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The United States of America vs. Samuel Bankman-Fried Indictment [pdf]
- joeblubaugh 4y agoIs there going to be any reckoning for the VCs who poured money into this ridiculous business? I don’t see how you respect Sequoia’s judgement after this.
- humanizersequel 4y ago>I don’t see how you respect Sequoia’s judgement after this. Me neither, sounds like that's the reckoning.
- kjellsbells 4y agoHelpfully, sequoia list who they are investing in, e.g. https://www.sequoiacap.com/our-companies/?_categories=fintech https://www.sequoiacap.com/our-companies/?_categories=fintec... or https://www.sequoiacap.com/our-companies/?_categories=crypto https://www.sequoiacap.com/our-companies/?_categories=crypto And of course you should all enjoy this while you can: https://www.sequoiacap.com/companies/ftx/ https://www.sequoiacap.com/companies/ftx/
- nradov 4y agoIt's hilarious how they describe the problem at FTX as a "liquidity crunch”. Liquidity was the least of their issues. What a bunch of clowns.
- eternalban 4y agoNot fair. They ran a "rigorous diligence process" at the time of their investment. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhKq6zQUoAIUJ1W https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FhKq6zQUoAIUJ1W These two sources claim Ramnik Arora played a "crucial role": https://diyatvusa.com/2022/11/24/meet-ftx-insider-ramnik-arora/ https://diyatvusa.com/2022/11/24/meet-ftx-insider-ramnik-aro... https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-is-ramnik-arora-the-fixer-behind-sam-bankman/id808014240?i=1000587357734 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-is-ramnik-arora-th... There is that Moonstone Bank thingie again: Ramnik was there too: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/ramnik-arora https://www.crunchbase.com/person/ramnik-arora https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/moonstone-bank https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/moonstone-bank Fluent Finance & Moonstone Bank issue "US+ Stable Coin": https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2022/10/24/2540281/0/en/Fluent-Finance-and-Moonstone-Bank-Accelerate-Crypto-Adoption-by-Issuing-US-Stablecoin.html https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2022/10/24/254... "Fluent Federation of Member Banks": https://www.fluent.finance/ https://www.fluent.finance/ https://www.fluent.finance/team https://www.fluent.finance/team [includes the "inventor of CBDC" ..] There are so many rabbit holes here. FTX is the tip of something bigger imo.
- paulpauper 4y agothat is why VCs are diversified
- joeblubaugh 4y agoI don’t mean a financial reckoning, I mean a reputational one. Why would you want to do business with such foolish people?
- jacquesm 4y ago> I don’t see how you respect Sequoia’s judgement after this. Same for a16z, Softbank and all the others that jumped on the crypto bandwagon without doing their jobs as board members and during the run-up to the deal and after investing. Ironically, the VCs will position themselves as the victims.
- coffeebeqn 4y agoDid anyone respect SoftBank even before this? Their claim to fame was the botched WeWork money hole and a few other insanely overpriced rounds on unscalable/unprofitable(even in theory) businesses.
- jacquesm 4y agoIt's a mark of something, but not of excellence.
- totalZero 4y agoYes. SoftBank has been extremely effective in the mobile telecommunications investment space. Look up Vodafone KK and their investment in Sprint. SoftBank was SoftBank before its unprofitable/weird investments in businesses like WeWork and Boston Dynamics.
- austenallred 4y agoA16Z didn't invest in FTX
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sam345 4y agoI'm just enjoying their humiliation and reputation hit. Enjoying only so much as it is the correct free market result of betting big without [edited] due diligence. Some of it is result of fed priming the economy with free money. With so much money being dropped from the helicopter there's no time for due diligence. You win some you lose some so in that sense it was a rational bet I guess but not an intelligent one.
- bogwog 4y agoOn the one hand, sure, but on the other hand, this was literally a case of fraud. A fraudulent business is going to go out of its way to hide the fact that it's committing fraud.
- sam345 4y agoI agree that fraud trumps due diligence. You can do your diligence all you want but a fraudster can thing of a million ways to hide the truth, offer up forged/faked documents, etc. But due diligence is just that - you check out at least what is properly due - do they keep books, are they properly audited, do they have a proper board of directors, etc. It's evident Sequoia did none of that. SBF's balance sheet at the time this all thing went down was a spreadsheet that looked like it was made by a kid with no financial training which it was. Their corporate and financial controls were so lacking its insane that anyone gave them money. But Sequoia did and did so with what appears to be no substantive due diligence, other than being swept up by SBF saying exactly what they wanted to hear.
- hervature 4y agoYou do know that due diligence involves going over financial records correct? I imagine they didn't look at anything given the sheet SBF was shopping during the collapse.
