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David Gerard has the best summary: ‘He was released on bail for a $250 million bond — “the largest ever pretrial bond,” apparently — secured only on his parent
by pavlov 4y ago
David Gerard has the best summary:
‘He was released on bail for a $250 million bond — “the largest ever pretrial bond,” apparently — secured only on his parents’ home in Palo Alto, where he will be living.
’SBF will surrender his passport and remain in home confinement with electronic monitoring — he’ll wear a bracelet. He will also be required to undergo regular mental health evaluation and treatment. No financial transactions over $1,000 except legal fees, no new lines of credit, and he can’t start a business. Also, no firearms.
’That is: Sam lost all his money in crypto, and has moved back into his parents’ basement.’
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2022/12/22/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-out-on-bail-ellison-and-wang-cop-pleas/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2022/12/22/ftx-sam-bank...
- nprateem 4y agoSounds like a pretty damned nice $250m basement
- notyourwork 4y agoI'm sorry but "and he can’t start a business." made me laugh out loud.
- googlryas 4y agoShould be denied access to the internet too, like most internet related criminals are on bond conditions.
- emn13 4y agoHow about: "No use of any software or device that includes any cryptographic algorithms." :-P Back to the stone age it is!
- grubbs 4y agoHe could still mine crypto with a pen and paper!
- dmitryminkovsky 4y ago0.67 hashes per day
- optimalsolver 4y agoSemi-relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/505/ https://xkcd.com/505/
- jrockway 4y agoThat seems needlessly cruel. I'm all for getting to the bottom of what SBF did, but he hasn't been convicted of any crime yet. It's important that we go through the process before applying punishments.
- bigmattystyles 4y agoI wonder what those in pretrial detention in Rikers do without internet, there only because they don’t have resources to bond out.
- jrockway 4y agoYour solution to needless suffering is to add more needless suffering?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- vkou 4y agoIf we only permitted accused criminals to have public defendants, instead of being able to hire expensive lawyers, I expect that improving the public defense system would magically become a priority for everyone, or at least, for half of the legal profession. If we got rid of TSA-precheck, I would expect some of the bullshit that regular travelers have to go through would be eliminated. It's pretty easy for people with power and influence to not give a shit about what the rest of us have to deal with, when they never need to experience it.
- andsoitis 4y ago> If we got rid of TSA-precheck, I would expect some of the bullshit that regular travelers have to go through would be eliminated. It's pretty easy for people with power and influence to not give a shit about what the rest of us have to deal with, when they never need to experience it. I must admit: if TSA pre-check is an example of what people with power & influence get away with, then I can simply not be convinced of your case.
- smcl 4y agoWhat would this achieve? I think SBF has done a load of financial crime, but I don’t think we are at risk of him spinning up a new token and making millions. Internet is required for a lot of normal shit, making it illegal is a really cruel punitive thing
- tosc 4y ago> I don’t think we are at risk of him spinning up a new token and making millions. Why not? He has stated that he intends to earn the money again to pay back the creditors.
- colechristensen 4y agoI don’t know about cruel, he’s just preparing for a significant legal defense. Communications, researching, etc using the internet is an important part of defending himself in court which he deserves a fair shot at. The purpose of the bail is to enable him to better participate in the upcoming legal proceedings.
- thelastgallon 4y agoDon't forget the interviews!
- russdill 4y agoI realize that it's easy to reach the forgone conclusion that yes, he's guilty and a criminal. You'd have to really tie yourself into knots to find out how he could be innocent. But our legal system still treats people not yet convicted as....not yet convicted. Speaking more generically, people released on bond need to be able to have the resources necessary to form a proper defense, and also to try and avoid their entire life being destroyed by an arrest that may or may not lead to a conviction.
- throwaway2037 4y agoNormally, I agree. However, considering the statements from current CEO John J. Ray III and two guilty pleas from insiders, it is hard to believe he is innocent. In the digital era, wire fraud is so simple to prove and can carry huge jail sentences. Honestly, I wonder if he will also plead guilty. The evidence against him looks enormous. Even with a guilty plea, I expect 10-20 years jail sentence and all assets seized.
- annexrichmond 4y agoMore like he moved into his parents’ attic? They don’t have basements in California :P
- stevenwoo 4y agoThey do if you spend enough money. I met someone who was related to an executive of Intel and they had a basement with dumb waiter and a laundry chute from the other floors.
- dilyevsky 4y agoI toured large house in santa clara that had a huge basement that was going for about 1M in 2017
- dredmorbius 4y agoBasement additions through remodeling has become much more common on the Peninsula over the past decade or two. There are height and density limits, so among the few options is to go down. Not a whole lot of coverage that I'm finding, though there's a brief mention in this Palo Alto Weekly article (2018): <https://paloaltoonline.com/news/2018/01/12/groundwater-spurs-basement-changes https://paloaltoonline.com/news/2018/01/12/groundwater-spurs...> If you search "palo alto basement remodel" you'll find a heck of a lot of contractor / services pages (enough to frustrate me looking for actual news coverage or mentions). And a Crescent Park remodel involving basements across four properties: <https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2016/05/26/zuckerberg-plans-to-raze-replace-his-crescent-park-homes https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2016/05/26/zuckerberg-pl...>
- sethd 4y agoWeird. I’ve heard this same phrase about every state I’ve lived in (always from a native) and it’s always turned out to be false. Perhaps such a state does exist? Sibling comment seems to indicate California might not be one of them.
