokers and exchanges exist for stocks and shares, too, and are highly regulated.
But FTX didn't worry about holding money and Bitcoin on your behalf. They just took your money and either invested it badly and lost it, or just spent it. And they lied to everyone by saying that they had your money and coins. They actually only had enough to cover withdrawals. Until there were more withdrawals than deposits, and they ran out of money.
I'm not sure I understand quite what went on that was so wrong. Didn't SBF say he'd hold the funds in a mix of cash and crypto-coins, and then 'sell' billions of dollars of his own crypto-coins to the exchange in return for the real money? So what's the difference between that and holding bitcoins or any of the other not-money?
Seems like the only complaint is that he didn't establish an arms-length price for them.
IDK, it just doesn't seem any more 'fraud' than anything else involving crypto not-money. The fools give their money to people who obviously aren't ever going to give it back, don't read the t's & c's that say it's a black hole, and then complain about what they freely signed up to out of sheer greed. You don't have to commit fraud to take money from mugs like that.
It is quite simple. If I open an exchange where you can buy things, you are still in control. You give me your money, and you decide what to buy. If you choose to buy 2 bitcoin at the price I offer them, then you now own 2 bitcoin and whatever money is left after you purchased them. I don't get to decide that I'm going to sell you a different cryptocurrency instead, because I'm running an exchange. My job is to buy the stuff you said to buy. If you lose money because you bought something that went down in value, that's on you. If I choose to ignore what you said and spend on something else, it's on me and it is a crime.
Your description of what happened is just wrong.
"Didn't SBF say he'd hold the funds in a mix of cash and crypto-coins, and then 'sell' billions of dollars of his own crypto-coins to the exchange in return for the real money?"
Neither. He said he would hold exactly what the customers asked him to hold, whether that's just cash, just cryptocoins, or a combination, and they get to choose the proportions and which specific cryptocoins those were. As for the coin he invented, FTT, he didn't sell those to FTX, they were already the property of FTX, and they were supposed to be just one choice of things you could buy. Of course, he used that as a method to slightly hide the fraud on the balance sheet, not that it took people very long to notice even with that fiction.
Steal little people's money by .. say using an estimate of their power usage then jacking up their direct debits to take the maximum you can rather than what they've actually used... the courts/cops go 'meh' and leave you to struggle to get your money back.
Invest 10 million of your money in a crypto ponzi scheme thats run by a company thats 6 months old thats sure to pay you back 25% per year or more untaxed and the cops/courts throw the crook in the slammer...
That's why I pay my bills by debit card and flatly refuse to use direct debit. In a world where smart meters send back our consumption every single day, taking any amount more than that really ought to be classified as corporate theft and punished with heavy fines. But, no, they know our exact consumption yet still take entirely fictitious amounts.
There's definitely abuse that should be rightly cracked down upon but the concept of paying an even amount throughout the year rather than having a bill shock in the colder months makes sense to me. For the financially secure/savvy, there's more money to be made by holding the excess cash through the summer and wisely investing it but if you're not very good with money and have limited income, it can get a lot more expensive to be caught out.
The problem is that it's decided by the same people who stand to profit from overpayment. It would be better if the data were readily available cross-platform (with the consent of the consumer) so people could run their own analysis. I personally do it manually anyway but lowering the barrier to entry seems beneficial if it gets more people in charge of their own finances.
"there's more money to be made by holding the excess cash through the summer and wisely investing it"
That's probably SBF's thinking but he was a bit unlucky. He probably genuinely, really expected to be able to get it back, plus what he spent on himself, friends and family, before anyone noticed; the self-delusion of everyone who gambles with other people's money and loses.
I thought that too, when I received a bill for about a year's worth of gas supply in summer, when I basically don't use gas.
I had already done my own meter-read and got a refund from the utility company by the time I realised my mistake: the first 100MJ (or something) of gas are the most expensive, then an intermediate tariff for 100-500MJ, then the cheapest rate was for usage 500MJ+ per billing period. So by paying for gas I hadn't used yet, I was buying the most expensive gas in advance at the cheapest rate.
The winning strategy therefore becomes: pay what looks like an exorbitant bill for gas I haven't used yet in summer, then get a negative bill the next billing period and use the credit on the account to pay for the gas in the winter when it's expensive and I actually use it.
This strategy becomes possible because I realised the gas company can't be arsed to do an actual meter-read more than one or twice a year, and because of the time of year that they do the actual meter-read, their extrapolated estimate of my consumption is based on winter usage, not average usage, let alone summer (non-)usage.
