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Sam Bankman-Fried’s esteemed Stanford parents face their own reckoning

61 points by erehweb 4y ago

xqcgrek2 4y ago
MIT should also face a reckoning -- this is where he went astray.
- ratg13 4y ago
  Can you elaborate? His parents were on the FTX payroll and contributing to the business. It is not clear that MIT has any involvement with FTX operations
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    You’re on hacker news. Either the poster went to MIT and has a grudge because it’s not everything they expected it to be, or they wanted to go to MIT but couldn’t. It’s a constant punching bag here. For example, there was recently a long thread about them closing public access to some buildings (a relatively minor news story all things considered).
xfour 4y ago
https://archive.ph/PGdN4 https://archive.ph/PGdN4
hitekker 4y ago
Related thread on the parents: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33915097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33915097 A few commenters were pretty gullible; they couldn’t imagine people lying about why they quit their jobs.
- dmix 4y ago
  From the article: > No evidence has emerged yet to link Bankman and Fried to their son’s alleged crimes, and their level of legal culpability depends on their knowledge of the alleged fraud, Barhoma said. That HN thread you linked to has multiple people providing good explanations why an emeritus professor retiring is nothing like “quitting” and they are right. They have plenty of reasons to not want to optinally teach classes they didn’t have to teach, at a minimum helping their son in crisis. That’s hardly a suggestion of guilt
  - hitekker 4y ago
    I'm actually a bit surprised at the naiveté. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-13/sam-bankman-fried-s-stanford-law-professor-parents-tangled-in-ftx-probes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-13/sam-bankm... explicitly says > “Bankman-Fried, his parents, and other FTX and Alameda employees used FTX customer funds for a variety of personal expenditures, including luxury real estate purchases, private jets, documented and undocumented personal loans, and personal political donations,” the CFTC said in its complaint. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/technology/sbf-parents-ftx-collapse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/technology/sbf-parents-ft... > The couple’s careers have been upended. Ms. Fried, 71, resigned last month as chairwoman of the board of a political donor network, Mind the Gap, which she had helped start to support Democratic campaigns and causes. Mr. Bankman, 67, has postponed a Stanford class he had been scheduled to teach in the winter, and he’s recruited a white-collar criminal defense lawyer to represent him. My guess is that the idea of complicity must not sit well with folks who rub shoulders with criminals.
    - dmix 4y ago
      How does any of that point to them being involved? SBF was well regarded by the media and was in control of an alleged billion dollar company. Why wouldn’t the parents think it’s normal to get a nice home in the Bahamas? Were they supposed to be digging into his financials and software architecture that allowed Alameda to pull unlimited funds? I don’t see how any of their expertise would even contribute to this scam. It’s simple enough what he did… just not tell anyone he’s using FTX assets to cover reckless Alameda gambling. Do you really think he confessed to his academic parents who built their careers on risk management? Which one of us is being naive here? This didn’t take a family of experts to pull off.
- SilasX 4y ago
  Wait — so all those CEOs who wanted more time with their families right after a massive scandal blew up that they were known to have a hand in …?
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  “Not teaching a class” and “quit” mean different things.
duxup 4y ago
Mixing charity and business closely has some substantial negative impacts when the business turns out to be fraudulent. I also wonder if it provides some excuses to do whatever it takes to be successful… “for the charitable causes”?
iLoveOncall 4y ago
> It could get especially ugly for the couple, who are accustomed to a privileged life in high-minded academia. If prosecutors and the FBI want to play hardball, they could try to force Bankman and Fried to cooperate with the investigation and to testify against their beloved son. This reads like a tabloid, no thanks.
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
They are not "esteemed" anymore. Personal bankruptcy inevitable. They will have to work again at some point.

61 points by erehweb 4y ago

xqcgrek2 4y ago

MIT should also face a reckoning -- this is where he went astray.

ratg13 4y ago
Can you elaborate? His parents were on the FTX payroll and contributing to the business. It is not clear that MIT has any involvement with FTX operations
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  You’re on hacker news. Either the poster went to MIT and has a grudge because it’s not everything they expected it to be, or they wanted to go to MIT but couldn’t. It’s a constant punching bag here. For example, there was recently a long thread about them closing public access to some buildings (a relatively minor news story all things considered).

xfour 4y ago

https://archive.ph/PGdN4 https://archive.ph/PGdN4

hitekker 4y ago

Related thread on the parents: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33915097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33915097 A few commenters were pretty gullible; they couldn’t imagine people lying about why they quit their jobs.

dmix 4y ago
From the article: > No evidence has emerged yet to link Bankman and Fried to their son’s alleged crimes, and their level of legal culpability depends on their knowledge of the alleged fraud, Barhoma said. That HN thread you linked to has multiple people providing good explanations why an emeritus professor retiring is nothing like “quitting” and they are right. They have plenty of reasons to not want to optinally teach classes they didn’t have to teach, at a minimum helping their son in crisis. That’s hardly a suggestion of guilt
- hitekker 4y ago
  I'm actually a bit surprised at the naiveté. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-13/sam-bankman-fried-s-stanford-law-professor-parents-tangled-in-ftx-probes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-13/sam-bankm... explicitly says > “Bankman-Fried, his parents, and other FTX and Alameda employees used FTX customer funds for a variety of personal expenditures, including luxury real estate purchases, private jets, documented and undocumented personal loans, and personal political donations,” the CFTC said in its complaint. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/technology/sbf-parents-ftx-collapse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/technology/sbf-parents-ft... > The couple’s careers have been upended. Ms. Fried, 71, resigned last month as chairwoman of the board of a political donor network, Mind the Gap, which she had helped start to support Democratic campaigns and causes. Mr. Bankman, 67, has postponed a Stanford class he had been scheduled to teach in the winter, and he’s recruited a white-collar criminal defense lawyer to represent him. My guess is that the idea of complicity must not sit well with folks who rub shoulders with criminals.
  - dmix 4y ago
    How does any of that point to them being involved? SBF was well regarded by the media and was in control of an alleged billion dollar company. Why wouldn’t the parents think it’s normal to get a nice home in the Bahamas? Were they supposed to be digging into his financials and software architecture that allowed Alameda to pull unlimited funds? I don’t see how any of their expertise would even contribute to this scam. It’s simple enough what he did… just not tell anyone he’s using FTX assets to cover reckless Alameda gambling. Do you really think he confessed to his academic parents who built their careers on risk management? Which one of us is being naive here? This didn’t take a family of experts to pull off.
SilasX 4y ago
Wait — so all those CEOs who wanted more time with their families right after a massive scandal blew up that they were known to have a hand in …?
UncleMeat 4y ago
“Not teaching a class” and “quit” mean different things.

duxup 4y ago

Mixing charity and business closely has some substantial negative impacts when the business turns out to be fraudulent. I also wonder if it provides some excuses to do whatever it takes to be successful… “for the charitable causes”?

iLoveOncall 4y ago

> It could get especially ugly for the couple, who are accustomed to a privileged life in high-minded academia. If prosecutors and the FBI want to play hardball, they could try to force Bankman and Fried to cooperate with the investigation and to testify against their beloved son. This reads like a tabloid, no thanks.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

They are not "esteemed" anymore. Personal bankruptcy inevitable. They will have to work again at some point.