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Fallen crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to twenty-five years in US prison
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- Title
- Dethroned crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried is set to be sentenced for defrauding FTX investors
- Published
- Mar 28 2024
- Word count
- 623 words
It’s not enough. He literally and intentionally sat atop and orchestrated a fraud to the tune of billions of dollars. He laughed in the face of law enforcement and law abiding citizens while pretending to be masters of the universe with his equally culpable cadre of crooks in a literal offshore lair. He lined the pockets of politicians with other people’s money as he tried to rise above the law. He is a bad, bad man and he deserved worse.
In criminal law, the courts look at a criminal’s mens rea when considering punishment. Effectively, mens rea is a measure of someone’s evil mind. That’s how we get different “degrees” of murder: we punish a killer worse depending on how evil his intent was when he killed his victim. SBF didn’t murder anyone, but his mens rea was as evil and intentional as the worst murderers. His lawyers did a good job infantilizing him. This wasn’t a kid with a cooky haircut, this was a 30-something year old man. He should have been punished to the fullest extent of the law. Put differently, if a man who knowingly defrauded billions doesn’t deserve the maximum penalty, who on earth does? It’s a shame.
I have no sympathy for the guy, but I always think people underestimate just how huge a punishment multiple decades in prison is. There's very few crimes outside of multiple murder or rape that I think really deserve more than 25 years in prison. That's about a third of your life (maybe a quarter since he's rich). In terms of keeping them out of society, I understand why a longer or life sentence can be important, but 25 years is a massive punishment.
I think there's something wrong about how we perceive crime that will increasingly become a problem as society continues to be abstracted.
People can't properly factor the pain of someone who can't afford dental work, the loss of possible futures had a college fund not been drained, a family weighed by a member requiring significant support, the domestic violence that spikes with financial stress, the risks the unhoused are exposed to, or the slow erosion of constant poverty and stress.
There's a death count for the actions of the Stackler family, and there are people who sold their bodies to make rent or feed an addiction. I had a sad encounter with a childhood friend in that group years back. What is the meaningful distinction between rape and creating the conditions that make prostitution one's best/only option? Or creating problem gamblers with its ~1/5 chance of attempted suicide and (attempted) murder?
If years later we found X number of suicides above the average in the population effected by FTX, or that they live X years shorter lives, what share of that death is SBF's, and if that was in the ballpark of the multiple murders you'd consider harsher punishments for, would you think those should be given to SBF?
I don't mean to weigh in on what sentencing should be for what someone like SBF did. The U.S. clearly has a dysfunctional justice system when compared to other countries, and my personal preference is always some flavor of pragmatism. I just think the language doesn't match the realities, because the realities are hard to collate.
"...Bankman was a fraud who caused a lot of people hardship" -- he caused death, some in the way LUNA did, and other ways slower and less obvious. He is the source of many untold stories like the guy on Reddit years back who stole hundreds of thousands from his family for a "sure thing."
He should be treated in the same way people without connections, wealth, or a story would. In recognition of the fullness of the consequences of his choices. Maybe that should be more leniently, but if so I'd hope it's across the board, and not just for white collar crime.
If you want to go broad, I think it's reasonable to talk about the opportunity costs represented by the money Bankman-Fried squandered, and the social damage caused by the political corruption he facilitated. I don't have the faintest notion what restorative justice would look like in this case, even though it's clear that extending prison time beyond a certain point fails to serve as a deterrent.
In the absence of better ideas, I'd be inclined to say that Sam Bankman-Fried got a justifiable sentence.
He didn’t squander it. He stole it.
Everybody lusts for the power and money. Everybody puts the responsibility part on “the system”.
Therein lies the problem. The law doesn’t listen to Uncle Ben.
Not only is 25 years a big part of a lifetime, when your sentence starts at 30, those are some of the very best years of your life. That's a big deterrent, inasmuch as deterrents are effective at all.
When I hear people calling for longer sentences I sometimes wonder if what they're really asking is for criminals not to exist. For people not to be selfish and greedy and hurt others as a result.
I agree with the sentiment, but humanity is what it is, putting people in cages doesn't change that, it's just the best solution we've come up with out of a collection of imperfect options.
Bankman-Fried is done. He won't be scamming anyone else, he won't be a part of society for decades, his shot at a normal life is over. That seems like enough when there's nothing we can do to him that will change the impact he had on people's lives. If we put him away for 100 years it won't return anyone's money.
Didn't the justice system do something wrong if he's still rich after this whole ordeal? I mean.. he's literally going to prison for the illegal ways he became rich at the expense of others. So shouldn't all his remaining wealth be seized and used to make up for damages where possible? Also if the justice systems wants to discourage others to follow such schemes, making sure that there's no profit whatsoever in them for abusers of bankman-fried's magnitute would probably be one of the more effective ways to do so.
