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The best theory I've heard is he's banking on a hung jury. Only have to convince/persuade one person to get off and he's been able to weasel his way through lif

• danpalmer 3y ago
  What's the long game on banking on a hung jury? That would typically lead to a retrial, especially given the publicity and amount of money involved here – the prosecution aren't going to let him off from one hung jury. I feel like he'd need a game plan, either waiting for something additional his team can bring in, or seriously thinking that the practice run would result in a higher likelihood of a not guilty verdict. I don't think either of these is likely, and think the prosecution would likely do better out of the practice run.
  • dylan604 3y ago
    A hung jury does not automatically mean a retrial. The prosecutor has to re-evaluate the situation. If SBF could convince 1 person on this jury, what does the prosecution need to do to prevent that from happening again? Is the expense of a second trial worth trying to put a single non-violent person in jail?
    • bragr 3y ago
      They'd retry him. They retry non-famous people with less serious charges and worse cases. Plus there's no other way to get that scarlet letter off the prosecutor's record.
      • dylan604 3y ago
        Outside the circles that intersect with HN, how famous is SBF really? My non-tech friends have no clue who he is.
        • danpalmer 3y ago
          This is pretty huge around tech, finance, politics/political donations, VCs, and advertising. Between that and it being one of the biggest fraud cases ever seen, a retrial is inevitable.
        • rtkwe 3y ago
          He's been plastered across the news. Embezzling a hundred million dollars will get you some notoriety.
          • FireBeyond 3y ago
            It's much more than that. In one transaction alone: > Another $413 million had gone directly to Bankman-Fried himself, through his wholly-owned company Paper Bird.
            • rtkwe 3y ago
              I did a quick search and the first result was clipped saying 100 million but it was from a longer sentence that was about one instance. I thought it was billions but trusted the quick googling instead.
              • FireBeyond 3y ago
                I think it will end up being in that region. Certainly billions lost, but the open question is "how big a subset of that is the amount embezzled?"
                • rtkwe 3y ago
                  However much was shuttled out the back door between FTX and Alameda Research at least.
                • pcthrowaway 3y ago
                  Last I heard, prosecution and specialists handling the FTX assets had recovered most of the assets which were considered embezzled/lost. This article says $7.3 Billion have been recovered: https://www.reuters.com/technology/bankrupt-crypto-exchange-ftx-has-recovered-73-bln-assets-attorney-2023-04-12/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/bankrupt-crypto-exchange-...
    • pb7 3y ago
      He might be “non-violent” but he harmed more people collectively than multiple violent people could. If I steal your entire wealth and your family ends up on the street, it doesn’t matter that I wasn’t violent. Hope he gets what he deserves: a ton of prison time.
  • rtkwe 3y ago
    It depends a lot on the prosecutor and how well the trial went, they have to decide to take the trial up again and after the first swing they've lost a significant portion of their advantage because the defense has had a preview of the evidence and tactics that's going to be used against them.
  • erehweb 3y ago
    Reminiscent of this joke (see e.g. http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/holybook/quotes/Horse.html http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/holybook/quotes/Horse.html) Once upon a time a man was accused of a crime. [..] The king of that land sentenced the man to death, and he pleaded for his life, offering to teach the king's horse to talk if he would be spared. The king agreed; if the accused could teach the horse to talk in two years, he would be pardoned. Otherwise, the original sentence would be carried out. Sometime after that, the man's best friend asked him why he made a promise he couldn't keep, and why he was acting so cheerful about the whole business. The would-be horse teacher said, "A lot can happen in two years. The king could die. I could die. Or the horse could talk."
    • mananaysiempre 3y ago
      That joke seems to be unbelievably old; I’ve heard a version with Nasreddin Hodja and a donkey (and the donkey is used almost universally when it’s told in Russian, despite donkeys not exactly being common in most of the country), but I wouldn’t bet on even that being the first iteration. (Neither do I have a good source for the authenticity of the Nasreddin version, unfortunately.)
  • eli 3y ago
    The long game is prison. A hung jury buys you, I dunno, another year of freedom/jail instead of prison.
    • rtkwe 3y ago
      Acquittal rates rise in cases retried after hung juries, the prosecution has already revealed most of their evidence and strategy in the initial trial so the defense can more effectively defend against it in the case of a retrial. Some prosecutors just drop the case instead of retrying because of this (though for high profile cases like SBF they're more likely to continue pursuing it).
      • eli 3y ago
        You really think that, in this case specifically, knowing the prosecution's case would make a difference?
        • rtkwe 3y ago
          Personally probably not but I'm not the one making the decisions, SBF is and he's been able to guile his way through life quite successfully so I don't have much trouble believing he believes he can get out of this.
  • denton-scratch 3y ago
    > I feel like he'd need a game plan Perhaps he's planning to tamper with the jury. Perhaps he thinks he can bribe jurors; I imagine he still has access to plenty of moolah, and he certainly has some powerful friends.