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Why Is No One Asking SFB What Happened to the $3.3B He Borrowed?
- akomtu 4y agoBecause SBF was smart enough to donate less than 1% of the stolen money to the some important politicians.
- throwaway1777 4y agoIt’s SBF not SFB. That’s embarrassing.
- twixfel 4y agoI don't really agree, when you insist on being known mononymously you have to accept that you are inviting ridicule.
- lilsoso 4y agoI'm not sure why you're being downvoted. The error discredits the voice of the article.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rvba 4y ago"Alameda" is also spelled inconsistently in the article.
- throwaway1777 4y agoYes, it seems very sloppy.
- tyingq 4y agoIt does seem correct in the body of the article, it's just the headline.
- jpeter 4y agoScam Bankrupt Fraud
- tr3ntg 4y agoThis website features advertisements for alt-bank services that sound as trustworthy as FTX turned out to be.
- nullish_signal 4y ago
- factsarelolz 4y ago
- nullish_signal 4y agoSuch a comparison certainly doesn't seem outlandish, as insane as it is to topple two iconic skyscrapers
- soraki_soladead 4y ago> Some theorists even predict another 9/11 since that event transpired after the last Trillion dollar accounting error by the Pentagon. Dropping “conspiracy” from “conspiracy theorists” is a nice touch but it doesn’t lend much to such a bold claim without sources with evidence.
- rglover 4y agohttps://www.bitchute.com/video/89fmBGxz9mks/ https://www.bitchute.com/video/89fmBGxz9mks/ Edit: this is the tip of the iceberg, if you really want to go down the rabbit hole...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQTyj0g3m_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQTyj0g3m_E
- dtx1 4y agoIt's just the spending for the UAP Reverse Engineering Effort. Note the lack of a /s tag
- kipchak 4y agoIf they haven't cracked it by now, what do you figure the odds of the next couple billion doing it are?
- 4y ago
- kahrl 4y agoSanford International Airport?
- bearjaws 4y agoAs a Central Florida resident this threw me off. Poor SFB accidentally associated with the garbage person SBF...
- derac 4y agoCoffeezilla asked him about it I believe. https://youtu.be/AfmBdKoqq1o https://youtu.be/AfmBdKoqq1o
- boole1854 4y agoCan you point to where in the video timeline the question about the personal loans to SBF comes up?
- bitcharmer 4y agoAnd he seems to be the only one asking SBF the hard questions and not accepting his BS meaningless answers. It's quite disappointing to see an independent YouTuber doing better journalism than major news outlets.
- _jal 4y agoThere are interesting questions here. I did not know this bit about Paper Bird not being part of the bankruptcy managed by Ray - "The bankruptcy filing states that Paper Bird owned 75% of FTX International.1 However, that does not make it part of the FTX bankruptcy. In fact, Paper Bird filed for its own bankruptcy, the same date at FTX did, with separate counsel: Adam Landis of Landis Roth & Cobb while the lead attorney for FTX is James Bromley of Sullivan & Cromwell." And really, the whereabouts of those loans should be very high up the list of things people are interested in - if nothing else, 10 digits somewhere safe sure is a nice bucket of grease to facilitate a disappearance to somewhere without extradition.
- mywittyname 4y agoFind a way to put everyone involved behind bars for many lifetimes with the possibility of parole should the funds be returned. I'm astonished by the number of fraud cases we've seen involving staggering amounts of money, and we don't have laws that give judges the option to put people away for life after some threshold of money is stolen, with the possibility of a reduced sentence only if enough money is recovered. We have RICO for organized crime and I feel like this needs to be expanded to business dealings as well.
- tom-thistime 4y agoThis may be a "culture gap" (or language gap) between crypto and traditional finance. The FT text directly addresses the question that we're told "No one [is] asking." They asked where's the money, and they're exposing the fact that no coherent response has been forthcoming. That's reporting. The likely interpretation of that piece of reporting is crystal clear to the intended readership. (I.e., the money is probably gone.) [For people who really want to nerd out: If you read all available public filings, the stories in the financial press are much easier to understand accurately. However this one is not subtle.]
- mikejulietbravo 4y agoCorrect - the "everyone" is mainly NYT and some politicians. There are some questions there as it's a bit sketchy why they're treating him with such kid gloves.