- lmm 4y agoThere's a level of wilful ignorance here. If you "invest" in a business because line goes up and you don't ask why or how, and it turns out the why and how was crime, well, maybe you were just a rube, but maybe you figured out that it wasn't in your interest to ask too many questions. When we're talking about a sophisticated top VC fund...
- timack 4y agoThe Sequoia profile of SPF is quite the read: https://archive.ph/qFJJN https://archive.ph/qFJJN
- buildbot 4y agoThe podcast Behind the Bastards did an episode on SBF, it referenced this article! And made fun if it extensively
- justinzollars 4y agoThere was. They marked their entire investments to zero. A total loss.
- majormajor 4y agoAre people going to trust them with their money to let them raise future funds? If so: why?
- dotnet00 4y agoPeople will still trust them with their money because social accountability mechanisms are not that great, PR is a thing and people are even more prone to FOMO and skipping due diligence than even VC investors have been here.
- melony 4y agoWhat about the funds that FTX invested back into Sequoia?
- justinzollars 4y agoSounds like Sequoia has something to go after.
- flylib 4y agoSBF invested 200 million back into Sequoia funds as an LP, wasn't that big of a loss as they invested 214 million into FTX
- MrPatan 4y agoWasn't it 500 million?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y agoThe reckoning perhaps is that as rates rise, investors will not need to resort to investing in "tech" companies. The over-availablility of cheap capital was one factor leading to the rise of VC and BS "tech" companies, but the other factor was that rates were so ridiculously low for so long investors were essentially forced to invest in this speculative nonsense.
- bitL 4y agoSequoia's main driving factor was paranoia of missing the next big thing. Why would that change with one of their assets tanking? They went through similar (albeit at a smaller scale) many times. Most investments flop, this one very publicly. Still, just one of many investments they have, some of them equally foolish. Many "foolish" investments made them rich before.
- shadowgovt 4y agoThe same reckoning a VC always gets for making a bad call: the money's gone.
- vishnugupta 4y agoTheir money is gone. Their reputation is tarnished among founders and LPs alike for the next 2-3 years. The partners/analysts who were in awe of SBF have become a laughing stock. I'd say VCs have greatly suffered. But then they will brush it under the carpet in the pretext of "that's the risk we are willing to take while chasing 1000x returns" and I guess that's fair. They voted with their money and reputation and lost both.
- dehrmann 4y agoOther than the reputational hit unless they knew about the embezzlement, what would it be? They probably didn't know what was going on, either. They had their ill-timed puff piece a few months back, and they make money on exits. No way FTX would have made it to the public markets once auditors saw it.
- frgtpsswrdlame 4y agoSo 4 counts on wire fraud and then also commodities fraud, securities fraud, money laundering and campaign finance laws. For the moment, if we set aside whether these will be proven, how bad does a stack of charges like this look for him if they are proven?
- ladeagaytf 4y ago
- DaftDank 4y agoIn legal parlance, he will be "fu*ed."
- makestuff 4y agoFrom a quick google search (not promising this is 100% accurate, but I searched for sentencing minimums) 1) Wire fraud: 121-151 months 2) Securities fraud: 6-36 months base (there are multipliers apparently) 3) money laundering: 70 month average is all I could find 4) Campaign finance: seems to be more monetary based Not sure how a plea deal/severity of charges would change this though. Ex: when you are committing billions in fraud that probably has different guidelines than the average securities fraud of a few million or whatever.
- tptacek 4y agoFraud is a 2b1.1 crime, so the sentence scales with the "losses" to the victims; you can get +30 levels off that alone, which catapults the sentence into double digits.
- anigbrowl 4y agoIt strikes me as a weakness in our system that this is keyed to the $ amount. You can defraud a person of modest means of $50,000 and wipe them out financially; you could defraud some rich people of $2 billion without it impacting them in the slightest. This strongly incentivizes preying on the weak.
- dereg 4y agoIt should be noted that SBF is facing 165 years in prison.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ivraatiems 4y agoThat's a maximum sentence, which is unlikely to match what he's realistically convicted of.[0] Still, he is likely to spend decades in jail. https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc... ctrl-f "guidelines"
- likpok 4y agoRunning through the sentencing guidelines on the wire fraud hits 15-life real fast though. The sentence increases with the amount stolen and he stole a LOT of money (so much that the table doesn't cover it! It only goes up to $550 million).
- rootusrootus 4y agoThis was said about Holmes, too. It matters what he actually ends up convicted of. Early speculation always runs high.
- tptacek 4y agoNot so much. Holmes guideline sentence redlined the sentencing levels too; she got a significantly lower sentence than the guidelines allowed.
