Over and under on him trying to claim the other two who already plead guilty are the ones who were really behind it all and he had no part in the fraud at all?

I bet in a year he will be fined a few hundred grand and told not to do it again.

The guy running everything says he was "clueless"... LMFAO!

Idk he did the biggest crime possible in the us.

He stole from the rich.

Eh... he also donated a lot of money to politicians.

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Martin Shrkeli or whatever his name is has a YouTube video up going over sam's charges and using the fraud sheet that determines how much time you will get. He said it's the exact same one they gave him when he was convicted. If this guy is found guilty I dont think it's possible he will get less than 25 years just based on the amount of money that was stolen. Not even considering the other charges.

We will see but I think crypto has been kept in a legal grey area on purpose.

Despite the state of our justice system, I think you would lose that bet. Being clueless about the whole thing has been his defense from the start, and that has historically been a winning defense for fraudsters everywhere, but a key component of the success of that defense that is that the defendant not actually be a moron.

By all accounts, SBF hid his actions, and his criminal intent, very, very poorly. He may yet succeed in convincing the general public that he's not a bad guy. But as for convincing a judge or jury that this was all just a crazy mistake, no, I don't think I would bet on that.

He better not get Judge Whitey then

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I hope Im wrong but I think a big thing people are forgetting here is this is about crypto. Which I would argue has purposely been left to its own devices.

That's essentially his defense. In every interview he's done since the FTX collapse, he pushed all the blame onto Alameda Research and claiming it was a totally separate entity and he had no idea what was going on there. It doesn't hold up to any kind of scrutiny, but that's the story he's sticking to.

He doesn’t really have grounds to push for a favorable deal, his co-conspirators already snapped them up. At this point he just has to plead not-guilty and hope that he can somehow undermine the government’s case.

He won’t be able to, but that’s his tuft of grass on the cliff side, the last thing he can grasp

He burned some major investors and he has now zero connections to anyone rich and powerful with any political strings to pull. The government would love to make an example on how they don't let the "1%" get away with everything like how everyone knows they do.

He is the perfect scapegoat. The guy doesn't have a prayer.

If it was 5 million gone aha slap on wrist. 50 million? Poor oversight . 100 million? We got no bookwork or accounts audited here. 1 billion is a lot. Then we got FTX.... Sam is FallGuy.

Coincidentally SBF's parents were involved in this lobby effort.

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Also, didn't he confess to multiple felonies in multiple interviews with multiple outlets?

Then how is Shkreli free?

He certainly did, which was… different. I gather that he isn’t quite the towering genius he believes himself to be.

Especially since he has two parents who are law profs. Even my ass knows not to confess to crimes in public before even being charged.

Also, I wonder what his parents' liability is. He had a bunch of assets in their name.

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I wouldn’t even try to guess, but I’d hate to be in their shoes right now. I think if the money ultimately came from fraud then the disgorgement process will include the parents’ assets at the very least.

The big no no in the US

He served his time

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While I saw Skreli's video and it had decent info in it regarding what SBF may face in this journey of his, I would warn everyone to be cautious of anything this guy says...Even his opinions on this trial.

He hasn't been out of prison a year and is already being accused of being involved in a shady crypto rug pull. He's also trying to push some software that he claims will harness computing power to solve drug discovery problems. However, this software looks really shady and I wouldn't be surprised if it's not some other crypto scheme he has planned behind the scenes.

Anyway, just a friendly word of caution. Some of the biggest snakes in the world come off as smart and friendly. It doesn't make them good people or make what they have to say any more valuable than the next guy.

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He’d get life anyway if he pled guilty I’m guessing?

While I agree I wouldnt trust him with my money or his opinions on what to invest in I would say his opinion on this is more concrete imo. He pulled up the fraud charge sheet on his screen so you could see the point system and everything for yourself as he's talking about it.

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Regardless, His name is forever tainted and he will never work in the industry aga, nor find anyone to work with him. He's the guy that lost billions for everyone including rich people. And he wasn't even smart about it. Unlike people like belfort or madoff that had some semblance of what to do, it's already but that at no point did the company even know how much money they had at any given time.

