4 ms·
If at the end of the story, everybody affected is made whole, could it be argued that his sentence should be reduced?
by moralestapia 3y ago
If at the end of the story, everybody affected is made whole, could it be argued that his sentence should be reduced?
- underseacables 3y agoIf someone robs your house and steals your things, The police arrest the burglar and get your stuff back, does that mean the burglar should go free or get a reduced sentence? NO. THE ANSWER IS NO.
- moralestapia 3y agoThat's a different crime, so your reasoning does not apply. It my understanding (I could be wrong) that on financial crimes it does make a difference if you make the victims whole or not. No idea if it also applies somehow after the ruling, hence why I asked on this forum for intelligent discourse. Sorry if that bothers you, though.
- jamil7 3y agoI think the original poster was aware that it’s a different crime and was attempting to simplify the concept so you were able to grasp it a little easier.
- moralestapia 3y agoI appreciate the generosity, but I feel it needs to be simplified even more so you and GP are able to grasp it as well. Breaking and entering is a crime on its own, while most financial crimes are non-violent by nature; a whole different set of rules apply. Burglary is also different from fraud. Read about it, I can recommend a dictionary.
- phone8675309 3y agoThat's why B&E is charged differently depending on if there were occupants in the house or not. If not, the person doing the B&E gets a lighter sentence, but they still get punished.
- lesuorac 3y agoThey're not really being made whole. > Depending on the type of claim they hold in the case, some creditors could recover as much as 142% of what they are owed. The vast majority of customers, however, will likely get 118% of what they had on the FTX platform the day the company entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy. If you had 2 bitcoins worth say 16k each in FTX; FTX is able to give you back 32k which is the value of your bitcoin at the time. (~Nov '22). But it's not giving you back 2 bitcoins (120k; presently). Same with if you had Solana which was $13 (~Nov '22) but is now $148.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoSure, I agree they are not made whole, but magnitude of financial damage is absolutely a factor in sentencing.
- Marsymars 3y agoWhat's the difference between stealing $100 in cash versus stealing $100 from someone's digital account?
- throw_fincrim 3y agoUsing a throwaway for obvious reasons... As someone who has been convicted of a financial crime (theft of funds from an association account due in part to a gambling addiction). The key word in your statement is "YOU". My sentence/deal involved restitution from my own funds. If I'd taken some of the money I took and put it into crypto, that would be -used- to make my victims whole, but it wouldn't be considered me making recompense, because the money I put into crypto would have been ill-gotten, and as such any gains were not mine to give. That very much made a difference to the discussions between my attorney and the prosecutor.
- moralestapia 3y agoWhoa, thanks a lot for coming here, I do appreciate your input on this.
- Edmond 3y agoNot sure about the legal details of his case but this could indeed be good for any appeals he may file. While we like to think of the law and its application as a dispassionate process that only looks at the facts, the sense that someone has been harmed plays a big role in the process and jury decisions. This development weakens any arguments around harm to others, it could also strengthen arguments in favor of incompetence as opposed to malfeasance when it comes to explaining what actually happened to investor money.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- s1artibartfast 3y agoIt could help. However, it is important to recognize the opportunity costs. Simply refunding the cash paid, or a snapshot price can be much less than what the asset is currently worth.
- Staple_Diet 3y agoYes, hence why bank robbers get let go once the police recover the money...
- currymj 3y agothe CEO of the bankruptcy estate sent a letter to the court arguing against this. people are "made whole" in that they will receive the dollar value of the assets on the day of the bankruptcy, but due to rise in cryptocurrency prices since then, a lot of them are still taking a big loss compared to the world without any fraud.
- JohnFen 3y agoAnything could be argued, but I'd hope that the argument would fail in court.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoDepends on why they're made whole. If it turns out that he didn't steal so much as it seemed at trial, that could matter. But as the article details, it seems to be more about two exogenous things: * Some FTX investments, in particular Anthropic, have done very well over the past 2 years. * Due to the mechanics of bankruptcy law, FTX's cryptocurrency liabilities were effectively converted to dollar liabilities when they filed, meaning that all crypto price increases since then are free money for the asset recovery. (You could reasonably frame this as bankruptcy victims not really being made whole, since their claims are substantially less than what FTX would owe them if it were still running, although there's good reasons it works this way.)
- FireBeyond 3y agoWhy? It's not due to his action that they're able to be made whole. That's the market. SBF got lucky with that. If crypto crashed, then...