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If someone isn't a violent threat to society, there isn't much social benefit to keeping folks locked up longer then 20-ish years. 20-25 (assuming he gets the 1
by PokedBear 3y ago
If someone isn't a violent threat to society, there isn't much social benefit to keeping folks locked up longer then 20-ish years. 20-25 (assuming he gets the 15% off for good behavior the feds allow) is plenty.
- shiftpgdn 3y agoI think ruining thousands of lives through fraud without remorse constitutes a threat to society. He should never see the light of day again.
- esotericimpl 3y ago[dead]
- swyx 3y agonot to be too unsympathetic but if those people he defrauded (which yes is a very bad thing) were all crypto degens gambling on things they knew they shouldnt be gambling on, does that change the calculus at all
- COGlory 3y agoNo
- floor2 3y agoWhat lives did he ruin? The USA has an incredibly robust, tightly monitored and regulated financial market. The SEC, FDIC and associated regulators and auditors carefully control bank reserves, prosecute insider trading, prevent and insure against fraud. Some people decided to opt-out of that system and send their money to an unregulated entity in the Bahamas to buy imaginary money without government oversight. Honestly the government shouldn't have intervened here at all. The people who lost money should have been laughed at and told that's why you put your money in the regulated market. If you intentionally try to avoid taxes, anti-money laundering regulations, audits and securities law by buying crypto overseas, then taxpayer resources don't go bail you out.
- shiftpgdn 3y agoIf you ask to borrow $500 and I give it to you, and you run off with the money with no intent to ever pay me back, did you commit fraud? Or was I just a rube who should have known better? You seem to wish to live in a zero trust world model where everyone is out to scam everyone at all times and "caveat emptor" if you do get scammed. We should do our best as a society to not turn into that.
- robin_reala 3y agoCaveat emptor. Emptor is “buyer”, caveat “beware”.
- schiem 3y agoI'm reading their comment as the opposite - there are mechanisms for a high trust society in place (which is good), but if you go out of your way to opt out of it then you're on your own.
- mrguyorama 3y agoThe difference is there is no such thing as "unregulated" in the concept of fraud. Doing fraud is illegal. Even if FTX had done all the paperwork to be compliant, it would still be illegal fraud. Same as there's no place where murder is allowed. You can't "opt out" of parts of society. It's not even "take it or leave it", society is "take it or get out of our reach"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zone411 3y agoAll creditors are expected to be repaid in full, though based on Nov 2022 crypto prices.
- browningstreet 3y agoThis keeps getting repeated... does anyone beside the defense attorney support this statement? The victim impact testimony of ruined lives doesn't align with it.
- scrlk 3y agoFTX claims are being sold for 96 cents on the dollar, so there's high expectation that creditors will be paid in full.
- denimnerd42 3y agoThere's the loss of liquidity for years and loss of opportunity cost. It's not victimless by far.
- jnwatson 3y agoThe judge provided a good counterargument: if a thief burgles a bank, goes to Vegas and doubles his money and gives the original amount back to the bank, does that deserve punishment?
- solumunus 3y agoYou're not repaid in full unless all your assets are returned, which would be of significantly higher value now than when they were stolen.
- rootusrootus 3y agoExactly this. If you gave FTX bitcoin, the only way to be repaid is in bitcoin. You did not give them dollars.
- HWR_14 3y agoSo he stole stuff in 2022 at a low point, and now his victims are going to be paid 30% the cost of what it would take to rebuy it? That's "repaid in full" in your mind? Losing 70% of their BTC?
- arrowsmith 3y ago> there isn't much social benefit to keeping folks locked up Deterrent
- yokem55 3y agoIf 20+ years isn't enough of a deterrent, I seriously doubt even more would be.
- arrowsmith 3y agoI didn't say he should get more. I think 25 years is totally reasonable.
- xvector 3y agoI can't think of any cases where someone would be deterred by 25 years in prison, but not, say, 8 years in prison.
- digital_sawzall 3y agoI would easily go to jail for 8 years for $50+ million. 25 years would not be worth it to me for any amount. I am from El Paso, which is on the border with Mexico and grew up with many kids whose parents were smugglers and cartel affiliated. I know several parents who went to jail for ~10 years while were were in elementary school, the kids never wanted for anything, and then when the parents got out and started capital intensive business. One parent did 12 years and got out to start a a series of high end mexican restaurants, one started a steakhouse, one bought a small hotel, one started a commercial construction company. It's all part of the game, just how startup founders grind for years for the money.