- Dork1234 4y agoHe is just a kid, he is merely 30, and grew up in a home with business lawyers. It has been such a hard life. If it wasn't for the shady Crypto market, he could be having a good life as a Doctor like we always wanted him to be. He got mixed up with this Caroline girl (How can you blame her, he is so muscular and good looking) and gave him all these ideas of having a crypto exchange. Clearly the problem is crypto, and it should be banned. It is ruining all these highly connected well to do young kids life's. /s
- Dork1234 4y agoWell then, I think I need to commission from the Boston Globe: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/12/06/business/caroline-ellison-math-whiz-newton-native-was-bound-success-then-she-got-into-crypto/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/12/06/business/caroline-ell...
- ethanbond 4y agoSeems to me people have completely unrealistic expectations of how financial crimes play out. This will take years to unwind. Pretty obvious the "why isn't he in jail yet" screaming is coming from the same place as "why aren't I rich yet," on which this entire empire was built. This stuff takes time. He's very obviously going to prison. For context: Enron, whose operations and collapse caused way more negative impact on the public, fell over in 2001. It wasn't until 2004 that Skilling (CEO/COO/general bad actor) went into FBI custody. It wasn't until 2006 that he was convicted. Yeah, SBF is going out on a media tour and admitting to all his crimes, so hey maybe they should arrest him now - but why? He's clearly too dumb/narcissistic to run. Take him to court based on media appearances and he may claim he was hopped up on a boatload of amphetamines to the point of actual delusion. Then oops, guess we didn't gather all the hard evidence needed to convict so we lose our shot! Jeez, people.
- Animats 4y agoThis: "This will probably come out in court anyhow since the creditors will be looking into fraudulent conveyance. So this isn’t something you will be able to hide.” Yes. Reading the bankruptcy filings and seeing what the accountants are finding is probably more productive than listening to the self-serving statements of a crook.
- mrtweetyhack 4y ago
- mc32 4y agoListening to him is like listening to another opportunist in another industry, Michael Avenatti. They're in trouble, but they keep on pretending like there is nothing to question or wonder about.
- BlandDuck 4y agoAbsolutely correct. There is no way this will be forgotten. The FTX estate will be want to collect all available assets, including outstanding loans to SBF, to distribute to FTX' creditors. Disbursements from FTX when it was close to insolvency will be scrutinized under the doctrine of fraudulent conveyance which makes it illegal to distribute funds from a company that cannot meet its obligations to its creditors. This wont be "forgotten" somehow. At this point, there doesn't seem to be any drama or reasons for concern here, and from everything we know (that I know) it looks like this will all be resolved eventually as part of the bankruptcy process.
- haunter 4y agoSouth Park has a perfect scene about that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3AM00DH0Zo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3AM00DH0Zo
- takeda 4y agoExcept in this scenario you're giving money to some random dude on the street that looks like lives in his mom's basement, so it's even worse.
- ghuntley 4y agoSee also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfmBdKoqq1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfmBdKoqq1o
- alexfromapex 4y agoBecause the US government has been captured by Organized Crime. Look up the documentary Everything is a Rich Man's Trick. Then look into all the connections between the mafia and the presidents of the USA.
- rglover 4y agoReminds me of one of my favorite quotes as of late: “You’re just saying ‘okay, the world is run by idiots,’ and I would say ‘no, the world is run by professional criminals.’ If you think it’s all by incompetence at this point, how come everything is so coordinated between all these guys with these policy agendas if it’s all just ‘by-chance incompetence?’” — Whitney Webb
- alexfromapex 4y agoIt's the deepest rabbit hole I've ever found and there's tons of receipts. The mafia actually formed something called The Commission which was basically their own Congress.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago"nobody needs to conspire when interests align"
- skinnymuch 4y agoWhat’s the big deal with the film? JFK is a bigger deal because he didn’t survive. Otherwise his assassination is one amongst many. Whether or not there is this conspiracy going on, how much different would things be if the opposite really happened? I don’t think much would be diff. Very important assassinations like MLK and Malcolm X would still happen. Capitalism being the primary “thing” in all American’s lives would still be a thing. Liberalism would still make the government a tool for private capital/capitalism as it is now. Whether or not the US government is captured by Organized Crime seems unimportant. The deepest rabbit hole one could find these days in why the world sucks would be investigating capitalism, neoliberalism, and imperialism.