- dopamean 4y agoI got downvoted yesterday for implying this. Is it true that her sentencing was "right in the middle?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33963823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33963823
- jayess 4y agoI'm a civil lawyer, not criminal, but maybe a criminal lawyer can chime in. Don't they have to allege specific facts in an indictment? If I were served with this as a civil complaint, it would be deficient on its face.
- johndhi 4y agoAlso a civil lawyer so not certain but I know there's a saying: "you can indict a ham sandwich," meaning the standard is very low.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DannyBee 4y agoThis is just the Federal grand jury indictment. See https://www.justice.gov/usao/justice-101/charging https://www.justice.gov/usao/justice-101/charging It is a pretty typical indictment, fact wise. They don't often include the level of line by line detail you would find in a civil complaint. They mainly exist to let you know what you are being charged with, not to make the case to you that you are guilty. Civil complaints are also deliberately meant to be detailed enough that people try to settle them ahead of time, pre discovery. If you looked at non grand jury state proceedings, the criminal complaint would look closer in detail to a civil one. Though I believe they have to extradite here so you will likely see a more detailed version that ends up in Bahamas court, depending on what they/the treaty requires
- ivraatiems 4y agoHow anyone could look at this man's behavior over the last few weeks and not think he was on a fast track to a federal penitentiary is beyond me. A word to the unwise: If you have done something, anything, that you have a credible reason to believe the United States government thinks is illegal, shut up. Do not do any of the following: * Go on a podcast and talk about it * Go on a Twitter livestream and talk about it * Tweet about it * Answer questions from those you committed the crime against about it * Speak to journalists about it Instead, shut up. Shut up shut up shut up shut up. Your defense attorneys and your ankle will thank you. It does not matter whether it was an honest mistake or not. It does not matter whether you agree, philosophically, that it ought to be illegal. It does not matter whether Congress wants to talk to you about it first. It doesn't matter whether you've lived a life so sheltered and privileged that you cannot conceive of the idea that anyone from the government might be out to get you. Imagine the US Justice Department as an extremely patient, extremely hungry predator, and yourself as a delicious, plump prey animal with two broken legs hiding behind a rock. Anything you do or say to anybody except your lawyer will be used against you. So shut up.
- jayess 4y agoIt's often arrogance that leads to these things. I have a feeling he thought that the "aw shucks, I didn't know what was happening and I want to make things right" shtick would somehow work. He seems like a pretty dumb guy.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Xeoncross 4y agoI don't pity SBF, but this advice is important for innocent citizens. It's unfortunate that anything you say to law enforcement can be used against you - but none of it can be used for you. A police officer can testify against you, but if they try to support you it will be dismissed as "hearsay".
- hprotagonist 4y ago
- jeffbee 4y agoThe opening phrase is killing me. What can "From at least in or about 2019" mean? Does it mean not before 2019? Does it mean 2019 at the latest?
- outside1234 4y agoIt means that they have identified acts back to 2019 but are not foreclosing on finding more acts earlier.
- hammock 4y agoThat’s what “at least” means. The “in or about” is separate, and means they found things that may have been in 2019 but are not foreclosing that those particular things may have occurred at a different time
- mh- 4y agooops, I didn't see your reply when I posted mine. yours is a clearer explanation.
- jeffbee 4y agoThings that happened earlier than 2019 have dates less than 2019, no?
- outside1234 4y agoThe law is definitely not a formal grammar like we have in computer languages, yes. :)
- mh- 4y ago(not a lawyer) there are two separate things here. "on or about" (s/on/in, in this case) is an expression[0] that indicates an approximation. hedging in case it actually happened in, say, 2018 or 2020. the "at least" is what you'd think, of course. combining the two in this way feels awkward, but it's common usage [1]. [0] https://www.nolo.com/dictionary/on-or-about-term.html https://www.nolo.com/dictionary/on-or-about-term.html [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22at+least+on+or+about%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22at+least+on+or+about%22
- jpmattia 4y ago> "did transmit and cause to be transmitted by wire, radio, and television communication" Note to self: Remember to use only free-space lightwave communications to avoid committing wire fraud. Edit: Removed "fiber" because it looks too much like a wire and avoid being busted by outside1234!
- outside1234 4y agoThat's considered "a wire" by the law now :)
- jpmattia 4y agoCurses! Foiled again! Does it help that I've now removed the fiber?
- salawat 4y agoOdds are the legal system will converge on a non-technical, highly abstract meaning of "wire" to the effect of "any medium for conveyance of a signal over long distances (where long distances can reasonably be concluded to encompass multiple jurisdictions). This is why Legalese and English are truly seperate beasts linguistically.
- jpmattia 4y agoAlas, it looks like I'll have to use my Maxwellian knowledge for good rather than evil after all.
- Kab1r 4y agoAren't light waves and radio waves the same phenomenon at different wavelengths?
