Of course, he has a professor father lecturing laws in Stanford university, I guess they had a plan right when the fiasco hits, any move since then must be designed meticulously to avoid being charged, what a shame.
You would think if you were raised by Stanford law professors, you would know the importance of staying silent and not incriminating yourself (especially on record). But I guess SBF has a superiority complex and thinks he can evade punishment if he can manipulate the right people.
Not familiar with legal issues - can someone explain why Adam Neumann is free but Holmes is in jail? Isn't both committing fraud from investor POV? And is SBF committing the same crime?
It is amusing if not enlightening to watch all the LinkedIn profiles, Tweets and other online footprints being deleted as all those who dealt with him and supported this nonsense seek to erase that history.
A WSJ article suggested his Dad a tax law professor at Stanford was in tears at a restaurant in the Bahamas.
Justice is coming and his father knows it.
Nothing SBF does from now on will lessen his culpability, but perhaps his ongoing communications and actions might be used against him by those preparing the charges. All the better. He seems like a royal idiot.
Per "tech" nonsense, SBF is continually portrayed as some sort of genius "executive", but he had no clue how to run a business, he's now broke, getting arraigned in federal court and his parents are bailing him out. If his parents' house has a basement, he will now be in it playing video games.
Will the judge call him "brilliant" as in the Holmes sentencing.
I think the sons/daughter of the elite (like law school professors) get used to getting away with anything for their small crimes that they forget when they fuck up in a big and public way it becomes a lot more difficult to just sweep it under the rug. My guess is law professor daddy/mommy have bailed him out before and he never got the talk that when he does these things he needs to do it in a way where authorities can at least pretend they didn't see anything.
If you observe SBF behavior it's clear he has an almost kid-like understanding of the world, which speaks of a pretty sheltered existence that can nourish sociopaths.
Well Elon Musk just tweeted that because they all democrats nothing will happen during the current administration.
It's very sad if there's not even an investigation but, as usual, it's likely that the crooks at the top are going to stay free. I'm not so sure however that they'll keep the exact same jobs.
> Do we have a hard paper trail? Not that I doubt it, but I know apologists who will and it would be nice to have more than 'Gensler took a class by the Alameda CEO's dad once".
They're all tied. The ex-CFTC commissioner (the one who just deleted his Twitter account) used to work with Gensler too. SBF's father is a well connected Stanford professor teaching tax laws and who's on air saying he's helping FTX with regulations. These guys obviously all know each other. It's more than just one coincidence. It's many coincidences.
As a sidenote Stanford as been behind quite a few very interesting characters recently: Elizabeth Holmes, SBF, SBF's two parents (one of them being implicated for sure even though he'll surely claim he had no idea what is son was doing).
Maybe it's time they were to teach integrity and ethics at Stanford? Oh, wait, someone posted here on HN that SBF's parents "are Stanford lawyers who specialize in compliance and ethics.".
I'm not sure there won't be some cleaning done at both Stanford and the MIT even if these people aren't indicted.
It's kinda bad looking on your institution when the head of the department of Economics happen to be the dad of the CEO of the biggest scam since Enron. It's also bad looking when your tax law teachers were helping the biggest scam get licenses to operate as regulated entities.
Even if nobody goes to jail, who's ever going to look at these people with any ounce of respect?
Holmes Will probably be in jail shortly, Milton was convicted of fraud last month and should be sentenced soon, SBF fallout is too new. There will be some consequences although maybe not equal to the fraud. Frauds looks so obvious in hind sight but not so in the moments.
SBF is the largest donor to the Democratic Party this year and his mom runs an org that raises hundreds of millions for political bribes each year. I'm sure that won't be forgotten.
Elizabeth Holmes committed worse crimes and got a slap on the wrist--mostly because the was stealing from the elite. People are going to forget all about SBF and he'll get charged in a few years and get forgotten until he times some meager sentence and then re-emerges a few years later as the new Jordan Belfort, probably selling some new get rich quick scheme.
> You’d think this MIT graduate would wise up, but he never did
I don't think it's lack of wisdom but rather pathological hubris and a God-Complex. I've met kids like SBF at MIT. Very smart but at some point they think the rules don't apply to them. The've never failed before so why would they start now. After all, he was like the youngest billionaire, rich parents, good grades, top schools. Everything has gone his way so the thought of admitting failure was out of the question. The defense also took this weird strategy of painting SBF as incompetent manger who had no clue what his subordinates were up to. Who knows, maybe that will get softer sentencing.