- moistly 4y ago
- mike10921 4y agoWhy is no one asking? LOL pretty much everyone knows the answer but won't say it. The reason is that those who are supposed to ask the questions would open a pandora's box of their own shiz and dealings. So they prefer to pretend it never happened... If we don't talk about it, then it never happened is it not so?
- rasz 4y agoBecause its not $3 million, its not $30 million, its not even $300 million, its so many millions everyone gets a cut.
- eternalban 4y agoIt really is a stupendously large sum of money. We're all used to hearing these crazy numbers thrown around but to think what you can do with that much money [$1B]. Heck, you could pay a million people a thousand bucks each. To what depths will a random person sink for that much money? And 100,000 people are still a huge army at your disposal for $10k. And 1000 select individuals for a cool million each. (Check out how much soviets used to pay american spies (a: pittance) to get a sense of what can be asked of the willing recipient.)
- oblivious7 4y agoWho said no one is asking? Government investigators are not in a habit of validating every bloggers empty rhetorical questions. The author is complaining in the comments ZeroHedge copy-pasted their post without permission. ZH should feel bad for spreading babbling gossip and impotent rage more than anything.
- WFHRenaissance 4y agoIt's SBF, not SFB.
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y agoWelp, that's why FSB crossed my mind for a second.
- numtel 4y agoI think SFB fits at this point. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=SFB https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=SFB
- miguelazo 4y agoIt's not at all surprising that the corporate media has failed on this aspect of the story, they're the ones who hyped this guy to the moon, after all. Most of the so-called journalists are just stenographers for the rich and powerful-- just look at their abysmal reporting on Ukraine.
- Aaronstotle 4y agoI'm curious on why you think reporting has been abysmal in Ukraine?
- miguelazo 4y agohttps://fair.org/home/us-medias-intellectual-no-fly-zone-on-us-culpability-in-nord-stream-attack/ https://fair.org/home/us-medias-intellectual-no-fly-zone-on-... https://fair.org/?s=ukraine https://fair.org/?s=ukraine
- yks 4y agolooks like you complain that the media is not working for the rich and powerful, i.e. Putin?
- miguelazo 4y agoThey've been working for the rich and powerful just fine. https://peoplesworld.org/article/pipeline-ploy-how-u-s-natural-gas-interests-are-fueling-the-ukraine-crisis/ https://peoplesworld.org/article/pipeline-ploy-how-u-s-natur...
- Aaronstotle 4y agoIt seems that they are critiquing two major news sources (NYT & WSJ). I've been following the conflict from BBC News and The Economist, and the reporting has been solid in my opinion. This site also only seems to push back against more left-wing news outlets, I didn't see anything saying how Fox News pushing for appeasement isn't a good idea.
- xwowsersx 4y agoShould be corrected from "SFB" to "SBF" (I know it's incorrect in the original title)
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y agoIt is funny that with the mistake it now comes out as: "Fried Bankman", which is kinda apropos.
- xwowsersx 4y agoHaha that's too funny
- disembiggen 4y agosam frankman-bied
- freddealmeida 4y agoHe borrowed 4B. he gave 700M to his CTO.
- rflec028 4y agoNepotism.
- coffeeblack 4y agoThe All-In podcast about this is worth listening to. Considering that part of the money went to you-know-who, it’s no surprise that those groups don’t ask any tough questions.
- gregshap 4y agoyou-know-who?
- alexfromapex 4y agoVoldemort
- coffeeblack 4y agoCorrect.
- kingofheroes 4y agoDemocrats and Republicans. Though only Democrats will be mentioned for idealogical reasons.
- ninjaa 4y agoSBF also donated an equal amount of money to Republicans. He just did so using dark money PACs because he was afraid of a PR backlash - said journos would freak the f out. He donated about $40 M to both parties. Src: https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/11/29/sam-bankman-fried-political-donations-democrats-republicans-dark-money/ https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/11/29/sam-bankman-fried-poli...