- jpmattia 4y agoOf course, but the fact that they redundantly spell out "radio" and "television" (as though they aren't the same) makes me think we have a good chance of convincing a jury that "light" is something completely different.
- trillic 4y agoInteresting wording. I am not a Lawyer but have had a lot of interest in this case and others like it. "SAMUEL BANKMAN-FRIED" a/k/a "SBF," the defendant, and others known and unknown did combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to commit wire fraud". Does this indicate that they intend to charge more people in the organization under RICO laws? Or is that just standard legalese for any wire fraud case.
- ivraatiems 4y agoIANAL either, however: RICO's pretty uncommon and it's probably not RICO. See for example [0]. But absolutely possible they charge many others. [0] https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-dammit/ https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-...
- bragr 4y agoPretty standard legalese from where I'm sitting but I'd expect more people to be charged. He didn't do this all by himself. RICO wouldn't really apply here, they've already got the top guy, and usually RICO is about charging the top guy with the little guys' crimes.
- danielfoster 4y agoThere may already be sealed charges against others but yes, there will likely be charges against others. Some conspirators may receive or may have already received immunity in exchange for testimony, though. It will take time to determine who else was involved and to what extent, though my guess is the focus will be on SBF. This is also great language for encouraging other conspirators to make a deal to testify even if the JD has little evidence against them. It's almost like the police lying and saying, "We have a video of you doing xyz."
- gizmo686 4y agoCount 1 is "conspiricy to commit wire fraud on customers". A nessasary component of that charge is the participation of others. In count two, "wire fraud on customers" there is no mention of consipiretors. I expect that we will see more charges, but this wording doesn't particularly indicated it.
- phire 4y agoWhat are these campaign finance charges doing here? They seem to be completely unrelated to the FTX collapse, he is accused of bypassing campigan finance limits by donating under other people's names. Was he already under investigation for these, or was it something they discovered while investigating FTX?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> What are these campaign finance charges doing here? If police get a warrant to search your basement for heroin and find a pile of dead bodies, what do you think happens next?
- TacticalCoder 4y ago> What are these campaign finance charges doing here? Sending a message.
- favflam 4y agoHe was trying to influence government policy that directly affected his business. This is like a level or two below bribing the SEC and CFTC to look the other way while breaking regulations.
- adamsmith143 4y agoOne certainly hopes that the thousands of customers whose funds he stole will also see him face charges for what he did to them.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- okasaki 4y agoIs there some reason why this kind of stuff is typed up on a typwriter?
- Macha 4y agoVarious legal systems have standards for the form for which documents should be submitted to them which are surprisingly nitpicky in terms of items like fonts and spacing. Of course, these standards were created when typewriters were the dominant use case, so had deference to what typewriters could actually do. Even though most of the typewriter use has fallen out of fashion, the standards remain, with the results that the documents look like they came out of a typewriter even if (as I suspect in this case) it's just been printed then faxed.
- jdgoesmarching 4y agoAt this point it also probably makes it easier for law-specific OCR software to round up the standard metadata. With the sheer volume of paperwork in that industry, nobody is interested in reinventing the regex wheel for every document.
- spookthesunset 4y agoNot to mention the real cost of every person reading each document having to relearn how this document is laid out vs every other document. There is a non-trivial human cost to not having a standard document format. Even if it is old and crusty. Also looks like most courts have a style guide for you to follow: https://www.jud.ct.gov/Publications/Manual_of_style.pdf https://www.jud.ct.gov/Publications/Manual_of_style.pdf
- SilasX 4y agoDoesn't explain why they'd never get with the time and accept electronic submissions, which are probably easier on their end too.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
- crmd 4y agoLet’s see if his ‘I’m baby’ defense works in court.
- coffeebeqn 4y agoYou see your honor I simply didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to siphon customer funds from one of my businesses to another. Can I truly be charged for a crime if I pretend to be dumb after I get caught?
- lern_too_spel 4y agoHis stupidity defense claims that he thought it was a loan, and he didn't know what Alameda Research was doing with the loan.
- Barrin92 4y agodoes that even make sense? If it was a loan against his customer's assets then the assets would still be there, and the exchange would simply be broke. If the funds are gone then it doesn't matter what for. He had no business lending his customers money away, he ran an exchange.
- roland35 4y agoStill, HE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO LOAN THE CUSTOMER MONEY!! If he didn't know that than why was it in the terms of service that his company wrote?
- lern_too_spel 4y agoBecause he's stupid and didn't read anything the company's lawyers wrote. That's the whole defense. Saying he loaned money to another company because he didn't know any better works better as a stupidity defense to get a more lenient sentence than what coffeebeqn wrote.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
- jasonhansel 4y agoThe SEC's complaint in its civil case provides more information about the details of the accusations against him: https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2022/comp-pr2022-219.pdf https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2022/comp-pr2022-2...