Sams life is going to suck for him. He may be well off than 98/99% of americans, but this was the wunderkind, the guy on time magazine, the guy with a stadium built for him, celebrity endorsements, expensive vacations and taste, the envy of all people globally. Everybody at one point wished they could have been smart like him and his friends.

But that's all gone now, his friends ratted him out, his billions gone and his incompetency is on display. Nobody wishes to be him anymore.

Sam is going to never again see that view or that world again and spend the rest of his life wishing for it back and never getting it.

I mean I hope so but Im not sure I believe it.

There is an equally good chance he will get away with a good chunk of illicitly gained money, get a slap on the wrist and spend the rest of his life in luxury.

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I think we're both in agreement here. I just wanted to throw out that PSA because I've seen way too many posts talking about how great Skreli is and how he's a reformed man now that he's out of jail. I guess some people just gravitate to bad role models.

That's going to be real hard when his interview tour had him admit to all sorts of shit.

Yes and no. They had terms of service regarding using depositors funds. Financial regulations or not, that was theft, and they've already admitted to it, in addition to the corporate fraud.

SBF is in a lot of trouble, regulations are just an additional set of laws for an industry to adhere to, not the only laws.

Madoff got sent to prison.

Madoff also got the shit beat out of him in prison

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/madoff-beat-up-in-prison-report/1880747/

Even then, the madoff family fell to complete ruins after the exposure.

PLenty of people get away with a slap on the wrist and it could happen here. BUt at the scale this happened and him trying to get as many hands in as many pies as possible with evidence to show for it, I have my doubts he'll be getting an easy life.

And like I said in my post, it may be a life of luxury of how we think it to be, but he isn't ever going to have the bezos life of luxury that he got a taste of and never will again.

There's no way a plea deal would get you life right? Like what's the fucking point, unless execution is an option.

No. He’s looking at about 25 years if he goes to trial and loses, which at his age isn’t a life sentence, especially with good behavior and parole. A plea deal is by definition going to be less than that.

Pleading not guilty in the first hearing is common sense. In a couple of weeks the prosecutor will offer him a deal, and he’ll either change his plea or take his chances at trial. This is all very routine.

It is highly speculated that when FTX was going down and a bank run on the company seemed to be in it's infancy, they gave what money they still had to their most important/wealthy investors first, although SBF characterizes this as FTX having given back requested withdrawals on a "first come, first serve" basis.

They should be charged as well. College professors putting up 200 million bail. Lol They were in on it.

You can’t rip off people richer than you and walk away with a slap on the hand. Look at Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani.

You can however rip off the everyday man all you like.

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Well... confess? To felonies? He gave some details about what he did and didn't do, tried to distance himself from Alameda Research. He admitted that mistakes were made and that they didn't have good risk controls. But I wouldn't call anything that he said a confession.

Many of the charges he faces like fraud require intent, which means he said something that he knew was false or deliberately and intentionally misled someone. He certainly didn't say anything like that and this can be hard to prove.

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I think one of the core issues is that there were two companies, Alameda Research and FTX. SBF ran the first one for a while, then supposedly stepped down, his co-conspirators started to run it, and then he ran FTX.

Alameda had what sounds like unlimited access to FTX funds and used them to make investments, fund loans and shore up losses. This is the source of many of the serious charges.

SBF is clearly trying to distance himself from Alameda and will probably try to blame malfeasance on the co-conspirators that ran it. Meanwhile they have already pled guilty and said they did things that they knew were wrong and SBF told them to do it. So I'm guessing that will be one of the main focuses of the lawsuits, if not the only one.

Bernie Madoff pled guilty and was given 150 years.

Except, I believe there is evidence that he knew about the fiat account used for the entire fraud.

Sounds like future Presidential material.

Well, whether or not he knew about it or used it will definitely be asked.

For a fraud conviction though they would have to show intent, like he said that he did not know about it but then used it, or something like that. And it would have to affect customers or investors.

