6 ms·

It's insane he could have cashed out as a billionaire and lived the high life for the remainder of his life but doubled down instead and is now facing a stretch

by s_dev 3y ago

It's insane he could have cashed out as a billionaire and lived the high life for the remainder of his life but doubled down instead and is now facing a stretch in prison. I'd also like to put my hand up and say I was one of those who was cynical that he'd end up in prison so glad that seems to be happening. I reckoned he'd escape some how being let off on some technicality of some prosecutor not following due diligence.

febed 3y ago
If you watch some of his interviews after the news of the scam broke out, he was incriminating himself every time he opened his mouth. Almost as if he thought laws are just for plebs.
jacquesm 3y ago
The race isn't run yet.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  SBF is going to be nailed to the cross as an warning to others. The case is a slam dunk, there are mountains of evidence, plenty of eager witnesses and prosecutors who would love to add his scalp to their collection. There's no way he's getting off on a technicality.
  - stephen_g 3y ago
    Yeah, and as much as he gave in political donations to all sorts of politicians in the past, since it looks like he won't be able to give any more in the future they have no reason for loyalty to try and influence anything behind the scenes.
    - shabda 3y ago
      I remember this quote here, “Do not count on the gratitude of deeds done for people in the past, you must make them grateful for things you will do for them in the future.” - Mario Puzo, Omerta.
      - barelyauser 3y ago
        In the book 48 Laws of Power from Robert Greene, Law 13 addresses this. If you held them by past deeds people will feel that they owe you something and nobody wants to owe anything to anyone. It is better instead to show them what they have to gain from now on.
        red-iron-pine 3y ago
        that book is banned in prisons. which means SBF won't be able to read it
tjpnz 3y ago
If he was bright, perhaps? But that's not SBF.
londons_explore 3y ago
> could have cashed out as a billionaire I doubt there was any time in his career where all the accounts were fully legit and he could have cashed out. There would always have been some investors who hadn't got the returns they expected and would have gone digging.
- Baader-Meinhof 3y ago
  Hindsight is always 20/20 but as FTX was growing and Alameda was losing money, he could have shut down Alameda before it went negative. Then, he could've focused solely on FTX, which was apparently worth 10 of billions.
  - Andrex 3y ago
    Like most of the financial world, the whole thing was a confidence game. Shutting down Alameda would have destroyed the illusion and the chips would have begun to fall shortly after, IMHO.
  - stephen_g 3y ago
    Was it not as much 'worth tens of billions' as 'held tens of billions of customer funds' though?
    - nikanj 3y ago
      In crypto, those two seem to mean the same thing. Three yards of ironclad terms of service inform customers that the deposited funds are fully and permanently the exchange's funny money
      - kayamon 3y ago
        You say “in crypto” yet Bitcoin was invented to solve the problem you describe.
        nikanj 3y ago
fugdfjxd 3y ago
Think of what he did to his parents too… Two bright Stanford professors/lawyers now with black marks on their careers. Silver lining is they surely have enough tucked and hidden away to live very comfortable once this blows over. Albeit in disgrace.
- martin8412 3y ago
  The dad was involved
- thegreenswede 3y ago
  The parents helped him. No one should feel bad for them. Like at all.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> I'd also like to put my hand up and say I was one of those who was cynical that he'd end up in prison so glad that seems to be happening. If you read the article, all it says it that he's going to jail for the completely legal act of publishing correspondence that was sent to him. He hasn't been sentenced or convicted or anything. The judge just doesn't like him. Theoretically, you deny bail to people who are flight risks.
- throwanem 3y ago
  > the completely legal act of publishing correspondence that was sent to him ...from the private diaries of his ex-girlfriend and former business partner who is now testifying against him, making this the latest in a long series of failed attempts at witness tampering, a federal crime in its own right. It's also what has turned out to be the last straw with a judge who has up to this point been astonishingly tolerant with all the other ways Bankman-Fried has tried to screw around with the remarkably lenient terms of his former bail agreement.
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  > [The article says] he's going to jail for the completely legal act of publishing correspondence that was sent to him … "in order to intimidate a witness in the case".
- darrenf 3y ago
  > the completely legal act of publishing correspondence that was sent to him Clearly the judge didn't consider it "completely legal", presumably based on 18 U.S.C. § 1512[0] which says the following may result in a fine or imprisonment (edited for brevity): (b) Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to— (1) influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding; (2) cause or induce any person to— (A) withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding; ... (d) Whoever intentionally harasses another person and thereby hinders, delays, prevents, or dissuades any person from— (1) attending or testifying in an official proceeding; [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512
nullc 3y ago
> It's insane he could have cashed out as a billionaire hah no. The billionaire claim was bull used to promote himself and his businesses. I wouldn't be surprised if a detailed accounting showed that he has never had a positive liquidation value for FTX and Alameda at any point in time. It's a common problem people have in reasoning about fraudsters-- there is a tendency to only peel back one layer of fraud and get caught because the fraud continues all the way down. :)
- nullc 3y ago
  (okay never positive at any time might be a little too far, I wouldn't be shocked if it was a few millions in the black at some point or another-- but billions? I would be shocked unless you used obviously fraudulent accounting like valuing illiquid assets at the last trade price)
- Melting_Harps 3y ago