- greenyoda 4y agoSee also the HN discussion of the SEC charges: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33967386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33967386
- rkagerer 4y agoDoes this strike anyone else as way too dramatic a narrative for a court document? Like it's written with a deep personal beef rather than sticking to the facts. Is that normal for civil complaints of this type? To be clear I'm not defending the guy, I just feel after reading the first few pages like I'm flipping through a cheap tabloid.
- totalZero 4y agoI noticed that too, and interpreted it as a sign of confidence. I can't imagine a regulatory group writing something so dramatic without them being sure it's a home-run case.
- otterley 4y agoMost well-drafted civil complaints are written this way. It’s hardly confined to complaints drafted by the Government. Legal process is driven as much by narrative as it is by facts and allegations.
- standardly 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pseingatl 4y agoCan we discus recovery? The Madoff trustee was able to recover something like 90% of the Madoff Ponzi. Alameda and FTX's real estate purchases have value, as do their VC investments, purchases of bank stock, etc. In other words, it's not all gone. My understanding is that even some of the political contributions can be clawed back. FTX's purchases of IOU's (i.e., crypto) that declined in value are not likely to be recoverable. But Bitcoin still has substantial value. There's at least a billion in loans to insiders that can be clawed back. How much really was lost?
- phphphphp 4y agoI’d be absolutely shocked if more than 25% can be recovered. They spent multi-billions on venture investments that were not just high-risk due to their early stage nature but also inextricably linked to ftx by way of the cryptocurrency market as a whole and thus about as undiversified as humanly possible. There’s a few of their investments that have value and value could be recovered through sales but almost all of them are illiquid and have seen valuations collapse. Also consider that a lot of the players involved are overseas and anonymous* which makes it much more difficult to clawback relative to people onshore (like in the case of madoff).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nullc 4y agoIf we limit ourselves to depositor funds -- who morally ought to be superior creditors to investors-- I wouldn't be shocked if the recovery percentage was quite a bit larger than that. One thing that made 90% recoveries of Madoff possible were that they first backed out all the fake gains that the customers thought they had but never actually had. This will be harder to do with FTX, but I expect that once all the bogus margin trading on fake assets is backed out we'll find that the losses were far less substantial than the numbers being thrown around.
- phphphphp 4y ago
- bmitc 4y agoIs there a reason why they did this before and not after he appeared in the previously upcoming congressional hearing?
- anigbrowl 4y agoA good question. Rep Ocasio-Cortez, questioning the current CEO of FTX in committee, seemed to suggest that there was more going on behind the scenes than was admitted to in the firm's legal filings of yesterday. I haven't been following the case closely so I'm not sure what her line of inquiry was aimed at.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- VectorLock 4y agoI'm curious what kind of plea deal Caroline Elison got.
- makestuff 4y agoI'm guessing a, you're still going to prison, but it will be for a few years instead of potentially your entire life.
- tjmc 4y agoWasn't Alameda the entity responsible for losing most of the money? Seems wrong that you could get less than a double digit sentance for that - even if you roll over for the prosecution.
- MrPatan 4y agoLosing money is legal. Stealing money is not. I have a hard time believing she didn't know where the money she was losing came from, though.
- Analemma_ 4y agoWhen she gets 18 months to his 20 years, I think the two of them will be used in Goofus & Gallant-style comics in law school to demonstrate the importance of shutting up and letting your lawyer do the talking.
- treis 4y agoMore like why it's better to be a small fish than a big fish when the legal proceedings start.
- andirk 4y agoRight. Never be the top top guy. Don't be the fastest car on the road. And shut the f up Friday [0]. I think he thought he could do a media blitz but stealing a bunch of other people's money for ones gambling addiction is generally frowned upon. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgWHrkDX35o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgWHrkDX35o
- axus 4y agoWas listening to C-SPAN, they said his written statement for the record of the hearing was very offensive. "I would like to state, under oath," and then two words they wouldn't repeat. Doing a Google search of "SBF Fuck You" shows he's already told regulators and his lawyers to go F themselves, I'm guessing he said the same to the US Congress.
- kiernanmcgowan 4y agoMaybe this guy isn't as smart as he thinks he is.
- jacquesm 4y agoThat's pretty obvious by now I think. Still, he makes just about every other thief look like a bumbling idiot.
- TideAd 4y agoit was "I fucked up" https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/12/13/exclusive-transcript-the-full-testimony-sbf-planned-to-give-to-congress/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/12/13/exclus...