Oh, and I'll heat my house with solar powered reverse cycle AC which is free, even in winter.
What are you babbling about? You can choose whether or not to give a utility company money ahead of time so you don't face a bigger bill later in the year, or not. If they have more of your money than you'd like, and they don't return it on request - which, in fact, they normally do - then you sue them, and get the money; it's a formality.
I mean, on the one hand, at least the people who were caught up in this will have some measure of justice done. I'm sure many would want a longer or harsher sentence, but that's how revenge works, not justice.
On the other hand... what this guy did is fundamentally the same as what banks did leading up to the 2008 banking crisis. After years of US politicians chipping away at the firewalls erected after the 1920s financial meltdown, allowing banks to mix customer funds put into checking and savings accounts, with funds put into investment accounts, shit predictably hit the fan again -- worst part is, after putting back significantly watered down firewalls shortly after, within a couple years there were efforts to knock them down again. People lost huge amounts of money, but the banks were bailed out and no one (that I'm aware of) faced any kind of prison time as a result of their actions. So, it kind of seems like this guy is being treated disparately harsher than all the CEOs of major banks who were pulling the same kind of shit. Not saying this guy doesn't deserve some time in prison, but there should be enough people to have a whole prison wing devoted to people who committed this kind of fraud on people, not just him, Madoff, and maybe a couple other small-timers.
May I direct you to this now classic article by Matt Taibi: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-179414/
In federal prison you aren't eligible for release until you've served 85% of your sentence. With good behavior you usually get out at that point, but the only way he only serves half his sentence is if whoever is president in 2036 commutes it or pardons him.
He will get credit for the year or so he's been locked up pretrial, but he's not getting out until the mid 2040s.
If Trump (perish the thought) is POTUS again, no doubt some of that missing money will find its way into his pocket and then he'll issue a pardon letting SBF out early. Sort of like Scooter Libby who took a bullet for GWB's war crimes. If Biden gets a second term, it's likely SBF is fucked until at least 2029.
If you didn't think SBF was enough of a waste of skin yet, something recently came out that manages to simultaneously:-
- Show just what a snivelling, unprincipled, craven excuse for a human being SBF actually is *and*
- Make clear quite how blatantly many of those jumping on the "anti-woke" bandwagon are low-life grifters doing so for entirely self-serving/self-preserving reasons.
Remember all that crap SBF spouted about "effective altruism" and his desire to raise money to have a positive effect on the world, blah blah. Yeah, turns out that was- big shock coming- self-serving techbro bullshit. He later admitted that as "dumb game we woke Westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us".
But the bit I had in mind was the revelation that- while brainstorming ideas to save his own skin after the FTX collapse- one of the ideas he came up with was to
* "Go on Tucker Carlson, come out as a republican",
* "Come out against the woke agenda", and
* "Talk about how the cartel of lawyers is destroying value and throwing entrepreneurs under the bus in order to cover up the incompetence of lawyers"
And also to reveal that he'd secretly donated money to the US Republican party.
In other words, the most transparent attempt at the rally-the-right-wing strategy yet.
I mean, remember he's considering doing this purely as a PR strategy because he's in trouble. Even caring about whether he believes in any of that- any more than the "altruism" he spouted- would undeservedly dignify the idea that SBF has any principles or moral standing worth giving a toss about, when this makes clear that he doesn't.
All that matters is that he was prepared to say it and go down that route purely for his own self-interest.
There's something childish and almost David Brent-like in the clunkiness of his desperate post-collapse attempts to find a PR direction that worked, including that abrupt "shift" to the rally-the-right-wing strategy, but not in a manner that's remotely endearing.
Quite the opposite- he comes across as an unlikeably immature manchild, the sort who would say anything and throw his own friends under the bus if he thought it would get him out of trouble at school, a spoiled perma-adolescent tech bro who never had to learn responsibility.
Congrats, you've just outlined the US GOP from (at least) Ronald Reagan to today. Some of the terminology has changed, but the basic message has remained pretty consistent for the past several decades. Main difference is that today they don't feel like they need to couch their racist, nativist, jingoist, authoritarian, and theocratic bullshit in cute little euphemisms. Now they just come right out and say what they're going to do.