(Note that my insights into this case are rather shallow, so I'm just going off your comment. I've got no idea how much wealth actually remains in that guy's posession.)
Bankman-Fried is on the hook for an $11 billion forfeiture, in addition to the prison term. If he has any assets available to him, I'd expect they'll be liquidated in the judgment.
I wonder how good forensic accountants are these days. I know there have been some global advances in terms of international agreements to help better taxation. How difficult is it to hide large sums of money?
Here's a letter from the new FTX CEO where he claims they've been working hard on this.
Since much of the money went to buy Tether, Patio11 speculates that a financial firm that has Tether's accounts might be asked to pay fines out of those accounts.
If that works legally, it seems like it's a weakness of stablecoins? It's a big pot of money, sometimes paid in by criminals, that a government could seize.
A business running a stablecoin might want to be more careful who they accept money from.
Going off the Panama and Paradise paper leaks, pretty fucking easy. Even the queen was hiding money there. And absolutely nothing was done about any of it except a few politicians in Iceland stepped down and apologised.
His parents own a home in Palo Alto. So he comes from money.
I think people vastly underestimate the level of damage he did. If he had killed 100 people I'm pretty sure this would be seen as a joke of sentence, and deservedly so. Instead he defrauded thousands with insane repercussions for many and 0 remorse, but since you don't get a body count it's treated as "oh well".
I'm all for rehabilitative prisons and what not, but at the same time I think it's naive to think that there isn't some portion of this that really needs to be showing the victims that the country cares about their problems. It doesn't help that politicians across the spectrum benefited from his theft and that trial was skipped (for legally logical reasons but socially/politically inept ones in my eyes).
Finally there's simply the ugly fact that prison is NOT rehabilitative right now and there is no mercy in the courts UNLESS you happen to be rich and oh by the way he donated to politicians. This isn't some "oops I was a techy nerd who accidentally fucked everything up". It is 100% business fraud on multiple levels and the people who are most damaged by this aren't going to feel like it's remotely fair.
Maybe I'm underestimating the damage too? On the one hand, a lot of people lost a lot of money. On the other hand, as I understand it, they were making shady, high-risk investments that aren't far from gambling - not exactly widows and orphans here, I don't think?
What's your understanding of the damage done?
That’s some real victim blaming. FTX strait up lied that their platform was more stable and safe than all the other options by way of fraud. This isn’t about the risks of crypto. This is like if your bank turned off your card, disconnected the phone, and locked its doors.
I'm not saying they were to blame for the loss. I'm saying that they were people who were making risky investments and many of them might not be harmed all that much?
A sophisticated investor who lost some part of their investment is harmed, but not in a way that seems like making a big deal about. For example, venture capitalists lose money on investments all the time. Or maybe they're not that sophisticated, but they treated it like gambling in Vegas, using money they could easily afford to lose?
Or maybe there were some more unsophisticated investors, too? To understand this, we need to know more than the amount of money lost and the number of people affected.
To be clear the major reason crypto blew up to such highs was straight up because they allowed "retail" (normal people) easier and easier access. The $60k BTC price is because of things like crypto.com, ftx, and binance letting anyone funnel their savings in. It's not just institutional investors.
Further when shit goes south, the institutional investors have a variety of channels to recover their funds. Maybe it was insured, maybe they have a huge legal team, maybe they'll hire some merc company to go to the non extradition country they were based in and have a chat (all 3 are very real examples).
The retail investor is left with "welp in a few years you might get a settlement". The crypto price rebound has meant that many of these people might actually be made whole, but in essence they've just given away a 0% interest rate loan for X years to the super wealthy.
Yes, good point.
As I understand it, in the case of the VC's that invested in FTX, they just write it off. They lose money on their median investment, but they invest in so many things that a few of them should win big.
As a result, their "due diligence" is often pretty sketchy, particularly in a hot market.
(Equity investors are likely to be wiped out, since their claims come last. In some sense, this is what stocks are for. It's a cushion so that hopefully the depositors and other lenders don't take the loss.)
Who do you think is more likely to make "investments" in high risk areas (which were not disclosed as high risk, nor is that the reason this all failed)? It's not the hyper rich.
Crypto is such a good scam because it preys on the vast amount of people who are just getting enough money to have something they want to "invest" but don't want to just stick it in something "slow" like a Roth. The number of people I personally know who had no business putting a dime in crypto but instead put important amounts in is already vastly too high, and I'm probably pretty sheltered from the actual damages.
So using me as an example:
I have, at current market value, about 5-6k in Gemini. I probably spent half that or less to buy it.
Gemini was chosen, at that time, because it was one of the only exchanges doing any of this with a US headquarters and had the least absurd rates(as I was certain anything with double digit returns was 100% a scam) on their "staking".
