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For anyone curious, Ken White has a good and entertaining article breaking down maximum sentences in print (here, 110 years) and what people actually serve. It'

For anyone curious, Ken White has a good and entertaining article breaking down maximum sentences in print (here, 110 years) and what people actually serve. It's worth a read: 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... A takeaway: "1. Maximum sentences have very little relation to actual sentences in federal law. When the government quotes the maximum sentence, they are trying to scare you. When the press quotes it, they are uninformed or lazy. Exercise skepticism. Resist emotional appeals to "how is this sentence reasonable when murderers get less?"

JackFr 3y ago
Yeah, I’ve heard that a bunch - about the press being uninformed or lazy. I’d offer that they are neither, but if they are restricting themselves to reporting facts and not prognostications and opinions, the statutory maximum is a reasonable thing to report.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I think this is likely the case. It's the only number they could have that doesn't involve a judgement call. Also, usually when I see things like that reported, they mention that most people don't get the maximum.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  A statement like "but it is often true that statutory maximums far exceed actual sentences" wouldn't be a prediction nor an opinion. This isn't the place to be sticking up for journalism. They really are both uninformed and lazy.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    It is almost logical. They would not be maximums but prescribed sentences if they always use the max.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      If I have to read a news article as if its some weasel-worded lawyerspeak contract (between the lines), then they're no longer in the business of informing at all. My cognitive capacity, however incredibly large it is, still is finite. Wasting it on crap like this means I'll almost certainly miss something else. It's difficult to believe that this isn't deliberate, but I manage to ignore that impulse... incompetence is still more likely than malice. Hence, "lazy and uninformed" instead of "deceptive and propagandizing".
tptacek 3y ago
The opposite thing is going to happen in this case, and I'm sure you'll hear Ken on Serious Trouble saying the same thing next week (you can get Andrew McCarthy, another former AUSA, saying the same thing in the National Review today if you want that with a dash of anti-woke conservative racial politics). In basic economic crimes, sentences scale primarily with dollar losses, and FTX lost billions. He's going to do something resembling the statutory max, and then only if statutory limits take life off the table. The whale sushi article is excellent and is a good intuition for most white collar crimes. You run into the big exception in these ultra-high-dollar cases like Theranos and FTX, because of the 2B1.1(b)(1) dollar loss chart.
- akerl_ 3y ago
  It's worth noting that the mechanism is still different. In this case, "the upper end of the range when you math out the sentencing guidelines" and "the amount you get if you take all the base charges and add them up and assume they're sequential" start to blend together because of the sheer scale. But it's not like when the scale gets big enough, the whale sushi hypothetical math starts becoming the real way we calculate sentences. It's just that the guidelines really do try to account for super villain levels of crime.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    That's true, and a good point.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > the upper end of the range when you math out the sentencing guidelines" and "the amount you get if you take all the base charges and add them up and assume they're sequential" start to blend together because of the sheer scale. No, it doesn't “start to blend together”. The amount you get when you take all the base charges, assign then the maximum sentence, and have them run consecutively isn’t something that the upper end of the guidelines range coincidentally blends into despite not actually directly applying, its the actual legal limit, and for that reason is directly applied (by assigning the statutory maximum to each offense and having them run consecutively) in the guidelines as the limit case. (It also, while the guidelines are not mandatory and judges may depart above or below them, is the upper limit—and, where it exists, the statutory minimum the lower limit—for sentences that depart from the guidelines.) > But it's not like when the scale gets big enough, the whale sushi hypothetical math starts becoming the real way we calculate sentences. Yes, it is. If, after all the other pieces of the guidelines calculation are done and all the offenses that aren’t required to be sentenced separately at their own statutory amounts are grouped in the way that they would run concurrently were the guidelines sentence short enough, the guidelines specify that you look at the total punishment, if it fits in the legal maximum for the offense with the longest limit, you do that and run everything else concurrently, if not, you run enough consecutively, if possible, yo reach the total possible, until you run everything consecutively at its max legal sentence and stop. “Whale sushi” is exactly the mechanism applied by the guidelines in the limit case, not something that the upper end case under the guidelines happens to approximate coincidentally. > It's just that the guidelines really do try to account for super villain levels of crime. No, its that the guidelines are, well, guidelines for calculating a sentence which is constrained on the lower end by any statutory minimums and on the upper end by thr statutory maximums for the individual offenses (and also, by statutory rules on which offenses must be sentenced separately and not concurrently with which other offenses), so each of those binding rules is expressly part of the guidelines sentence calculations.
harimau777 3y ago
In some ways I can understand white collar criminals being "more evil" than murderers. As I understand it, murderers are often acting out of desperation, poverty, etc. On the other hand, it seems like a lot of white collar criminals who have everything but feel entitled to take from people who already have less than them. Although clearly the murderers did the more heinous crime. Not trying to say that this is something I'd build a moral or legal system around. Just that emotionally I can kind of see it.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  White collar criminals can also ruin multiple lives. Victims of such fraud have even been driven to suicide before. In those cases, at least, I find it hard to say it isn't roughly approximate to murder.
  - Mistletoe 3y ago
    If I had to guess, the number of suicides from this is much more than one.
- itronitron 3y ago
  I like to think that I want to know what SBF's circle of friends and family had to think about this fraud, as it was going on, but I'm probably better off not knowing.
pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
> Responsibility is not a zero-sum game. So it's not the case that when one person is responsible, someone else has to be irresponsible to balance things out?
TrackerFF 3y ago
But in some cases, especially novel cases where they want to set an example, they can/will actually throw the book at you. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they do. To deter potential future-SBFs. I mean, the whole cryptocurrency space is filled to the brim with scammers, many will never face anything at all. But when you've nailed the biggest of them all, might as well set an example. EDIT: I do not believe he will serve 110, or 50, or 20 years. But hopefully they will dole out the maximum of a realistic sentencing. A couple of year behind the bars would be a complete joke. From all I've seen, I have zero faith that SBF will be "rehabilitated" by a year or two in prison.
_giorgio_ 3y ago
so how much will he get?