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y agoForbes published it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/12/13/exclusive-transcript-the-full-testimony-sbf-planned-to-give-to-congress/?sh=30ba03983c47 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/12/13/exclus... He said "I fucked up" which would get C-SPAN in trouble with the FCC. It is a very defiant and entitled sounding statement though.
- anigbrowl 4y agoNo it wouldn't. C-Span isn't broadcast for one thing, for a second it's newsworthy, and for a third they could just say/write 'I f**ed up' The US is so babyish about this stuff. One day people shout about free speech absolutism, another day they hold mock fainting fits over common swear words that virtually everyone uses. In other countries this would not merit anything more than an arched eyebrow on the part of a newsreader.
- soyiuz 4y agoI've seen a bunch of his interviews now and his message is pretty controlled, actually. It all boils down to: (a) I don't know, wasn't aware, and (b) I messed up / lost focus. These appearances seem to play a therapeutic (instead of legal or financial) role for SBF (bad idea, obviously). Yesterday (12/12) he was still talking about returning in a "senior executive role" to help in the bankruptcy. He is also convinced FTX USA and FTX Japan were fully solvent and that they still have a future. Fascinating.
- smolder 4y agoEvery indication is that he's lying through his teeth about being unaware.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago“If you attract customers and investors by saying that you have good risk management, and then you lose their money, and then you say ‘oh sorry we had bad risk management,’ that is not a defense against fraud charges! That is a confession!” https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-12-13/how-to-do-fraud-at-a-futures-exchange?srnd=premium https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-12-13/how-to...
- Panzer04 4y agoLevine, as always, trotting out the bangers :)
- SoftTalker 4y agoSounds like a sociopath.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- whatashammy 4y ago
- obruchez 4y agoVegaphobia or not, I fail to see any link here.
- gamblor956 4y agoOne thing to note about the charges: a number of these charges are "conspiracy" charges, meaning that there will be more people indicted. Most likely, his ex, who has probably already been talking to the feds in exchange for leniency, and possibly also including his one or both of his parents (see Count 7). Also interesting to note that Count 8 relates to campaign finance violations (for exceeding contribution thresholds and fraud related to making or reporting contributions). PACs don't have donation thresholds, so this appears to be related to the alleged "dark money" contributions he claimed to make in the summer (rather than the donations to the Democratic PACs in the primaries). It's not clear if this charge is based solely on his claims or if there is actual evidence of improper contributions.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y agoDirect link to PDF without Javascript: curl -s https://www.docdroid.net/kxfZltq/unsealed-indictment-in-us-v-bankman-fried-22-cr-673-abrams-as-sam-bankman-fried-of-ftx-heads-to-sdny-echoes-of-onecoin-and-un-bribery-cases-pdf \ |tr -d '\134'|sed -n 's/u0026/\&/g;s/.*\"application\/pdf\",\"uri\":\"//;s/\".*//;/https:/p' Q+D script using curl to download from "DocDroid" #!/bin/sh read X Y; unset Y;Y=${X##*/}; echo "$X" \ |sed 's/^/url=/' \ |curl -4sK- \ |tr -d '\134' \ |sed -n 's/u0026/\&/g;s/.*\"application\/pdf\",\"uri\":\"//;s/\".*//;s/https:/url=&/p' \ |curl -4o "$Y".pdf -K- For example, echo https://www.docdroid.net/kxfZltq/unsealed-indictment-in-us-v-bankman-fried-22-cr-673-abrams-as-sam-bankman-fried-of-ftx-heads-to-sdny-echoes-of-onecoin-and-un-bribery-cases-pdf \ |1.sh; muPDF unsealed-indictment-in-us-v-bankman-fried-22-cr-673-abrams-as-sam-bankman-fried-of-ftx-heads-to-sdny-echoes-of-onecoin-and-un-bribery-cases-pdf.pdf More DocDroid URLs can be found at https://www.reddit.com/domain/docdroid.net https://www.reddit.com/domain/docdroid.net and of course https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=docdroid.net https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=docdroid.net
- dang 4y agoThanks. We've since changed the URL from https://www.docdroid.net/kxfZltq/unsealed-indictment-in-us-v-bankman-fried-22-cr-673-abrams-as-sam-bankman-fried-of-ftx-heads-to-sdny-echoes-of-onecoin-and-un-bribery-cases-pdf https://www.docdroid.net/kxfZltq/unsealed-indictment-in-us-v... to the proper source, which I assume is a direct link with no fuss.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ksala_ 4y agoThis is an interesting way of writing a quick and dirty script, completely different than I would have written it (I would have definitely have used a lot more subshells, temporary variables, escaped the characters in the commands, "#" in sed instead of "/" and a lot less sed magic). If anyone is curious as it took me a bit to decipher (and I consider myself quite familiar with shell scripting!): read X Y Read the stdin into X and Y. I'm honestly not sure why read Y here as it's unset and re-defined on the next line? unset Y;Y=${X##*/}; Unset Y, use Parameter expansion to match the regex "/" greedy and delete it from the string, assign it to Y. Also I believe that using "" here is a "bashism" so it would not work on a strict posix shell :) echo "$X" \ Echo X to be piped as stdin in the next command |sed 's/^/url=/' \ Use sed to prepend url= to the string |curl -4sK- \ Connect over ipv4 (-4), don't output (-s, silent) and read the config from stdin (-K-). Apparently curl support reading what to fetch from a config file, I was not aware that curl supported that |tr -d '\134' \ Delete all backslashed from the input. "\<number>" is the octal ascii code of the character |sed -n 's/u0026/\&/g;s/.