I did this because I was already maxing my contributions to traditional savings, and budgeted small amounts to invest over a long period of time on a hedge that if it turned out I was wrong about the whole crypto thing, I'd get some money out of it, and if I was right it was an amount I could afford to lose. Since there was a US based company I figured if anything wasn't a scam, that's probably the place to start. I didn't touch binance with a 20ft pole and put like $10 in FTX and didn't feel comfortable with all sorts of red flags.
The reason I still have that money in gemini though is because it's been locked up since FTX crashed. Turns out even though I was doing everything in my power to stay away from the shady actors in the ecosystem, Gemini used Genesis for their staking, and genesis had some of it's funds on.....FTX.
So now years later, it does look like I'll be getting everything back, like for like, and actually netting a nice little profit from the whole thing (if it doesn't blow up before the deal is finished).
I am well enough off and financially savvy enough to not have risked a single cent that I couldn't afford to 100% lose, and treated every single dime as if it was already spent.
I am not the norm. The vast vast vast majority of people I heard about putting money into things like FTX at that time were blue collar workers who made decent chunks of cash but didn't have a lot of financial literacy. People have literally lost their retirements on shit like this, and that's far from the worst case.
BILLIONS of dollars going missing doesn't somehow leave no victims, and the various realities of society and government mean that it's most often the most vulnerable who get stuck with the bag. Even IF you get every dime back, that doesn't mean you could afford to not have access to those funds for X years while all this happened. I was fine, many were not.
Makes sense, thanks for sharing. I hope you get your money back.
What it comes down to is that, although I followed the FTX crash a bit, I don't know very much about the victims, so I have little reference for how it compares with murder.
Also, I don't know that much about rich people either, but I do think it's likely that the hyper-rich and many ordinarily rich people gamble with cryptocurrency, too? Sometimes, it's how they became rich. And there were celebrities buying NFC's.
Well for what it's worth, I considered that money literally gambled, so the loss is a loss
Sure. My take on this is that there's really more tiers to "rich" than a lot of people recognize. There is a gulf of difference between something like the empire of Microsoft, and a guy who hit well on crypto.
The first probably couldn't lose enough money if they tired, the second can be wiped out over night. Further if the first loses money, than can afford the 10 figure+ legal battles that will now progress to get their money back, while the other is at the back of the line hoping to get 0.50c on the dollar.
As for the NFC's, that's even scummier because in many many cases they were not legit buying NFC's.
I make some nfc worth $1. I then pay celebrity X $10,000 to buy the NFC at $500,000, and then give them their $500,000 back. Now my nfc's are worth somewhere in the thousands, and the celebrity made $10 grand, and everyone else who buys them from me is getting screwed.
Clarification; NFC is Near Field Communication - NFTs are monkey jpeg money laundering.
Derp thank you. Been burnt out all day and didn’t catch that
I think that's exactly why I have such a difficult time caring about white-collar crime. Bernie Madoff scammed a bunch of other billionaires. How angry am I supposed to be? Stocks, crypto: if you can't afford to lose it, why'd you
investgamble in the first place?The people who bring out a contrarian "you deserved your losses" attitude are the ones who talk about how financial markets are a vehicle for human flourishing by allocating resources.
No, he did not. He scammed EVERYONE looking to invest. Yes there are billionaires in that group. There were also pension funds and insurance and things of that nature. Massive scams like that don't just hit the wealthy and end.
I'm not wild about "human flourishing" language either. Perhaps a more down-to-earth way to put it is that fundraising for big, expensive, and risky projects needs to happen somehow, or they won't happen, and sometimes those bets pay off.
Some projects are government-funded, but they don't do everything. People don't like it when governments lose "taxpayer money" on a weird-sounding bet.
I'm in favor of having multiple approaches to funding things. Big charities can do good work too, and if they end up wasting money on something that's ineffective, that's a shame, but it's not my problem. Similarly for business.
People also don't like it when governments spend taxpayer money on reasonably foreseeable infrastructure improvements and then act surprised when it costs 8 times the original proposal when reality forces them to confront it 20 years later.
I personally disagree. I believe, with not a small amount of experience with the courts, that sentencing should serve society. Society benefits when sentences balances deterring crime with affording individuals opportunity to safely reintegrate and stop costing taxpayer dollars to be incarcerated.
25 years does both. It is a long enough sentence that no one wants to risk half their adult life, and still allows the opportunity for SBF to not be a financial drag on the prison system.
Realistically, SBF doesn't pose much future risk to society. He abused a position of trust to use funds that weren't his. He will likely never occupy such a position again, with or without a prison sentence.
Edit: Thinking back, when I was his age my third child had just been born. Thinking about all the life he will miss in prison really underscores the severity of the sentence. 25 years is the span of time it takes to have three kids, and see them all off to college.