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One was enough!

> I gather that he isn’t quite the towering genius he believes himself to be.

Lot of that going around lately.

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Should we take a moment of silence for his defense team? Because they have one heck of a job ahead of them just to keep his prison sentence under 10 years.

Guess borrowing $250 million of others people’s money from another sister dummy company is considered “not guilty”.

Did you just make up a number lmao. He lost 16 billion which should easily be excess of 100 years in prison

r/wellthatsucks buddy.

Idk if you listened to all the Twitter spaces he did the weeks before his arrest... also deleting tweets etc

Talk about putting an image in my head with the grass on the cliff.

Sam is fucked, and crypto scammers need to stop their bullshit.

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Sbf had petitioned the court to not release the identity of who paid his bail lol

I don’t think it’ll be this weak of a verdict, however, my concern is we see something like 3 years in a minimum security prison and fined like 1MIL or something like that. I have a feeling it’s going to be an incredibly frustrating sentence and he’ll be back at it with some type of crypto or “online class” scam in no time

Yeah, but he's no longer able to donate to politicians. Politicians are kind of big on "What can you do for me?" types of exchanges. (Note: Good politicians are using this to score investment for their constituents, whereas bad politicians for themselves. Ugly politicians don't play this game and shit all over everything. Case in point: today's House of Representatives.)

So who are the two who shall not be named that bailed this sack of shit out?

I mean that's as easy as cut me some deals and I'll throw some money your way for reelection.

He has billions

Pretty sure that he's in trouble specifically for the fact he doesn't have billions.

I mean the problem is his users don't have their money. It's pretty clear he has some extreme wealth tucked away.

Thats not the appropriate use of over/under.

He seems like a guy who is a result of growing up very privileged and never having been told no.

You don't plead guilty at this point, even if you intend to plead guilty later. It is completely expected that he would plead not guilty. He can still negotiate a plead deal.

From what I can see, it really depends on what evidence they have that demonstrate his state of mind for intent to defraud investors and customers, especially when it comes to directing Caroline and Gary to commit the fraud they have already plead guilty to. It's not entirely out of the question that Caroline and Gary were working together and lying to Sam to hide their trading losses as a result of degen gambling. But I'm going to let the evidence tell us what happened.

Those poor rich people. He's going to burn for that! (Actually though)

Guess they didn't offer him a deal he wanted to accept.

Holy shit, I had already forgotten about this asshole. The last 3 years have been the longest decade of my life.

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I tend to agree. Much of what he said is too non-specific to call it a true confession. But I bet the prosecution will still try and sautee him in it because of how bad it sounds.

The markets/currencies may be unregulated, but fraud is fraud. You can't lie to someone about what you are doing with their money, Beanie Babies or crypto.

>He stole from the rich.

Did he though? Most crypto investors aren't rich. They're kids who are too young to remember Beanie Babies.

>PLenty of people get away with a slap on the wrist and it could happen here.

A lot of people believe this, but it isn't really true. People just don't recognize crimes when they see them or rather think that being rich or greedy is in and of itself a crime. It isn't.

Nah, they're fine. Everyone knows they're the band on the Titanic. Their worst case scenario is not getting paid and writing this off to advertising (but I bet SBF's parents would pay them).

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Oh my god that interview where he explained his business plan as;

“people will see all this money in the box, and more some will want to put money in the box”

So how is that not a scam?

“Maybe YOU see it as a scam…”

———

Or something like that. The dude straight called him out saying, you’re providing nothing to your investors. The growth of your investors investments is predicated on more investors investing more!! And him just saying I disagree was incredible. I made some wrong financial moves in my life, but never something like that

>but that’s his tuft of grass on the cliff side, the last thing he can grasp

That’s a cool sentence I’ve never heard lol.

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I was gonna tell them a story about how you, Sydney Shaw, grassed him up

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Apparently he wasn’t familiar with shut the fuck up friday.

SBF said he stepped down as CEO of Alameda two years ago and turned it over to the two people that are now his co-conspirators. I am sure this is his attempt to demonstrate distance between Alameda and FTX.