- gojomo 4y agoSeveral reports – & SBF in recent statements – have identified $2.1B to $3B as the cost of buying out others' stake in FTX, primarily Binance (an early investor). That was true traditional but not publcly-traded equity, not FTT tokens (though perhaps FTT tokens were accepted as part or most of the payment value out). Now, by structuring these as "loans" to SBF, for him alone to increase his (already overwhemling) majority control, meant he'd unethically levered up the enterprise into a "heads SBF wins even more, tails everyone else loses everything" precariousness. Losers at risk from such an arrangement would include, and eventually now have included, customers with custodial funds that should never have been at any risk at all - but were so commingled across purposes & entities under SBF's shoddy self-dealing & criminally-negligient management that they were de facto contributors to these unwise sweetheart insider loans. So at least $2.1B, & perhaps up to ~$3B, of this "loaned" value (in cash & other tokens) may have made its way to Binance, and thus we wouldn't expect it to be in SBF's current pockets. It was still taken inappropriately, though. And, the magnitudes further make SBF's claims of not knowing the details of either Alamedas or FTX's balance sheets not credible. Honest people generally don't send $3B of value through themselves, to elsewhere, without at least some sense of the stocks & flows involved. However, perhaps after those loans, the large venture investments into FTX are reported to have sent around $300M cash (of the raised funds) to SBF. He's also described that as repaying him for acts like buying out Binance with personal funds, almost as if he hadn't been loaned billions from FTX to do that. That money looks instead more like a VC's willingness, in a suitably hot deal, to let the founder take some value out to have more-diversified wealth. I'd expect the debtors to especially chase that cash money, to see where it landed, for possible recovery by SBF's victims. Another missing question from recent interviews: when SBF does his, "I've got nothing, now" or "maybe $100k" act, ask him: why hasn't he declared bankruptcy? He borrowed ~$3B from FTX/Alameda-related entities, in order to lever-up further into FTX. If he presumably per the debtors-in-management team still owes his associated-entities $3B+, and has "nothing", he should be in bankruptcy. SBF is a very smart person with a now-documented history, during his ascent, of blatant misrepresentations about weighty matters & a flexible view of ethics. When such a person claims "oops, I kept poor records & didn't manage the staff or complicated legal entities I'd chosen & didn't pay close attention", but then slowly & vaguely describes past actions in the most self-exonerating ways possible, the presumption should be that the post-fall accounts are retroactive fabulations. The character 'hapless-Sam' is just as much a self-aggrandizing fiction as the character 'hyperethical-and-hypercompetent-Sam' was. And even if fully true, "I was a reckless gambler bad with math even when I was selling people on the idea I'd hedged out all the gambles and was brilliant at math" only helps explain, but does not excuse, criminal deception.
- skybrian 4y agoMatt Levine’s column yesterday quotes a Bloomberg interview with Zeke Faux where they did ask where the money went, and SBF gave some approximate numbers in a spreadsheet. I don’t see why this is trustworthy, but for what it’s worth: > “You misplaced $8 billion?” I ask. > “Misaccounted,” Bankman-Fried says, sounding almost proud of his explanation. Sometimes, he says, customers would wire money to Alameda Research instead of sending it directly to FTX. (Some banks were more willing to work with the hedge fund than the exchange, for some reason.) He claims that somehow, FTX’s internal accounting system double-counted this money, essentially crediting it to both the exchange and the fund. > That still doesn’t explain why the money was gone. “Where did the $8 billion go?” I ask. > To answer, Bankman-Fried creates a new tab on the spreadsheet and starts typing. He lists Alameda and FTX’s biggest cash flows. One of the biggest expenses is paying a net $2.5 billion to Binance, a rival, to buy out its investment in FTX. He also lists $250 million for real estate, $1.5 billion for expenses, $4 billion for venture capital investments, $1.5 billion for acquisitions and $1 billion labeled “fuckups.” Even accounting for both firms’ profits, and all the venture capital money raised by FTX, it tallies to negative $6.5 billion. > Bankman-Fried is telling me that the billions of dollars customers wired to Alameda is gone simply because the companies spent way more than they made. He claims he paid so little attention to his expenses that he didn’t realize he was spending more than he was taking in. “I was real lazy about this mental math,” the former physics major says. He creates another column in his spreadsheet and types in much lower numbers to show what he thought he was spending at the time.
- EGreg 4y agoSBF
- egberts1 4y agoThe long winding cybermoney trail starting from FTX, as compiled by Molly White: https://www.mollywhite.net/etc/ftx-contagion https://www.mollywhite.net/etc/ftx-contagion