Take a look at the founder of WeWork and the folks who happily continue to jump into his pyramid schemes. I have no confidence that in the minimum number of years SBF won't be hocking whatever new grift has taken the general population by storm.
Yeah this is a view I’ve seen a lot and it doesn’t really match the evidence I’ve seen at all. I’ve only looked into it a bit but sure seems like the most famous white collar criminals got out and did it all again
Totally. I think "got out" is even a stretch, most see no punishment, let alone jail time for their crimes. White collar crime has a much larger impact and seemingly no culpability.
Yep, just like Billy McFarland who is literally selling tickets to Fyre Festival 2. To some degree, the people who are buying them are just idiots. But the fact that he's doing the same exact thing that landed him in jail in the first place shows you just how much of a lesson he really learned.
What specific fraud did Adam Neumann commit? I didn't follow the WeWork issues closely, but my understanding is that while there were some strange accounting practices, he was fairly transparent with the board. In a few minutes of googling, I haven't seen anything really on par with what happened at FTX or Theranos.
It would be the ever vague securities fraud - as well a violation of fiduciary duties. He did things like personally trademark WeWork, then have the company buy the trademark from him. The accusation would be that he was not acting in the shareholder's best interests.
In general, this would be a civil litigation, not a criminal one. It's also fairly hard to prove, even in Neumann's case.
That makes sense. And I'm all for holding CEO's accountable. But I think the other commentor mixing the criminal and civil cases doesn't make sense when discussing sentencing.
Thank you for the clarification!
They pretty much hit the nail on the head. My commentary is that criminal behavior doesn't disrupt investors and customers, in some cases it makes someone more compelling. Sam is willing to do incredibly unethical and illegal things for profit, to many VCs that's a feature not a bug.
I think the difference here is that what SBF did wasn't for the betterment of the company. It's not like he took some aggressive risks and things didn't work out. He criminally misused and mismanaged customer deposits. That's a bright line issue. If SBF was out tomorrow, he would be radioactive from an investment perspective.
In contrast, WeWork tried to scale a space business like a software business, and did some shady self dealing that may not be in the shareholders best interest, but doesn't seem criminal. There is a very big difference between the two. If WeWork had taken billions of VC dollars and gave them to a hedge fund, that would be a better example. Or if WeWork signed leases with customers to space they didn't have a right to, and fraudulently collected funds, that would be similar.
There is truth to some VC's liking a founder with a few failures under their belt, because it shows that they have experience. In the startup world, most people have a few failures before they hit it big. But there are some types of failure don't look good through any lense.
I hear you and I think we just have a difference of opinion on where we draw the immoral vs illegal boundary. Technically what Uber and Lyft were doing was illegal and they literally had a law changed to become compliant.
What Adam Neumann wasn't for the betterment of the company, it was for his own gain.
You could be absolutely right that he might be radioactive when he comes out but I just don't think that's the case. We'll probably find out in 12.5 years.
I think Adam's was a mix of self interest, and some shady accounting "community ebit" stuff. But I agree, we will see what happens!
Have a great day!
Jordan Belford got out from prison and pivoted straight to crypto since his Wall Street licence was taken away. You can see him dodging the press after he sold scamcoins here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPap21FBGbE
That's not really occupying a position of trust comparable to being the officer of a financial firm who has access to customer funds. Being a spokesperson or doing motivational speaking engagements, or even endorsing a ponzi scene isn't the same as occupying a position of trust in a company with a fiduciary's responsibilities.
It sure isn’t serving society to let someone who is a know scammer out so they can scam again.
If a murder “only” beats their spouse that’s still a recidivism as far as society is concerned
The original point I made is that he is unlikely to occupy a position of trust again, and I'm clarifying that being a spokesperson isn't the same as attracting VC funding and starting a new financial platform.
But I'm also not sure what the logical conclusion of your argument here is. Are you saying everyone who commits a crime deserves a life sentence so they can't harm people again? Or that we should assume that people will 100% reoffend, and sentence accordingly?
I’m saying if your goal is to serve society and you have a class of crime that seems to have an extremely high chance of recidivism then you need to adjust somewhere.
I don’t think 25 years is seen as a deterrent by this class of criminal which is what your original statement claims
I think most people, including rich people, are very disincentived by the idea of 12-25 years in prison. For rich people, I think the biggest issue is thinking they won't be aggressively investigated. I think more aggressive investigations and enforcement will have a much stronger effect than longer sentences.
I also don't have any data one way or another that white collar crime, specific or in general, has a high vs low recidivism rate.
To be fair, it's reasonably likely that he can get out in 12.5 years per the CNN article
Good behavior generally isn't a problem for white collar criminals, for obvious reasons.
It's sort of funny, in the last article about sentencing that came out, I commented that what I would like to see is 15 years to 25 years, which is more or less what he got. I know the federal system doesn't have parole, and so early release is less about showering growth than good behavior, bit hopefully whenever he does get out, he has some perspective on how his actions were wrong and why.