I don't think it's accurate to lump Reagan and most Republican voters in the Reagan era in with the current lot. I didn't like Reagan or his politics, but he was — particularly in his first term before cognitive decline really started to set in — a policy wonk who was very well-informed and appears to have sincerely believed that his domestic policies were good for the country, and his foreign ones for the world. We have a lot of information about him now from his private notes and similar material, much of which wasn't available, much less digested by historians, for quite a few years after he left office.
Most of today's GOP leadership, on the other hand, is entirely unprincipled (Trump, Graham), or pursuing their own personal agenda (McConnell), or ignorant and foolish (most other Congressional Republicans, such as Johnson and that nitwit MTG). The principled ones have been sidelined or forced out. When even people like Mike Pence and Bill Barr are cast as villains by the populist section of their own party, you know things are bad.
The Reagan years, or even the Bush presidencies, don't compare to the current shit-show. Reagan made many questionable decisions, sure. He was hawkish — though his confrontations with the USSR were reasonably nuanced and probably contributed to its collapse (even if Reagan's role in that has been greatly overestimated by some). His pretense of ignorance over Iran-Contra was unpersuasive. But he was neither foolish nor (a couple of hot-mic moments aside) reckless.
While I won't deny there's been an increasing pace to the dumbing down of the Republican party, even in the Reagan years they were racist, xenophobic, jingoist, theocratic, autocratic, assholes. They just did a better job of hiding it. Then Trump came along, ripped off the mask, and took a giant shit on it while staring you right in the eyes, which apparently resonated with a depressingly large number of people.
Lest we forget, one of Reagan's campaign commercials had a bunch of Mexicans running across the border, which was supposed to make people think that they're coming to take jobs away from good hard-working white folk. These days we call it the "great replacement theory" which is peddled by people like Xitler and Fucker Carlson, but the GOP has been using the same racist tropes for longer than some of their voting base has been alive.
"...a spoiled perma-adolescent tech bro who never had to learn responsibility..."
Sociopaths are genetically predisposed to not LEARN responsibility; they absolutely can NOT learn responsibility. This trait is formed in the fetus, in the womb. The sociopath is born a completely amoral individual, with no conscience; and cannot be changed--via medication, human interaction, or otherwise. (and congratulations on getting the "...spoiled perma-adolescent..." part 100% correct, re the sociopathic condition/individual)
{...and--be very careful about who you vote for...}
That's not entirely true.
A true sociopath, as opposed to someone who we just call a sociopath, is indeed born that way, but they essentially do not have empathy. You can quibble over whether that's the same as a conscience, but, sociopaths can and do learn things like responsibility. It just requires a lot more effort on their part, and it's a conscious decision each and every time, whereas for the rest of us, it's largely subconscious. But, a sociopath will, at the very least, fake concern or whatever else is needed to get whatever it is they're after. It's not a universal trait, but a lot of times sociopaths can actually be quite charming people, because they spend a lot of time learning exactly what kind of behaviors get them what they want.
Granted I'm neither qualified to do so, nor have I personally interacted with SBF in order to determine if he really is a sociopath, but it's a very rare condition and I'd be surprised if he was. I think his emotional growth was stunted at some point and he doesn't really have the capacity to understand what he did. Sort of like a dog doesn't really understand why it's bad for them to piddle on the carpet, just that you get upset with them when they do.
《Sociopaths are genetically predisposed to not LEARN responsibility; they absolutely can NOT learn responsibility. This trait is formed in the fetus, in the womb. The sociopath is born a completely amoral individual, with no conscience; and cannot be changed--via medication, human interaction, or otherwise. (and congratulations on getting the "...spoiled perma-adolescent..." part 100% correct, re the sociopathic condition/individual)》
Unfortunately much of society is built on the idea of an individual's innate capacity to make moral choices and that when they have knowingly made an immoral choice to feel guilt, accept punishment and the need for restitution before rehabilitation or redemption. Appears rather futile when dealing with sociopaths.
Sort of explains why the US on the whole isn't keen on abortion.
viz The right to [sociopathic] life - probably worried some pinko boffin might develop an antenatal test for sociopathy.
Many decades ago, I was reading the text of US Constitution and came across the ban on "bills of attainder*" which I had to lookup. I am not sure they might not be such a bad thing after all (as long as its not my blood that is considered tainted.;)
Not that my presence has or ever will disgrace any of the 50 states.
* Art.1 ss 9&10
"...and--be very careful about who you vote for..."
