You’re not wrong about crypto, but this case is regular old-fashioned securities fraud. There’s nothing inherently crypto about the crime.
My favorite line about crypto is from comedian Bill Maher. He said that he looked into bitcoin, but: " I don"t understand it. And neither do you".
My favorite movie quote from the Mel Gibson movie, “Payback”, is: “If you don’t understand something, get rid of it.”
That’s right. She was only found guilty on the investor fraud side. That was widely commented upon at the time (including in threads here).
Yeah, the crypto thing was more of the tool that made it “easier” for SBF and his tribe to do this since it allowed them to tell investors and themselves that the usual rules did not apply in the brave new world. In another time frame it would have been some other Big New Thing that nobody quite understood or that nobody could really go check out.
That still rankles me. I believe that she literally killed people, by providing inaccurate medical information on a large scale. Knowingly and intentionally. But she was only convicted of stealing money.
Bankman-Freid stole money from speculators.
I think she’s a lot more guilty. But he may have been convicted of worse.
I’m surprised sentencing isn’t until March. Is that common? What’s the point of the wait?
What’s the point of sentencing in five months? Sam is obviously going spend time in prison. Why not start his sentence immediately (thereby eliminating the chance of fleeing)? (I also recall former governor Rod Blagojevich was free on bail for several months between his conviction and sentencing)
Considering he already had his bail revoked and was sent to jail in August, I presume that he’ll continue to sit in jail until the sentencing as well.
Of course, Elizabeth Holmes got caught buying a one way ticket out of the country between her conviction & sentencing, and they didn’t revoke her bail for that, so who knows?
IANAL but I think the prosecution and defense now prepare arguments about how long they think the sentence should be and present them to the judge. The judge then weighs the arguments and issues the final sentence.
NB The judge doesn’t have to split the difference, he could go lower than the defense wants, or more than prosecution asks for.
There’s also a potential trial on some other counts which may complicate things.
And the judge’s own experience of the trial and the defendant’s behavior can obviously factor into it. So unless the defense can come up with a home run mitigation story, SBF is going away for a long time.
Is it possible that more time is needed to convince BF to cough up what remains of the stolen dough to mitigate his prison sentence?
I think the usual way to “convince” a convict is fines and restitution orders.
Time is not needed. Negotiation is off the table. Compliance is enforced.
Agree with you on this one, especially now that you reminded me about her dangerous defective product.
Both the Theratos and SBF investors were trying to get rich.
But with Theratos, they also were putting their money into what looked like a company that would grow the overall economy and improve health care. If the investors hadn’t put their money into Theratos, most would have instead invested in legitimate economically useful businesses. So even though I don’t like to see people going to prison, there’s legitimate justification for my tax dollars going to deter her behavior – even if she hasn’t caused deaths.
In the Bitcoin case, the investors were trying to get rich by investing in an economically useless activity that causes global warming (through mining electricity use). If SBF has been acquitted, the message then would have been that cryptocurrency investors can be defrauded at will, and people would hopefully be more likely to invest in something less harmful to society, and maybe actually useful. As for prison, I don’t see benefit in my tax dollars being used to deter crypto fraud.
Do I think it practical for the government for protect investors in useful companies (Moderna?) while leaving investors in harmful ones (Philip Morris?) to get what they deserve? No. But if SBF escapes from prison tonight (without harming others), and makes a clean getaway – fine with me.
Article in Wired which responds to the question asked a year ago in the OP: it’s not crypto, it’s fraud. But unless governments regulate crypto more, there will be more frauds.
Which in turn depends on a court fight in the Bahamas about the scope of the extradition order. Some of the charges which have not yet been tried in the US were added after extradition, and SBF is arguing that they exceed what was authorised by the Bahamanian extradition order.
This is something I’ve wondered about before, the lengthy pause between conviction and sentencing in the US court system. Yes, counsel now have to prepare sentencing submissions, but I don’t understand why that takes four months to do. Same thing happened with Holmes and some other high profile cases.
Could it simply be the judge’s calendar is full until March?
That’s an important addition to the idea that this was about old-fashioned fraud. While true, the crypto environment and lack of regulation made it easier to commit.
Maybe. But it also happened with Holmes and her boyfriend.
And Steve Bannon - convicted July 2022, sentenced October 2022, for a very straightforward matter: failure to obey a congressional subpoena. So it seems to be a thing?