*\"application\/pdf\",\"uri\":\"//;s/\".*//;s/https:/url=&/p' \ Several substitutions, and don't echo the output automatically (-n). Replace "u0026" with "&" (u0026 is the unicode number of ampersand - not sure why but docdroid use that in their page), all occurrences. Select the line that matches '.*"application/pdf","uri":"' Match "https:" and prepend it with "url=", and print it curl -4o "$Y".pdf -K- As above, parse the config file to download the output to $Y.pdf (-o) over IPv4
- politician 4y agoIt's interesting that the US gets priority on prosecution here when the losses internationally are far in excess of those of US creditors.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ajross 4y agoThere's no "priority" at work. The DoJ just filed charges first. There's no reason any other jurisdiction couldn't file its own case simultaneously, though obviously they're unlikely to get him extradited while he's standing trial.
- coffeebeqn 4y agoIt’s the biggest economy and the strongest “rule of law” out of all the large countries in the world. And it has the most soft power in the world. I’m not too surprised
- kkielhofner 4y agoThe United States Department of Justice effectively has a 99.6% conviction rate[0]. As the article states most of this comes from pleas but in cases like this (Theranos, etc) they'll go to trial and almost always be found guilty anyway. That's an impressive stat and they want to keep it. With a conviction rate like that an indictment is practically a guarantee that anyone named in it will go to prison. They also have an incredible amount of law and leverage in their favor. For example, another tactic is using statutes like "false or misleading statements"[1]. As that article tells it they'll often navigate suspects towards making statements investigators know to be false and then come back at a later interview and let them know they already have them on something that can get them five years in prison. There have been famous examples of wealthy and sophisticated people (Martha Stewart, Dennis Hastert, etc) getting charged under that statute when all else fails. Basically, if they want to get you they will get you. All of this is pretty well known and I'm not surprised in the least the rest of the world is happy to sit back and watch the DOJ "do what it does" and put people in prison. [0] - https://www.doarlaw.com/blog/2021/04/what-you-should-know-about-the-federal-governments-conviction-rate/ https://www.doarlaw.com/blog/2021/04/what-you-should-know-ab... [1] - https://www.iannfriedman.com/blog/2019/april/federal-charges-for-false-misleading-statements/ https://www.iannfriedman.com/blog/2019/april/federal-charges...
- AcerbicZero 4y agoI guess we'll get to see what 3 billion dollars and a well connected mother can buy you; I doubt it'll be a free pass, but I'm not expecting anything that resembles justice here.
- Ericson2314 4y agoCorruption works when one is still rich. If the dude's got nothing now (or nothing he can get access too and others can't), he's not worth very much.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- indigodaddy 4y agoFrom https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/13/sam-bankman-fried-denied-bail-in-bahamas-on-ftx-fraud-charges-judge-cites-flight-risk.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/13/sam-bankman-fried-denied-bai... : “Bankman-Fried's parents were animated during the proceeding, at times laughing or putting their fingers in their ears, according to Coindesk.” … what in the world.. I guess they really think they are going to somehow get him out of this.. how do they not understand that this type of behavior is not in any way helpful to him?
- brewdad 4y agoMaybe they already got their millions secured away in some untouchable country and don't really care what happens at this point.
- tasuki 4y agoThey were already quite well off, now their son is in trouble. "My son is going to prison but I have secured my millions so it's fine" is generally not a thing.
- LudwigNagasena 4y agoMaybe he never was their favorite son anyway.
- bambax 4y agoOh I think it's the opposite. I think they thought of him as the second coming of Jesus himself, and he felt he had to do extraordinary things to live up to that image (which of course is impossible). I think he secretly hated it and that's why he trashed his own hypocrisy in some interviews, saying that the charity talks were all an act and not true. And I also think that's a big part of his "I'm stupid / I fucked up" line of defense. Yes, he may think it helps his case (but is he actually that naïve?) But the main goal is to tell his parents "see, the genius you thought I was is actually a complete idiot, what do you make of that?!?" I think he's happy to suffer if that makes his parents suffer more. (Of course that's all speculation and pop' psychology and as such isn't worth the electrons it's typed in; but it's a possibility.)