"...Any rat in a sewer can lie. It's how rats are. It's what makes them rats. But a human doesn't run and hide in dark places, because he's something more. Lying is the most personal act of cowardice there is.”― Nancy Farmer
"It further recommends that the designated facility be as close to the San Francisco - Bay Area as possible"
Well I recommend that the facility be as close to the North Pole as possible.
I fail to see where the imprisonement takes place has anything to do with it, and if you specifically want him to benefit from California temperatures, I would personally see to it that he gets as close to Siberia as possible.
Yes. Note the full order puts that bit after the requirements about taking medication and so forth. It's all part of the mental-health package. This is good sentencing practice, because 1) it demonstrates some consideration for the incarcerated, 2) it maintains the fiction of rehabilitation, and 3) it removes a possible avenue for appeal.
From the article--"...Social awkwardness for the win..."
When was the last time you heard of "social awkwardness" saving someone from the gallows, or from the firing squad?
The entire problem with--and solution to--the overwhelming, absolutely smothering, avalanche of cases like this is that retribution is not met with the construction of gallows in the town square, with the end result being visible to all.
The "Fear of Consequences" is a tremendously powerful disincentive to any form of anti-social behavior. It simply does not exist in the "legal system" or social fabric of most countries (those who consider themselves "...too civilized...") of the world--any more.
At a minimum, Bankman-Fried should have gotten the '100-years-with-no-chance-of-parole' sentence, and at a maximum-security, non-Club-Fed facility.
One can only hope that The Register's close ("...Social awkwardness for the win...") was written, using a well-chosen abundance, and very healthy dose, of sarcasm.
From the judge's statement, it doesn't sound like his awkwardness was used to reduce his sentence, just to change where he served it. I admit that this was one of your points, although the recommendation was for a medium-security, not a low-security facility. Still, you may have overestimated how much that helped him.
Social awkwardness - dressed up as "autism" - has been tried as an excuse for almost every crime imaginable, including hacking, rape and murder. It's hardly a surprise that an upper middle class defendant would try it for fraud as well.
I don't like in this day and age how people with autism and ADHD etc are being branded as having "superpowers" to make them feel special. It's an illness that hinders their development, not something to be celebrated. A superhero wouldn't constantly be late, forget things, misplace things, or have massive anxiety, that is, if they were real anyway, which they're not.
He fights tooth and nail, obviously, because everybody in the entire world knows he’s DEFINITELY guilty as charged.
What he really wants is guaranteed assurance that he will be extradited ONLY if it is agreed he will be found innocent at trial.
The ultimate irony: he cries and begs and whimpers, but gets sent back anyway, and the jury sentences him to 3 months because he’s such a complete milktoast, anything more and it’s punishing the jail system worse than him.
And then it dawns on him: he wasted, what, 15 years? avoiding practically nothing.
Poetic Justice!
If Assange isn't going to the US, he's off to Sweden to serve a couple of decades for the rapes he confessed to under oath. Or, potentially, in an English jail for perverting the course of justice.
All the fuss about whether the alt-right misogynist did this, that, or the other with Wikileaks is obscuring the bit where the scumbag admitted to violently raping a woman while she cried and struggled to get free. His defence, such as he tried on in front of several English judges, was not to dispute the facts - he stipulated, under oath, that the facts as alleged were true - but to argue a point of law meant his rapes weren't _criminal offences_.
Like others have said, what SBF did was no worse - actually much less worse - than what happens within the banking system. But FTX and crypto are a threat to established system so there you go.
And there were a lot of plea deals issued in this case, where arguably guiltier people walked free if they testified against SBF. That's not justice, that's a witch hunt.
Shameful the way so many readers here just want to express outrage at his "crimes" and think what they're told to think.
Oooooh, let me think... has a bank ever failed and would have lost everything without government bailouts (er, yes), or other banks scrambling to steady the ship before it happened to them (couple of months ago right?)???
Also... crypto is the Wild West, we all know that. Anyone who's not a fool has their own wallet. But banks have very undeserved public trust. What would happen if everyone - very reasonably - asked their bank for their money back? The banks would be blown out of the water.
whataboutism strawman.
Not to mention our esteemed establishment politicians who gladly took contributions from SBF & co, even when they were in charged with overseeing crypto banking and FTX.
And none were prosecuted or even admonished.
I would have thought with the Trump waiting in the wings, that they would put our interests in front of their pocketbooks, but no.
So, because Trump, I should forget about the incompetence and greed embedded in our political system and instead just believe anyone who isn't Trump / Trump-ish is an angel?