- yau8edq12i 3y agoHonestly? I sincerely doubt you, or anyone would actually, really, for realsies, go to prison for eight years for $50M. Anyone would beg to be released after a few weeks.
- koolba 3y agoThere had to be some scale or additive nature though. If an otherwise peaceful person is committing fraud on a scale 1000 times larger than the next guy, wouldn’t it at least scale up logarithmically?
- skulk 3y agoActually, financial fraud sentencing guidelines add an extra number of years to the sentence that grows by the log of the money stolen: https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/guidelines-manual/2015/2B1.1.pdf https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/guidelines-manu...
- koolba 3y agoWow that’s really fascinating!
- nkozyra 3y agoI have to ask: does 20 years provide more social benefit than 10? 5? Surely there's diminishing returns on imprisonment. As a deterrent and as a punitive, I get it, but even life sentences don't seem to deter crimes that can yield those punishments.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoWhat do you believe Sam would do if granted a shorter sentence, assuming they believe they've done nothing wrong? Who should carry the burden of re-offense without remorse? People make mistakes, to err is human, and forgiveness should be provided to those with the capacity to change (ie harm less). Compassion is important. But if you don't believe you've done anything wrong, can we not project future potential outcomes? Prison duration is a risk assessment of harm reduction. EDIT: Prison should still be about rehabilitation and treating humans humanely, to be clear.
- nkozyra 3y ago> What do you believe Sam would do if granted a shorter sentence, assuming they believe they've done nothing wrong? Ostensibly the same thing as after a 22 year sentence, just later.
- sangnoir 3y agoThe difference is society gets 12 additional years of safety which it wouldn't get otherwise. Ostensibly.
- nkozyra 3y ago> The difference is society gets 12 additional years of safety which it wouldn't get otherwise. Naturally, by this logic I have to ask: why not 32 years? 52? 102? Aren't we doing society a disservice by ever allowing criminals to leave prison? > Ostensibly I chose this word carefully, because I think a lot of our preconceived notions on criminal behavior have not been validated by the real world, including the deterrent effects of long-term imprisonments.
- tithe 3y agoIn this case, could he be considered a violent economic threat to society? His defense did try to argue that he was not a "ruthless financial serial killer".
- vitiral 3y agoLying is a form of violence and so is stealing. Not physical violence mind you, but violence nonetheless.
- stonogo 3y ago"Violence" is physical. Without a physical component, there is no violence. It's the entire point of the word.
- vitiral 3y agoSo screaming at someone is not violence? Definitions vary depending on context. I think of violence as a spectrum. Talking peacefully and negotiating is extremely low violence. Threats etc are more. All our war and atomics are about the limit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence?wprov=sfla1 > Some definitions are somewhat broader, such as the World Health Organization's definition of violence as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation." Violence IMO is anything which causes harm or can be used to force a condition.
- floor2 3y agoI was psychologically harmed reading this comment. Please do not post on HN again. To continue to do so is to do violence against me.
- vitiral 3y agoGlad we can find agreement, but sorry this is justified violence :D
- stonogo 3y agoNo, screaming at someone is not violence. The WHO definition you cite also restricts its definition to physical force. If screaming were violence, we'd have prisons full of sports fans after every football game. "Harming someone" is anything which causes harm. We have different words to describe different things. In this way, we can tell them apart when communicating with each other.
- PurpleRamen 3y agoIs a silent threat so much better? I mean, how high is the chance for him to repeat the same shit again after some years?
- pie420 3y agoThe main purpose of imprisoning white-collar crime is to act as a deterrent. If the upside for a financial crime is billions of dollars, and the potential risk is 25 years in prison, lots of people will be willing to take that risk, especially if 25 years actually means 17ish with good behavior. If the punishment is life in prison with no chance of parole, it'll act as more of a deterrent. Punishment lengths don't act as a deterrent to petty and violent crime, because the people commiting those crimes are not intelligent or are crimes of passion. Systematic fraud like this is slow, calculated and methodical.