Yeah I'm with you and others of this mentality. I'm more in favor of restorative and rehabilitative justice when applicable, and I think most situations it is applicable, but I also think punitive (retributive) justice has its role as well. I think the issue is that our systems are very interdependent and you can't easily change one without changing others, making it hard to incorporate more restorative or rehabilitative elements without improving other systems in society. If most kids are getting excellent educations and people have adequate safety nets etc., fewer people are going to complain that those who have veered off the path and done wrong are not worth a few extra resources to try to get them back on track, but without that relative comfort provided to most of society then most of society won't welcome comfort being provided to those who have done something wrong.
So given our current constraints, the over-reliance on punitive justice shouldn't be modified just because SBF did some white collar crimes rather than some violent crime. But I think 25 years within this paradigm is fair for the damage and pain he caused and absolutely serves as a sufficient deterrent. I also don't know necessarily whether talking about the idea of rehabilitation or restoration is appropriate in the context of discussing SBF (due to the impersonal nature and scale of what he did), but his mindset is/was extremely flawed and was almost like a gambler-type mentality with no real concern for who was paying the price of his gambling if he didn't win and without the empathy to value the harm it would cause. I think it's actually this type of mentality that is common in many white collar crimes. If there were some type of justice in addition to punitive that were more part of our system, finding actions that impart some kind of personal element and impart the value of who is impacted by these impersonal crimes would be essential for those who commit these types of crimes. As a whole, our culture needs to find a way to better emphasize this rather than just let some people in privileged positions see people as nothing more than numbers on a sheet of paper because that would go a long way to deterring this behavior, possibly more than punitive justice would.
I think it would be interesting if instead of blunt punishments like imprisonment, financial crimes could be punished by limitations on income or net worth. The motivation for these crimes is greed, so why not limit their ability to be greedy? If you capped them at double the rate the government considers to be poverty, then they will still be able to live very healthy and happy lives; just not rich lives.
Of course it's probably not realistic given how easy it is to find loopholes ("No, I'm just crashing in this twenty million dollar mansion"), and the idea of marriage makes it fold over entirely.
I’d imagine most people would just move to another country.
If it's levvied as a tax, they'd have to give up US citizenship and risk never being granted a green card again.
And giving up US citizenship has an "exit tax" if you're rich enough too, so they likely would still be on the hook then.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. It should be a prohibition against owning a company, serving on the board of a company, being awarded stock options, and making more than $x / year in total compensation. A conservator is appointed to oversee their finances and any compensation is managed first by the conservator.
To address what @stu2b50 said, since it's a punishment, they also get their passport seized so they can't leave the country, any more than they could if they were in prison.
It's basically a business death sentence, which I think would be a much greater deterrent since money and power is what matters to these people.
They may have some cash sitting around to pay some human smugglers to get them out. Perhaps even to create fake documents (or just bribe border guards).
Sure, but if their resources are sufficiently hobbled and they have to live pseudonymously off in some quiet corner then that's still a pretty good punishment.
It's hard to determine what rehabilitation means in all situations. For me, SBF occupied a position of trust that comes with a responsibility to ensure compliance with legal and ethical standards. In that sense, rehabilitation might mean developing an understanding of the responsibilities he had, the harm caused by his cavalier attitude, and the insufficiency of any notions about making the world better.
I feel like whenever anyone gets a sentence people just automatically say it's not enough.
Like I'm not trying to downplay that Bankman was a fraud who caused a lot of people hardship. But there's just something uncanny to me about considering losing 25 years of your life to prison and being like "well im not impressed, thats not so bad".
The guy is like 30ish. This is a sentence comparable to his whole life thus far. That seems like a fairly long time.
I think the imbalance of the justice system is often why folks get so upset at a sentencing like this. People get life for growing pot, they get decades for stealing a car, people get much much more time than SBF is getting for much smaller crimes. White collar crime is criminally under investigated, under sentenced, and in most cases feels like a slap on the wrist. If we're happy putting people in jail for shoplifting or B&Es then SBF should be tried with a similar level of scrutiny. Otherwise it's a different system for the rich and the poor (which is how we almost always see it play out and what we're seeing here).
This is all true, but it's frustrating as someone who is decidedly not happy with people going to jail for shoplifting to watch us go through the same cycle of comments every single time something happens. Yes there are inequities in the system, but if we're going to have principles about it, we should decide what those are and stick with them, not toss them out every time a high profile person gets a sentence we don't like.
A related but not identical example: Illinois recently stopped doing cash bail, remanding defendants only when they are shown to be a danger to someone (possibly to the broader public; there was some litigation, and I'm not as up on it, but it has to be serious) serious domestic violence and up, for example. Local conservatives and police orgs were calling this "The Purge" and how this would be awful for crime. I'm dreading the first major "person released from jail with no bail kills someone" incident and will be livid at the number of people who pivot to "tough on crime" rhetoric. Same with prison sentences.