I'm not voting for Trump but somehow our politicians have to kept on their toes. You are not doing Democracy any favors by writing anybody-not-Trump a blank check.
Where is the implication that SBF should have gone free? Clearly the point is that Trump should be in jail too. If the US just had the balls to charge him with treason for his attempted coup, it would have brought the death penalty into play and Trump would have plead guilty to avoid it. He'd now be safely behind bars, spending the rest of his life in jail without communication privileges. Those of his cult-followers batshit enough to commit crimes as a result would be in jail too. Problem solved.
"The mastermind behind one of the largest cases of corporate fraud in US history was convicted on seven charges (conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers and lenders, actual wire fraud on the same"
Without passing judgement on the judgement, so to speak; I legitimately don't understand how you can be convicted of the separate offences of 'conspiracy to commit wire fraud' AND 'actual wire fraud' within the same act. If you conspire but fail to follow through, then ok that is a separate, legitimate charge and I understand it. But if you're convicted of 'actual', that should then encompass the 'conspiracy' part. Otherwise they could create separate offences for each and every part of the planning process.
Seems to me they're padding the charge sheet here.
Unrelated note: my car needed new brake pads recently. I got a message on the dash saying I needed new brake pads. It was abundantly clear that I needed new brake pads. Went to the garage (big Stuttgart-based German manufacturer who shan't be named) and asked for new brake pads.
Got the invoice. €590 for new brake pads, €45 excl. VAT for "Diagnostics" to determine whether I needed new brake pads. Fuck no. If I come to you and say "My car doesn't seem to be stopping well but I don't know what the problem is", then sure charge me a diagnostics fee. But you don't get to charge extra for stating the bleeding obvious. Just like the 'conspiracy to' versus 'actual' argument.
Because under US Federal law those are separate crimes. That's all there is to it. Separate crimes, potentially separate sentences.
More importantly, he was given concurrent terms for the "actual" wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud charges. Counts 1 and 3 are wire fraud; 2 and 4 are the corresponding conspiracy. Terms for 1, 2, and 7 are concurrent; terms for 3 and 4 are concurrent; and part of 3/4 is concurrent with 1/2/7.
All of this is in the minutes and attached documents.
And fair enough, too. If you do a crime all on your lonesome, you get the punishment. If you find some other person to help you who but for your solicitation would not have helped, and enabled your crime, extra punishment is fully in order. Your accomplice might already have been criminally-minded, but you helped make them a criminal.
"Got the invoice. €590 for new brake pads, €45 excl. VAT for "Diagnostics" to determine whether I needed new brake pads. "
Yeah, the diagnostic fee is pure manure. If you've brought the car in to have new pads installed, the work to "inspect" the old ones is built in since they are coming off anyway and it's part of the process to measure the rotors at the same time. Perhaps there would be an extra fee if the rotors needed to be turned or replaced, but just checking wouldn't be an added charge. In many places, licensed garages are required to make those checks at the same time so it would be built into the service cost.
Basic auto mechanics should be taught in school to prevent people from being sold muffler bearing and blinker fluid. There was a shop near me owned by a customer of my business. They weren't the cheapest, but they were scrupulously honest. I referred several people to them and always heard back about how appreciative they were that I told them about that shop. The shop is also busy all of the time. There seems to be a demand for work well done, good communications and no attempts to pad a bill.
He didn't set out with criminal intent, just like Zuckerberg (children being algorithmically fed details of how to kill themselves- because that's what they deserved), and the rest of them.
But he lacked the vision and foresight to see how things would/could end, just like Zuckerberg, and the rest of them.
These are people who have no concept, and no ability to deal with the power that has somehow landed in their lap- because the rest of us signed up.
"The court declines to order restitution due to the complexity of the case and the number of victims. It instead grants the government's motion to authorize the United States to compensate victims with finally forfeited assets through a remission process, as restitution would be impractical in this case."
An understandable move, but as erver with these massive financial crimes:
1) The public (U.S. in this case) has to make it good when some may well have pensions etc which were invested and so lost money in the first place
2) I suspect people outside of the U.S. will not be compensated. I get why, but very much sucks for them.
I'm often not a fan of people getting over-long prison sentences, but I think Sam Bankman-Freid deserves what he got if he serves all of it (it's federal prison so possibly he will?). Why? Because of the magnitiude of the crime, the attempted (and possibly actual) corruption of politicians, the loss to individuals and (this is postulation admittedly) reponsibility for some self-deletions of people who lost everything.
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