What are these "hundreds" of business entities? The press has mentioned 4 or 5.

I think the core issue is that the way that money was accounted for at FTX was a custom-written accounting system that they wrote, which didn't have nearly the necessary controls to keep track of different kinds of account or commingling of funds etc. Also it has been revealed that Alameda specifically had special treatment within the accounting system to have basically complete access to all assets in FTX which it used for all kinds of purposes.

But SBF will say that is Alameda's problem which he no longer runs. The co-conspirators will say that SBF orchestrated the whole thing. We'll see how that shakes out in court.

It'll all comes down to whether or not they can convince jurors that he got in over his head about stuff he didn't understand and things fell apart because his friends took advantage of that fact.

The prosecution needs to get the jury to understand crypto finance enough to understand what actions Sam took constituted intentional fraud, and also convince a jury that the people testifying against him aren't just trying to save their own asses via plea deals.

The defense just needs to say, "I don't understand this stuff, you don't understand this stuff, and he didn't understand this stuff. He thought he did, and that led to him making major mistakes in clearly risky areas of finance. The people saying otherwise have every reason to lie."

They don't even need to flip the jury, just make that seem likely enough to get a better deal from the prosecution.

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Man steals billions and still too cheap to get decent haircut.

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And “undermine the government” may very well be the outcome. Since some government officials are involved or connected to it.

The "I don't understand" defense is not a defense and will fall flat. Can you imagine if someone shot a person and then claimed that they didn't understand how to use a gun and so they accidentally killed a person and then proceeded to accidentally cover up the "accident"?

I think if they go down this route it will be a very quick guilty verdict. Stupidity is not a defense, but I agree with you that it's most likely their only option.

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You don't need to understand crypto to be able to follow what he did.

He created two companies; FTX was a ponzi scheme and Alemeda siphoned the money people invested in FTX into their own accounts. Then, eventually and like happens with all ponzi schemes, the house of cards fell apart.

It's not really any more complicated than that.

>You don't need to understand crypto to be able to follow what he did.

No, not if the prosecutors guide the jury and tell their story well.

The prosecution will argue their side and the defense will poke holes and argue alternative narratives. One of which will likely be comparable to what he's been claiming in interviews.

The defense doesn't need to confuse the jury on what happened so much as convince them Sam was confused and arrogant but not acting criminally.

>Can you imagine if someone shot a person and then claimed that they didn't understand how to use a gun and so they accidentally killed a person and then proceeded to accidentally cover up the "accident"?

First, it depends on what they're charged with. Because if they're being charged with murder, they can absolutely argue they didn't understand how to use a gun. Generally, when charged with murder they need to prove you intended to kill. If I fire a gun at you and just meant to scare you but happened to nail you between the eyes, then in many if not most states, it's not murder.

Depending on the charges "mens rea" can be the difference between jail for life and time served with a fine.

Look you don't have to convince me. I think he's a liar that committed fraud and will go to jail. I'm just telling you what his defense is. Whether or not it legally holds water is up for him and his lawyers to decide.

All of these people were probably cohabitating and sleeping with one another and hanging out, so the idea that there was some kind of arm's length separation between a guy and his girlfriend who were CEO's of two related companies is kind of laughable. But we'll see.

"I was smart enough to make $26 billion, but stupid enough not to know that my clients' money was not mine" is going to be a pretty tough tightrope to walk.

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FTX was one of the largest donors to the Biden election campaign…but somehow this is never mentioned.

This looks like this was money laundering donor money, and worse ….money laundering funnel from foreign adversaries.

https://fortune.com/2022/11/10/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-joe-biden-democratic-party-second-biggest-donor/amp/

https://decrypt.co/117258/white-house-refuses-questions-sam-bankman-fried-donations

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-political-donations-2022/

This is unfortunately already presidential.

He was also the largest donor to the Biden presidential campaign. What he did was a ponzi and potentially funneled money from foreign governments to the presidential campaign.

We need more oversight to get money out of politics.