I think we're on a very similar page with our beliefs around criminal justice. It sounds like Illinois is taking an awesome first step and I understand the wariness you have about follow up rhetoric.
It seems like we deviate on how we see potential change within the criminal justice system. Until we're at a point where folks with power/finances/connections are held accountable in the same way your average joe is then we're not going to see any tangible changes. I believe you need a Malcom X for your Martin Luther King Jr. Without some external threat, like getting tried for white collar crime, folks in power will continue to abuse and maintain the systems in place.
I want people to be tried and convicted for white collar crimes, I just think that if I have principles, like prison is abusive and the vast majority of people should not be there, I shouldn't also sit around and advocate for more people to go to prison longer.
It's not about being Malcolm X vs MLK in my mind (and MLK was far more radical than the annual quoting of one line from a speech would suggest) because these conversations don't just come up for white-collar criminals, it's also around the teens that assaulted Nex Benedict, and more generally it's any big name case where we find it particularly "bad" or any small name case that affects us personally. it feels like everyone reverts to a "tough on crime" attitude when we don't like the "criminal." And that means we'll never ever stop being "tough on crime" as a society. Also, truly, arguing on the internet about a sentence after the fact is absolutely not Malcolm X nor MLK Jr.
I'm not saying that sentence reform should start with SBF, but it doesn't sit right to pivot on principle because someone's particularly shitty. We have to acknowledge that many times, the people who did a criminal thing will be shitty.
Yeah, that's fair. I think I have a hard time with it because examples of folks actually going to jail for white collar crime are so few and far between and often they are the same folks who hold sway over our means for change via political donations and capital in general. SBF has donated a lot of money and got to define the landscape/legality/regulation of crypto, so even if he goes to jail that impact alone has set us on path he got to define. I think I'm mostly feeling anxious and jaded that in sticking with my principals we're not changing the system but perpetuating it. To be honest that's probably not right and some of the base feeling for punishment of people I disagree with or am deeming "bad" is slipping in. I guess I'm feeling at a loss for what to do.
I appreciate your comments, they've got me rethinking my own stance.
I get that, and it's a bit like "eat the rich" in the fact that nothing we say is going to change anything but at least it expresses our dissatisfaction with the current status quo.
I have appreciated your thoughts too, because I do fundamentally agree that the system is fucked.
Replying to let you know that you seem to have dropped a sentence, there!
/noise
Mille grazie
A version of this happened already. Darrell Brooks, the Waukesha Parade Red SUV Man was out on a $1000 bond for domestic violence, it gave bail reform a black eye in the press.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/26/us/waukesha-car-parade-prosecutor-bail-reform/index.html
I mean it can, but it was all in Wisconsin and before this law went into effect. (Since then, zero purge fwiw) And probably that's the example that Trump's voice keeps harping on in an ad for some representative whose district I'm definitely not in (or it's someone else).
But I'm more worried about what lawmakers will do when the first major incident happens with someone released under the new law. Because it will. And it won't mean the law is shit. But it'll be what's blamed.
We have issues with it at the university, students who are trespassing or fighting are no longer cooling off overnight in jail, just ticketed and released. And while I think that is more just, it means changing our assumptions about how we handle those situations with and without police.
I can understand that, but the flip of that is if you are NOT happy with how excessive and life destroying the justice system is, you shouldn't stop caring about that when it's aimed at the right people. If you ignore the resentment that may be felt toward imbalances in the criminal justice system, a 25 year sentence seems like a pretty devastating blow to many, I would even argue most, peoples lives.
I'm not happy with how excessive and life destroying it is, but if it's going to be terrible, I'd like to see it applied evenly regardless of class, economic status, or familial connections. Until we're at a point where folks with power/finances/connections are held accountable in the same way your average joe is then we're not going to see any tangible changes. Why change a system that you're above? For now we have rules for thee, not for me and SBF's treatment is a great example of that.
I’m in the restorative justice camp, but your mens rea comment is right on the money. Multi-billion dollar fraud is objectively much worse in the big picture compared to one-off rape and murder - the harm is just more diffuse and less visible.
I think people are out of their minds with the softness here: SBF clearly has no remorse and will engage in similar schemes again if at all given the chance. He should be locked up forever due to the risk he poses, in order to protect society.
Deimos better keep this site up through 2050 because I damn well want bragging rights once he’s let loose.
Gotta be honest, that doesn’t sound very restorative at all. Not to mention how much a man can change in two decades.
I don’t think punishing SBF should be the goal of the sentence, I think offenders should be rehabilitated as much as possible so they’re able to support themselves and give back to society, and I think the wishes and judgements of victims should be a primary driver of sentencing.