- msrenee 4y ago
- edf13 4y ago$250m secures on their home?? How much is that valued at?
- SilasX 4y agoWell, SBF is the master at getting collateral overvalued…
- eddsh1994 4y agoThe house is valued at $4m - it's on Stanfords campus.
- MuffinFlavored 4y agowhy was pledging some/all of the equity of their $4m home enough? or is it that two secret rich people put up much more and the parent’s house thing is basically a distraction?
- jjtheblunt 4y agoHis parents' home isn't worth anything like that. Does that mean only a fraction of the bond value needs to be the security? If so, is that not bullshit?
- ravi-delia 4y agoI mean, it's up to the bond company no? Besides, the ankle bracelet is doing most of the work
- throwbigdata 4y agoMartha Stewart taught us how easy those are to take off!
- svnt 4y agoI’ve got $100 that says his mom will face charges of her own before this is all over.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> I mean, it's up to the bond company no? No, its up to the court. There is no “bond company” involved here.
- coldtea 4y agoNot any more bullshit than getting a loan by getting someone in good standing to sign they'll pay the full price if you fail.
- jjtheblunt 4y agoBut they can not pay the full price, right?
- coldtea 4y agoIsn't that up to those accepting the deal to determine?
- happyopossum 4y ago> secured only on his parents’ home in Palo Alto, This part is incorrect - his parents and 2 other individuals with ‘significant assets’ signed on his bond.
- lamontcg 4y agoThat makes more sense. He probably has a billionaire friend or two.
- jacquesm 4y agoIt'd be nice to know who and how they got their billions.
- irrational 4y agoAre there any billionaires of whom it is not known how they got their billions?
- nimchimpsky 4y ago[dead]
- wmf 4y agoThere seem to be some, like Trump and SBF himself, who lied about making billions.
- from 4y agoJho Low until 2013.
- vba616 4y agoWell, known by who? More of them are known to journalists and Google than to a proverbial person on the street, but there are supposed to be over 3,000 billionaires in the world. We probably haven't heard of most of the 99% of billionaires that aren't in the top ten. And if we haven't heard of them, it would not make a lot of sense to be certain that "it is known" of all of them where they got their wealth. Last year, if you didn't Google them, did you know who Bernard Arnault, Mukesh Ambani, or Gautam Adani were? In the case of Adani, I had never heard even of his company, which apparently is one of the largest in the world. (The point of this post was mainly to use the phrase "99% of billionaires")
- csense 4y ago> on bail for a $250 million bond — secured only on his parents’ home in Palo Alto Wait what? How does that work? I thought if the bond was $X, that literally means you either (a) give the court $X, cash only or (b) sit in jail until trial. How can his bond be set at $250 million, yet the court somehow isn't just making him sit in jail until and unless he either goes to trial and is found not guilty, or he coughs up $250 million?
- stanleydrew 4y agoYeah you have to put up cash or collateral nominally worth (presumably in the court's discretion) the amount of the bond. This report seems incorrect.
- edwnj 4y ago[dead]
- hollerith 4y agoA financial intermediary trusted by the court pledges to pay the court the 250M if SBF flees and the intermediary cannot find him and take him back into custody. For typical bail amounts i.e., $50k, the intermediary usually demands 10% of the $50k from the defendant (and his friends) as a deposit, but maybe SBF found an intermediary willing to make the pledge to the court for a deposit significantly less than 10% of the 250M.
- MichaelBurge 4y ago> maybe SBF found an intermediary who'd take significently less than 10% of the 250M. The amount is large enough that even with 1% or 0.1% they could probably pay a professional bounty hunter to tail him for a week, reducing the odds of him escaping.
- csense 4y agoOkay so it's basically a bail bond, sign over the $2M house to get the bondsman to post $250M bond. What bondsman has $250M? Even if they did, why would they ever agree to this? Isn't getting $2M from a defendant on a bail bond less than even the interest you could probably get by just putting your $250M in, say, a Treasury bond over the same timeframe? For that matter, who's willing to bet $250M at 99-to-1 payout odds that a smart guy like SBF won't be able to disappear and pop up in Dubai or somewhere with no extradition to the US? (Remember SBF probably had the means, motive, opportunity and moral character to siphon a couple hundred million worth of BTC into a wallet there are no records of. And he knew for a long time FTX was going to collapse and he was probably being investigated.)
- danrocks 4y agoWouldn't it be interesting if the people who secured the other part of his bail bond are all rich individuals holding all of their net worth in crypto?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TreeRingCounter 4y ago[dead]
- napierzaza 4y ago[dead]