  > hah no. The billionaire claim was bull used to promote himself and his businesses. Granted, but as we have seen with these exit scams you don't need to be operating a cash or crypto positive business in order to run off with people's funds. All of these leaks and loans etc... were likely him siphoning funds if/when he was eventually caught. I still think it takes a certain kind of crook to setup shop in the Bahamas, purchase an immensely ostentatious home, make your sexual proclivities known to the World while splashing money around to make politicians make favourable legislation for your crooked business, stream yourself playing video games while doing pitches to VCs and getting them, all while talking about effective altruism and guaranteed yield and none of that has to do with being business savvy and everything to do with be a grifter. He is like Razzlekhan's bf, he had a golden ticket with billions in BTC and could have just woke up and left to Russia or Belarus (and eventually Turkey where all the Oligarchs are now buying up sea-side Villas given the distressed Lira) where he could have even been chummy with Putin given how he evaded the US intelligence community: instead the two were out buying Playstations with walmart gift cards and making shitty rap videos on youtube and got pinched when they left a copy of the private keys on a cloud server!
  - nullc 3y ago
gadders 3y ago
I hope they all go to jail, though, and the ones that were first to to turn don't escape jail.
tenpies 3y ago
> I reckoned he'd escape some how being let off on some technicality of some prosecutor not following due diligence. Call me cynical and conspiratorial, but I expect that the camera glitches are being set up as we speak. The sleepy guards being scheduled. The one photo of "his body" being generated. On the bright side, at least SBF isn't tall enough to simply stand up if he were to "kill himself" in his cell by hanging. What gives me optimism is that if this is done, we can at least have some visibility into his accounts.
- BoxFour 3y ago
  Alright, you're cynical and conspiratorial. Even assuming it's true that Epstein didn't take his own life, SBF holds nowhere near the level of significance to justify such actions. The matters he's been associated with pale in comparison to Epstein and the potential political fallout is extremely minor in comparison. The grim, yet in all probability accurate, reality is that confronting the prospect of spending numerous decades incarcerated is an exceedingly tough pill to swallow, particularly for individuals who've enjoyed rather comfortable existences and anticipated its continuation. If, by any chance, we find SBF in a cell dead it's significantly more probable that this is the underlying cause.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    > The grim, yet in all probability accurate, reality is that confronting the prospect of spending numerous decades incarcerated is an exceedingly tough pill to swallow, particularly for individuals who've enjoyed rather comfortable existences and anticipated its continuation. Yep, even with their omertà vows, that's what finally got the New York mob to start turning on each other. Nobody, even those street-hardened guys, wanted to spend decades or the rest of his life in prison, so they started cooperating with prosecutors.
  - selflesssieve 3y ago
    Perhaps you hadn’t heard he was the second biggest donor for the 2022 elections. Might be spicy. “Bankman-Fried contributed more than $70 million to election campaigns in less than 18 months, placing him among the nation’s top political donors. He personally gave at least $40 million to politicians and political action committees ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, mostly to Democrats and liberal-leaning groups, making him the second overall top donor to Democrats, only behind George Soros, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.” https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donations/ https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...
arrowsmith 3y ago
I'm so behind on this story. I've never paid that much attention to it and there are many details I don't fully understand, but I want to catch up. Can someone give me a link to a single, concise article that explains this whole thing from the beginning?
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  "Billionaire fraudster got caught when his scheme collapsed" That about sums it up.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    So is this a specific scheme or "all crypto is a scheme" sort of deal?
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Yes, although I doubt he was ever a billionaire.
throw0101b 3y ago
> It's insane he could have cashed out as a billionaire and […] I think some people just want/enjoy/need to play the game regardless of what the score is.
Ajay-p 3y ago
For some men having a billion dollars is not enough.
Melting_Harps 3y ago
> I reckoned he'd escape some how being let off on some technicality of some prosecutor not following due diligence. Or [0]... This is peak HN, as is the bulk of the top post, you guys are entirely clueless and refuse to see anything that detracts from your own insular narrative(s). Seriously, if you think SBF was a conman, which he is, thenyou should really take a dose of reality and see what pillars SV and big tech as a whole is built on. it really is no differnt than that of Mega corps, Wall Street and Banks. He and his ex-gf worked at Jane Street, and are part of a SV elite in-class, they (but specifically SBF) were already living the high-life before they even knew what Cryptocurrencies were. That was probably never thier goal, they probably sought relevance in a World that was curated and manicured for them because of what class they belong to; only to find out that this space will eat you up and ridicule you to no end if you suck at it mercilessly: I speak from experience as a founder in this space. And to be honest, these two are worse than RazzleKhan and her bf (look it up) as they take the cake at sheer incompetence. Sidenote: I'm glad it was downvoted as I know it struck a nerve and serve dit's intended purpose; but I'm also really starting to feel I am becoming a sort Tech-Diogenes around here, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad seeing as how I know how is fate ended. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37128392#37134085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37128392#37134085
- jacquesm 3y ago
  At least he held had his integrity in one piece. That should count for something. What bugs me is why people would trust all these absolute nobodies with media coverage that makes you immediately question their sanity with their money. It's like picking any random junkie off the pill-bridge in Amsterdam and asking them to hold on to your cash for a while.