JackFr 3y ago

Yeah, I’ve heard that a bunch - about the press being uninformed or lazy. I’d offer that they are neither, but if they are restricting themselves to reporting facts and not prognostications and opinions, the statutory maximum is a reasonable thing to report.

JohnFen 3y ago
I think this is likely the case. It's the only number they could have that doesn't involve a judgement call. Also, usually when I see things like that reported, they mention that most people don't get the maximum.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
A statement like "but it is often true that statutory maximums far exceed actual sentences" wouldn't be a prediction nor an opinion. This isn't the place to be sticking up for journalism. They really are both uninformed and lazy.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  It is almost logical. They would not be maximums but prescribed sentences if they always use the max.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    If I have to read a news article as if its some weasel-worded lawyerspeak contract (between the lines), then they're no longer in the business of informing at all. My cognitive capacity, however incredibly large it is, still is finite. Wasting it on crap like this means I'll almost certainly miss something else. It's difficult to believe that this isn't deliberate, but I manage to ignore that impulse... incompetence is still more likely than malice. Hence, "lazy and uninformed" instead of "deceptive and propagandizing".

tptacek 3y ago

The opposite thing is going to happen in this case, and I'm sure you'll hear Ken on Serious Trouble saying the same thing next week (you can get Andrew McCarthy, another former AUSA, saying the same thing in the National Review today if you want that with a dash of anti-woke conservative racial politics). In basic economic crimes, sentences scale primarily with dollar losses, and FTX lost billions. He's going to do something resembling the statutory max, and then only if statutory limits take life off the table. The whale sushi article is excellent and is a good intuition for most white collar crimes. You run into the big exception in these ultra-high-dollar cases like Theranos and FTX, because of the 2B1.1(b)(1) dollar loss chart.