- buggythebug 4y ago
- Y_Y 4y agoThis isn't Reddit.
- buggythebug 4y ago
- iosjunkie 4y agoSuggesting that one should not trust someone based on their looks is based af. Any other sage wisdom to bestow upon the people of Hacker News?
- buggythebug 4y agoThey look like gremlins. And from her interview especially she talks about how life is better on drugs.
- smeej 4y agoWhen do you think we'll start seeing the politicians who received SBF's illegal campaign finance contributions insisting on returning them to FTX customers so as to be above suspicion or reproach?
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y agoI'm waiting for Sequoia to be put in jail.
- jacquesm 4y agoIt will be a long wait, unfortunately. More likely: Sequoia will be shouting from the rooftops that they too are victims.
- stickfigure 4y agoThey... literally... are? The SEC has charged SBF over exactly that.
- akiselev 4y agoIANAL but that depends on what their agreements with LPs were, doesn’t it? The managing partners have a fiduciary duty to the fund so couldn’t they be held criminally liable if they failed to do some due diligence stipulated by an LP?
- jacquesm 4y agoNormally these things are all agreed at the time of the original commitment and the closing of the fund, so assuming there are LPs each and every one of them should have a copy of the obligations of these funds.
- sam345 4y agoI'd be interested in the theory. Their investors aren't exactly mom and pop operations. But I do agree that their promotion of SBF was asinine though that's all clear to the world now. And I'm not in favor of criminalizing bad investments. Sets bad precedent and incentives.
- breck 4y agoHere is SBF's full statement: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/12/13/exclusive-transcript-the-full-testimony-sbf-planned-to-give-to-congress/?sh=672b12c73c47 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenehrlich/2022/12/13/exclus... Worth a read
- hintymad 4y agoDoes such statement, given what SBF did and said, qualify as treacly and sanctimonious?
- TacticalCoder 4y agoNot really. He's a pathological liar. There's probably great incriminating evidence there (as in lies that can be exposed as lies for not a word of that person can be trusted) and it's good to see him whine that his accounts got blocked but it's not a good read. The six counts of conspiracy are a great read though. I wonder who his co-conspirators are but in case they're in the Bahamas those implicated may not be sleeping that well: now they just saw that even the bahamian authorities bow to Uncle Sam.
- breck 4y ago
- voganmother42 4y agoCurious why you believe sbf has earned the benefit of the doubt?
- breck 4y agoThe software was good, so I was surprised it was fraud. But then my funds were frozen, so I thought it was fraud. But now he says he didn't freeze the funds, and this Ray guy seems suspicious.
- totalZero 4y agoThe part about the Chapter 11 legal fees is particularly interesting. It starts on page 8.
- cokeandpepsi 4y ago
- Aleksdev 4y agoThe fact that SFB was still giving live interviews during the whole FTX collapse where he contradicted himself was beyond dumb. They are going to have a field day with him.
- readonthegoapp 4y agoafter reading about his parents' high level of involvement, i think they knew there were all sorts of illegal things going on, and decided to not ask too many questions to allow for plausible deniability. but they gladly kept spending that money and spreading that influence. and, to seemingly throw away your kid's future because you're so enthralled with finally being one of the true bigwigs around Stanford... smh. he needed parents. and the myriad people surrounding him for years during the theft and fraud -- who are now all Pikachu-faced that he could have been doing these dastardly things. and maybe sbf will get his little brother sent to jail, too. SBF wasn't paying attention to the SPAC people -- you gotta take yours off the top, like a politician (quoting dead prez) -- not just steal everyone's money, and _def_ don't steal from the rich -- i thought we all collectively learned these lessons. if we killed SPACs _and_ crypto, where are all the scammers gonna go? conspiracy. wire fraud. commodities fraud. securities fraud. money laundering. the Federales even threw in a campaign finance charge just for giggles.
- norin 4y agoSBF is no Muhammad Ali.
- MagicMoonlight 4y agoIt’s beautiful seeing a justice system work so quickly
- jonnycomputer 4y agoI'll restrict my comment to condemning the empty cynicism behind Elon Musk's tweet [1] that, because SBF donated to Democrats, there would be no investigation of SBF, much less an indictment. And AFAIK Elon Musk hasn't publicly admitted that he was wrong. [1] https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1591822387267665921 https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1591822387267665921
- ciropantera 4y agoYeah, such a silly take to imagine that politicians would go down with a blatant fraudster like that just because he gave them a couple of mil for their candidacies. A big part of being a skillful politician is knowing not to tie yourself to corpses like SBF.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]