That’s what I mean by restorative justice, and that’s what most people mean by it. Don’t gatekeep other people who don’t meet your fringe ideals of prison abolition - that’s some wild and dangerous thinking that goes against the tenets of conventional restorative justice by making it easier for victims to be revictimized.
In this case, I’m arguing SBF shouldn’t be allowed to run another scam to revictimize people given the extent of damage he caused, and his transparent unwillingness to recognize fault or reform. That’s a flavor of legitimate restorative justice in consensus-reality.
I wouldn't think throwing someone in a concrete hole and forgetting about them would qualify as "restorative," or "rehabilitating them as much as possible," but I don't think my opinions matter all that much to you. You decided for yourself what my opinions were based off of nothing but the words "prison abolitionist" and then spun yourself a strawman from that, before redirecting your hate for SBF onto me.
I see no good faith in your post, and thus no reason to engage further.
Mate, you’re baselessly accusing me of not really supporting restorative justice - while simultaneously you’re also arguing the point of view in an adjacent comment that SBF ideally shouldn’t go to prison in the first place.
I think it’s fair to point out that your criticism rings a bit hollow in that light, but that’s your prerogative if you disagree.
What risk does SBF really pose after all this? If there is still anyone out there willing to trust him with their money, then well, they deserve to lose it.
Realistically we can get the same impact by banning him for life from working in finance or any adjacent sector, and that would be a lot cheaper than incarcerating someone for an extra 50 years.
Backing up one step, my assertion that SBF is not contrite/insincere is based on the opinions of Michael Lewis and John Ray, who I’d argue are the individuals best positioned to make that assessment.
As for why I think a ban from finance is insufficient:
That being said - let me turn it back to you: are there any details you think point in the opposite direction that I should be considering?
On an emotional level, I might agree with you, but on principle I can’t. I’m a prison abolitionist. Punishment is not justice, even for someone as despicable as him.
With the exception of actual war criminals, I don't think anyone should face a prison sentence longer than 21 years. Our justice system should be reformative, not punitive. SBF is a piece of shit up there with some of the biggest pieces of shit ever, but I still think it's better for him and for society as a whole if we try to reform him.
I'm still in favor of life bans from working in certain industries for certain types of crimes. SBF shouldn't be allowed to work in finance, the same way a convicted pedophile shouldn't be allowed to work in a school.
There's a lot of dimensions to it. For instance, at least from a practical point of view, if not ethical, someone like El Chapo being on the outside causes materially more damage than being in a maximum security US prison. I don't know what could ever convince people that an El Chapo would reform their ways, put down the cocaine, and become a humble farmer or whatever.
On a smaller scale, someone who has shown a propensity for battery, say, the third variable between punishment and reform is danger to other people; is it right for the people on the outside for you to decide that they're "reformed"?
If you're like 90% sure that someone is reformed, but in the other 10% they go to the witness that ratted them out and beats them to death, on who's life do you weigh?
Norway manages to make it work, and with a much lower recidivism rate than the US. They are clearly doing something much better than we are.
I also think someone like El Chapo would qualify under my "war crimes" carve out, being a mass murderer of civilians.
I really do mean this literally and not in bad faith:
How many similar cases to someone like El Chapo does Norway even handle? Have they had violent cartel members?
In Norway, in particularly egregious cases where the person in question can be considered a danger to society, an initial sentence will be a minimum of 14 years. Starting at 21 years, this needs to be reassessed and can be extended for 5 years at a time if they're still considered a danger to society. Theoretically this can happen indefinitely if they're never deemed safe to release. This is what's happening with the July 22nd mass shooter, whose initial 21-year sentence will be up for review in about 2032.
This type of sentence was introduced right after a specific heist in 2004 (as the government got criticized for how early the perpetrators were able to be released under existing laws), so those who have received this kind of sentence were sentenced too recently to have reached the end of the initial term.
Norway has organized crime, but certainly less than the US. However, I think you overestimate how much those in organized crime are deterred by the possibility of such prison sentences and underestimate how the US carceral system contributes to prisoners becoming and staying involved in organized crime.
I think there's some confusion on my position.
I don't think prison sentences deter things like organized crime very much if at all.
I also think that current prison practices absolutely contribute to making more of them.
I do think that there's a line where you have to handle the very real moral issue of "this person has perpetrated truly horrible crimes that have affected 10s/100s/1000s of people". Godwin's law but if you could prove Hitler repented by math, science, or divine mandate, do you forgive him?
Obviously these people are not on the level of a state actor mobilizing an entire country to mass genocide, but some are close enough that I think you have similar questions that must be dealt with.
My ideal is 100% lower prison sentences across the board, but I do think there are exceptions that for societal reasons might require more serious punishments. This is in some ideal world not the currently utterly fucked US justice system though, which has all sorts of things we just shouldn't do because you can't trust it to be remotely fair.