by s_dev 3y ago

febed 3y ago

If you watch some of his interviews after the news of the scam broke out, he was incriminating himself every time he opened his mouth. Almost as if he thought laws are just for plebs.

jacquesm 3y ago

The race isn't run yet.

resolutebat 3y ago
SBF is going to be nailed to the cross as an warning to others. The case is a slam dunk, there are mountains of evidence, plenty of eager witnesses and prosecutors who would love to add his scalp to their collection. There's no way he's getting off on a technicality.
- stephen_g 3y ago
  Yeah, and as much as he gave in political donations to all sorts of politicians in the past, since it looks like he won't be able to give any more in the future they have no reason for loyalty to try and influence anything behind the scenes.
  - shabda 3y ago
    I remember this quote here, “Do not count on the gratitude of deeds done for people in the past, you must make them grateful for things you will do for them in the future.” - Mario Puzo, Omerta.
    - barelyauser 3y ago
      In the book 48 Laws of Power from Robert Greene, Law 13 addresses this. If you held them by past deeds people will feel that they owe you something and nobody wants to owe anything to anyone. It is better instead to show them what they have to gain from now on.
      - red-iron-pine 3y ago
        that book is banned in prisons. which means SBF won't be able to read it

tjpnz 3y ago

If he was bright, perhaps? But that's not SBF.

londons_explore 3y ago

> could have cashed out as a billionaire I doubt there was any time in his career where all the accounts were fully legit and he could have cashed out. There would always have been some investors who hadn't got the returns they expected and would have gone digging.