TBH I wouldn't be surprised if he gets out after 2-3 years on "good behavior". those political donations have to count for something. He very well may have the last laugh.
Maybe not too fast (or at all) for SBF though. His father is a Stanford Law professor and that doesn't come without some connection to the rest of the legal world-- and so, assuming SBF is likely to have some method of funding, a flavor of defense along these lines could keep him out of jail:
"SBF was simply an idealistic young man who tried to strike out in a new direction in the financial world. But he'd only had a year or two of experience and found himself in a crypto industry filled with scammers and VC forms eager with FOMO failed to provide the guidance or ensure proper governance as would usually be the case. And so business SBF built was very ad hoc on the inside and when things started crashing down SBF made some extremely poor but well intentioned decisions. But now? He's learned his lesson"
And then he gets his probation and a ban from working in the industry for X years. And maybe even a handslap jail sentence.
Based on what's come out so far that has some small chance of still being how he gets off the hook, but it's early days and getting worse by the tweet.
>Phrased another way, we're about to find out if SBF is morally bankrupt enough to take away a huge portion of his parents assets as well.
If he has hundreds of millions hidden away, he could easily ensure that his parents get some of it later to compensate them.
That said, I don't think he will run. His parents are both Stanford law professors and he has an insane number of connectionsand people that owe him favors. I think he will go to court and put up a very strong defense and end up with around ten years in jail at the end of it all.
Not that unlikely, but as far as I know he isn't actually charged with anything yet? But, even if I am correct on that, he almost undoubtedly will be at some point. You can lose a lot of poor and maybe middle class people's money and walk free, but FTX also lost some rich people's money. You don't lose that many rich people's money without getting charged, unless you're absolutely saintly in your behavior, which SBF certainly was not.
He's definitely getting prosecuted. It just takes DoJ a long time to build cases, especially financial cases, because the burden of being able to convince a jury that something intentionally malevolent happened as opposed to simply incompetent.
To Molly White's point, SBF is essentially walking around shouting "I was incompetent! Very very incompetent!" In an attempt to make that, as opposed to his clear fraud, the narrative.
Holmes was only found guilty on 4 of 11 charges, totalling around $300m raised from investors. SBF is guilty on all counts of stealing 26 times more than that - $8bn of his customers deposits.
after reading about his parents' high level of involvement, i think they knew there were all sorts of illegal things going on, and decided to not ask too many questions to allow for plausible deniability.
but they gladly kept spending that money and spreading that influence.
and, to seemingly throw away your kid's future because you're so enthralled with finally being one of the true bigwigs around Stanford... smh.
he needed parents.
and the myriad people surrounding him for years during the theft and fraud -- who are now all Pikachu-faced that he could have been doing these dastardly things.
and maybe sbf will get his little brother sent to jail, too.
SBF wasn't paying attention to the SPAC people -- you gotta take yours off the top, like a politician (quoting dead prez) -- not just steal everyone's money, and _def_ don't steal from the rich -- i thought we all collectively learned these lessons.
if we killed SPACs _and_ crypto, where are all the scammers gonna go?
conspiracy. wire fraud. commodities fraud. securities fraud. money laundering. the Federales even threw in a campaign finance charge just for giggles.
I don’t think the intriguing part of SBF is the crime he committed, which is a pretty common one. For me, it is how he, after getting caught, hurts his own case being proactive in doing and saying stuff publicly.
The common type of white collar criminal remains in silence and follow orientations from their very well paid lawyers. And it is a pretty proven strategy that leads to minimal or no relevant punishment. If SBF was a common criminal in this sense, he possibly could leave all of this judged not guilty by the justice.
I don't think the fact he's walking around in necessarily evidence of corruption, so much as it's evidence of governments (and there are multiple jurisdictions here) being slow to act.
As to the idea that connections will always get you out of trouble, again I don't think that's universally true. Elizabeth Holmes is extremely well connected as was Bernie Madoff but that didn't stop either of them being prosecuted and convicted.
My guess here is that once the dust settles on exactly what's happened with FTX (which is still unclear in a lot of ways) SBF will be charged.
Comparing to SBF, Holmes is nothing.
reply