akerl_ 3y ago
It's worth noting that the mechanism is still different. In this case, "the upper end of the range when you math out the sentencing guidelines" and "the amount you get if you take all the base charges and add them up and assume they're sequential" start to blend together because of the sheer scale. But it's not like when the scale gets big enough, the whale sushi hypothetical math starts becoming the real way we calculate sentences. It's just that the guidelines really do try to account for super villain levels of crime.
- tptacek 3y ago
  That's true, and a good point.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > the upper end of the range when you math out the sentencing guidelines" and "the amount you get if you take all the base charges and add them up and assume they're sequential" start to blend together because of the sheer scale. No, it doesn't “start to blend together”. The amount you get when you take all the base charges, assign then the maximum sentence, and have them run consecutively isn’t something that the upper end of the guidelines range coincidentally blends into despite not actually directly applying, its the actual legal limit, and for that reason is directly applied (by assigning the statutory maximum to each offense and having them run consecutively) in the guidelines as the limit case. (It also, while the guidelines are not mandatory and judges may depart above or below them, is the upper limit—and, where it exists, the statutory minimum the lower limit—for sentences that depart from the guidelines.) > But it's not like when the scale gets big enough, the whale sushi hypothetical math starts becoming the real way we calculate sentences. Yes, it is. If, after all the other pieces of the guidelines calculation are done and all the offenses that aren’t required to be sentenced separately at their own statutory amounts are grouped in the way that they would run concurrently were the guidelines sentence short enough, the guidelines specify that you look at the total punishment, if it fits in the legal maximum for the offense with the longest limit, you do that and run everything else concurrently, if not, you run enough consecutively, if possible, yo reach the total possible, until you run everything consecutively at its max legal sentence and stop. “Whale sushi” is exactly the mechanism applied by the guidelines in the limit case, not something that the upper end case under the guidelines happens to approximate coincidentally. > It's just that the guidelines really do try to account for super villain levels of crime. No, its that the guidelines are, well, guidelines for calculating a sentence which is constrained on the lower end by any statutory minimums and on the upper end by thr statutory maximums for the individual offenses (and also, by statutory rules on which offenses must be sentenced separately and not concurrently with which other offenses), so each of those binding rules is expressly part of the guidelines sentence calculations.

harimau777 3y ago

In some ways I can understand white collar criminals being "more evil" than murderers. As I understand it, murderers are often acting out of desperation, poverty, etc. On the other hand, it seems like a lot of white collar criminals who have everything but feel entitled to take from people who already have less than them. Although clearly the murderers did the more heinous crime. Not trying to say that this is something I'd build a moral or legal system around. Just that emotionally I can kind of see it.

JohnFen 3y ago
White collar criminals can also ruin multiple lives. Victims of such fraud have even been driven to suicide before. In those cases, at least, I find it hard to say it isn't roughly approximate to murder.
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  If I had to guess, the number of suicides from this is much more than one.
itronitron 3y ago
I like to think that I want to know what SBF's circle of friends and family had to think about this fraud, as it was going on, but I'm probably better off not knowing.

pwdisswordfishc 3y ago

> Responsibility is not a zero-sum game. So it's not the case that when one person is responsible, someone else has to be irresponsible to balance things out?

TrackerFF 3y ago

But in some cases, especially novel cases where they want to set an example, they can/will actually throw the book at you. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they do. To deter potential future-SBFs. I mean, the whole cryptocurrency space is filled to the brim with scammers, many will never face anything at all. But when you've nailed the biggest of them all, might as well set an example. EDIT: I do not believe he will serve 110, or 50, or 20 years. But hopefully they will dole out the maximum of a realistic sentencing. A couple of year behind the bars would be a complete joke. From all I've seen, I have zero faith that SBF will be "rehabilitated" by a year or two in prison.

_giorgio_ 3y ago

so how much will he get?