Baader-Meinhof 3y ago
Hindsight is always 20/20 but as FTX was growing and Alameda was losing money, he could have shut down Alameda before it went negative. Then, he could've focused solely on FTX, which was apparently worth 10 of billions.
- Andrex 3y ago
  Like most of the financial world, the whole thing was a confidence game. Shutting down Alameda would have destroyed the illusion and the chips would have begun to fall shortly after, IMHO.
- stephen_g 3y ago
  Was it not as much 'worth tens of billions' as 'held tens of billions of customer funds' though?
  - nikanj 3y ago
    In crypto, those two seem to mean the same thing. Three yards of ironclad terms of service inform customers that the deposited funds are fully and permanently the exchange's funny money
    - kayamon 3y ago
      You say “in crypto” yet Bitcoin was invented to solve the problem you describe.
      - nikanj 3y ago

fugdfjxd 3y ago

Think of what he did to his parents too… Two bright Stanford professors/lawyers now with black marks on their careers. Silver lining is they surely have enough tucked and hidden away to live very comfortable once this blows over. Albeit in disgrace.

martin8412 3y ago
The dad was involved
thegreenswede 3y ago
The parents helped him. No one should feel bad for them. Like at all.

thaumasiotes 3y ago

> I'd also like to put my hand up and say I was one of those who was cynical that he'd end up in prison so glad that seems to be happening. If you read the article, all it says it that he's going to jail for the completely legal act of publishing correspondence that was sent to him. He hasn't been sentenced or convicted or anything. The judge just doesn't like him. Theoretically, you deny bail to people who are flight risks.

throwanem 3y ago
> the completely legal act of publishing correspondence that was sent to him ...from the private diaries of his ex-girlfriend and former business partner who is now testifying against him, making this the latest in a long series of failed attempts at witness tampering, a federal crime in its own right. It's also what has turned out to be the last straw with a judge who has up to this point been astonishingly tolerant with all the other ways Bankman-Fried has tried to screw around with the remarkably lenient terms of his former bail agreement.
arrowsmith 3y ago
> [The article says] he's going to jail for the completely legal act of publishing correspondence that was sent to him … "in order to intimidate a witness in the case".
darrenf 3y ago
> the completely legal act of publishing correspondence that was sent to him Clearly the judge didn't consider it "completely legal", presumably based on 18 U.S.C. § 1512[0] which says the following may result in a fine or imprisonment (edited for brevity): (b) Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to— (1) influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding; (2) cause or induce any person to— (A) withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding; ... (d) Whoever intentionally harasses another person and thereby hinders, delays, prevents, or dissuades any person from— (1) attending or testifying in an official proceeding; [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512

nullc 3y ago

> It's insane he could have cashed out as a billionaire hah no. The billionaire claim was bull used to promote himself and his businesses. I wouldn't be surprised if a detailed accounting showed that he has never had a positive liquidation value for FTX and Alameda at any point in time. It's a common problem people have in reasoning about fraudsters-- there is a tendency to only peel back one layer of fraud and get caught because the fraud continues all the way down. :)

nullc 3y ago
(okay never positive at any time might be a little too far, I wouldn't be shocked if it was a few millions in the black at some point or another-- but billions? I would be shocked unless you used obviously fraudulent accounting like valuing illiquid assets at the last trade price)
Melting_Harps 3y ago
> hah no. The billionaire claim was bull used to promote himself and his businesses. Granted, but as we have seen with these exit scams you don't need to be operating a cash or crypto positive business in order to run off with people's funds. All of these leaks and loans etc... were likely him siphoning funds if/when he was eventually caught. I still think it takes a certain kind of crook to setup shop in the Bahamas, purchase an immensely ostentatious home, make your sexual proclivities known to the World while splashing money around to make politicians make favourable legislation for your crooked business, stream yourself playing video games while doing pitches to VCs and getting them, all while talking about effective altruism and guaranteed yield and none of that has to do with being business savvy and everything to do with be a grifter. He is like Razzlekhan's bf, he had a golden ticket with billions in BTC and could have just woke up and left to Russia or Belarus (and eventually Turkey where all the Oligarchs are now buying up sea-side Villas given the distressed Lira) where he could have even been chummy with Putin given how he evaded the US intelligence community: instead the two were out buying Playstations with walmart gift cards and making shitty rap videos on youtube and got pinched when they left a copy of the private keys on a cloud server!
- nullc 3y ago

gadders 3y ago

I hope they all go to jail, though, and the ones that were first to to turn don't escape jail.

tenpies 3y ago

> I reckoned he'd escape some how being let off on some technicality of some prosecutor not following due diligence. Call me cynical and conspiratorial, but I expect that the camera glitches are being set up as we speak. The sleepy guards being scheduled. The one photo of "his body" being generated. On the bright side, at least SBF isn't tall enough to simply stand up if he were to "kill himself" in his cell by hanging. What gives me optimism is that if this is done, we can at least have some visibility into his accounts.