- zug_zug 3y agoFeels low to me too. I think the distinction between "violent" is completely irrelevant. I think taking money from people does just as much harm as physically injuring them -- many people would rather have several bones broken than lose their pension. The benefit is the deterrent. It's especially important for wealthy people who we may wonder if they greased wheels behind the scenes. If you want somebody to cry about, cry about a man doing a life sentence for marijuana possession, not sbf. [1] 1 - https://eji.org/news/life-sentence-for-marijuana-possession-upheld-in-mississippi/ https://eji.org/news/life-sentence-for-marijuana-possession-...
- tshaddox 3y agoI think it's generally appropriate to group violence, coercion, and fraud together in these discussions.
- batch12 3y agoI think it's okay to consider both to be too long.
- dijit 3y agoFWIW people have a viceral reaction to extremes of violence that they can comprehend. When you consider that a 1% unemployment rate increase generally correlates to ~5,000 deaths then you can consider gross financial negligence to have an actual tangible human mortality cost. We just don't, because it's too indirect and your laywer would argue confounding factors until you are all dead; but don't be mistaken: financial crimes do cost lives.
- CraigJPerry 3y ago>> The benefit is the deterrent That’s utterly useless. There is simply no way any sociopath gives one iota about it.
- tsimionescu 3y agoOn the contrary, sociopaths typically only care about the deterrent.
- renegade-otter 3y ago"But financial cons are VICTIMLESS CRIMES! Give the guy a slap on the wrist and let him clean someone else's life's savings again! They may or may not kill themselves. VICTIMLESS!"
- hiddencost 3y agoEvery $10 million in financial crime should be punished as severely as murder. It is equivalent in terms of the harms caused.
- abvdasker 3y ago> If someone isn't a violent threat to society, there isn't much social benefit to keeping folks locked up longer then 20-ish years. This unfortunately widely held belief is measurably wrong and reeks of all kinds of biases. White collar criminals are one of the categories most likely to reoffend. Recidivism is much higher in white collar criminals precisely due to the leniency they often experience and the powerful financial motives associated with these types of crimes. For violent crime 38.9% of convicts were arrested for new crime within 3 years of release. White collar crime on the other hand had a 58.8% 3-year recidivism rate. White collar crime poses systemic risks which violent crime doesn't to the same extent. It undermines confidence in institutions by creating corruption and waste, enriching few at the expense of many. When it becomes normalized and widespread this kind of crime can destroy a country's economic and political systems. https://medcraveonline.com/FRCIJ/FRCIJ-02-00039.pdf https://medcraveonline.com/FRCIJ/FRCIJ-02-00039.pdf
- bombcar 3y ago> In analyzing recidivism of violent criminals, the criteria used were any prisoner with two or fewer prior arrests, who had been convicted of rape, homicide, assault, other sexual abuse, or other violent crime. > In examining at white collar criminals, the criteria used were any prisoner with two or fewer prior arrests, who had been convicted of larceny, theft, motor vehicle theft, or other property crime (which included types of fraud, embezzlement, etc.). I wonder if you removed the "two or fewer" if you'd get a different result.
- Teever 3y agoI very much agree with your last paragraph. I would go so far as to say that white collar crime is worse than violent crimes because it is the pernicious ability of white collar crime to perpetuate the environment that it flourishes that can lead to the social decay that you're talking about which ultimately causes violent crime. Another aspect of white collar crime vs violent crime is that there's no real legal concept of self defense against white collar criminals while in most places there's varying degrees of force you can use in response to a violent crime being committed against you or a stranger. With white collar crime a psychopath wearing a corporation can act with impunity and ruin your livelihood in all kinds of ways and there's nothing you can do about it.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoIt is ridiculous that finance owns such an outsized position in our economy, with the wizards of finance hailed for their key role in the efficient performance of the economy rewarded to the tune of megabillionaires... and people will say with a straight face that defrauding large numbers of people of their money might not have numerous health / fatal consequences: anxiety, stress, divorce, loss of benefits, working longer past retirement. It's like saying Mafia bosses or Hitler or Stalin weren't violent and dangerous because they ordered the deaths of millions with a stroke of a pen.
- Vicinity9635 3y ago[dead]