Fair enough, then, I think we don't disagree much then! I hope my comment at least was informative about how Norway handles those types of situations.
As @babypuncher touched on...Isn't the creation of an El Chapo not the result of systemic failure? A (probably) rational actor operating with the parameters of the system. Perhaps his rise might have been avoided if other issues had been properly addressed.
A Ted Bundy or Unabomber might be a better example.
I am not fully a prison abolitionist because I do think there are some people who will need to be sequestered from society long-term, potentially forever, for the safety of others. But in theory a true systemic revamp could also intervene in some of those situations far earlier with actual positive results. And possibly abolition would lead to overall less harm, the math on that is complex though.
I wouldn't say I'm completely a prison abolitionist either. I do think that we could probably, over the course of time, eliminate prison for 98% of crimes.
Also, context that may be important: I see 'prison' and 'jail' as two subtly distinct things. The same way that "property" is a distinct thing from "your home and belongings" when talking about economics.
Jail is be more of a temporary, less than 48 hour measure "hey you're drunk and you hit somebody, we're holding you till you cool your temper and we can figure what to do."
Prison would be for "You were drunk and hit somebody so now we're holding you in a cell for 10 years."
Jail will almost certainly be needed so long as there is conflict. It's important to isolate people long enough to figure out what to do. But prison isn't going to make the angry drunk less of an angry drunk.
Yes but it doesn't change the fact that societies will have to deal with systemic failures? This entire topic is technically about a massive fraud perpetrated in part because of systemic failures, just not with an obvious body count.
"well the system encouraged me to do it" doesn't bring back the dead, and there's a real issue of how do you tell those families, who have very justified emotions, that "well yeah he killed 100s but our bad we started the war on drugs in the 50s so you can see how that happens"
Yes, and that's why this kind of thing is usually a process, and not just "ok we're shuttering all the prisons tomorrow and gonna start rehabilitation next month, enjoy The Purge!"
Step one is agreeing that prisons do more harm then good for many use cases. Step two is figuring how to reduce their use as much as possible. Step three is implementing these things over time till we start shuttering the majority of prisons because we don't need them anymore.
Why do you think they don't have any?
Like I said, Norway is clearly doing things better than we are. I think our criminal justice system creates bigger criminals by not focusing on reformative justice. People get in trouble at a young age, spend a long time in prison, and have no real path to success when they get out. That leads them right back to criminal behavior as their only option.
I didn't say they don't have any. I literally just don't know.
I think people often take cases that are vastly different and compare them. There's a lot to learn from norway, but there's a lot that doesn't map 1 to 1.
I'm not in favor at all of the current prison system, but I don't think that just pointing at X country works as well as people hope. I still think at least trying it would be better than what we're currently doing.
Justice isn’t and shouldn’t be used to inflict vengeance. Personally I think even 25 years is high but it sounds like he might be eligible for early release after about half of that which sounds correct to me.
Do we know if his parents get to keep the ill gotten gains he gave them? Like the house he used as bail?
I think this is the right amount of time. He's a crook, but does he really need to be separated from society for the rest of his life? He shouldn't be able to work in the financial industry ever again, but he can still be a productive member of society someday.
That said, Bankman said in his statement to the court:
“My useful life is probably over. It’s been over for a while now, from before my arrest.”
So it sounds like he's giving up on being a productive member of society.
That's not how I read that statement. Anyone in his situation would probably feel similarly hopeless about their future. But in 20-ish years time if/when he gets parole his perspective will likely have changed. And even if all he does afterwards is work a menial job and live an unassuming life, that's still being a productive member of society.
I don’t think that’s what he meant by that at all.
I find it somewhat amusing that he consideres building a company to defraud his customers as a useful life...
I guess it was useful to him in the short term but given the outcome I have a hard time understanding that line of thinking.
Well his story is that the purpose behind all his business activities was to get money to finance projects that would help humanity. He can't go back on that story at this point, so its in his interest to make it seem like he genuinely believed himself to be doing good in the world.
You don't question his motivations after he stole billions and spent it on mansions, sports teams and celebrity endorsements? Personally I'm pretty skeptical that the whole "effective altruism" was anything more than a convenient excuse to hide his actions.
Grayscail's comment doesn't seem to be accepting that story, just saying that it's in SBF's best interest to stick to the story
I don't think it has more meaning than to say he would have spent most of his youth and early adult life behind bars. That's it, I'm not sure what people are seeing more of in that statement. He'll be 50 when he gets out.
Seems like a reasonable amount of time. High end for white collar crimes. I’d imagine mostly punitive.
I expected it to be more, but he'll be nearly 60 when he gets out so he'll be spending most of his best years in prison. So maybe it's reasonable overall in terms of the impact on his life.