BoxFour 3y ago
Alright, you're cynical and conspiratorial. Even assuming it's true that Epstein didn't take his own life, SBF holds nowhere near the level of significance to justify such actions. The matters he's been associated with pale in comparison to Epstein and the potential political fallout is extremely minor in comparison. The grim, yet in all probability accurate, reality is that confronting the prospect of spending numerous decades incarcerated is an exceedingly tough pill to swallow, particularly for individuals who've enjoyed rather comfortable existences and anticipated its continuation. If, by any chance, we find SBF in a cell dead it's significantly more probable that this is the underlying cause.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  > The grim, yet in all probability accurate, reality is that confronting the prospect of spending numerous decades incarcerated is an exceedingly tough pill to swallow, particularly for individuals who've enjoyed rather comfortable existences and anticipated its continuation. Yep, even with their omertà vows, that's what finally got the New York mob to start turning on each other. Nobody, even those street-hardened guys, wanted to spend decades or the rest of his life in prison, so they started cooperating with prosecutors.
- selflesssieve 3y ago
  Perhaps you hadn’t heard he was the second biggest donor for the 2022 elections. Might be spicy. “Bankman-Fried contributed more than $70 million to election campaigns in less than 18 months, placing him among the nation’s top political donors. He personally gave at least $40 million to politicians and political action committees ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, mostly to Democrats and liberal-leaning groups, making him the second overall top donor to Democrats, only behind George Soros, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.” https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donations/ https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...

arrowsmith 3y ago

I'm so behind on this story. I've never paid that much attention to it and there are many details I don't fully understand, but I want to catch up. Can someone give me a link to a single, concise article that explains this whole thing from the beginning?

SoftTalker 3y ago
"Billionaire fraudster got caught when his scheme collapsed" That about sums it up.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  So is this a specific scheme or "all crypto is a scheme" sort of deal?
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Yes, although I doubt he was ever a billionaire.

throw0101b 3y ago

> It's insane he could have cashed out as a billionaire and […] I think some people just want/enjoy/need to play the game regardless of what the score is.

Ajay-p 3y ago

For some men having a billion dollars is not enough.

Melting_Harps 3y ago

> I reckoned he'd escape some how being let off on some technicality of some prosecutor not following due diligence. Or [0]... This is peak HN, as is the bulk of the top post, you guys are entirely clueless and refuse to see anything that detracts from your own insular narrative(s). Seriously, if you think SBF was a conman, which he is, thenyou should really take a dose of reality and see what pillars SV and big tech as a whole is built on. it really is no differnt than that of Mega corps, Wall Street and Banks. He and his ex-gf worked at Jane Street, and are part of a SV elite in-class, they (but specifically SBF) were already living the high-life before they even knew what Cryptocurrencies were. That was probably never thier goal, they probably sought relevance in a World that was curated and manicured for them because of what class they belong to; only to find out that this space will eat you up and ridicule you to no end if you suck at it mercilessly: I speak from experience as a founder in this space. And to be honest, these two are worse than RazzleKhan and her bf (look it up) as they take the cake at sheer incompetence. Sidenote: I'm glad it was downvoted as I know it struck a nerve and serve dit's intended purpose; but I'm also really starting to feel I am becoming a sort Tech-Diogenes around here, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad seeing as how I know how is fate ended. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37128392#37134085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37128392#37134085

jacquesm 3y ago
At least he held had his integrity in one piece. That should count for something. What bugs me is why people would trust all these absolute nobodies with media coverage that makes you immediately question their sanity with their money. It's like picking any random junkie off the pill-bridge in Amsterdam and asking them to hold on to your cash for a while.