> I actually find SBF quite charming and persuasive.
I genuinely find that fascinating, because from the first I ever saw or heard him (before the FTX stuff erupted), my reaction was the exact opposite. My most charitable reaction was that he was a scammer.
> The guy has a strong sense of ethics. I continue to be impressed.
That seems to be the case in general, but I have to say in this case it doesn’t really require that to decide to take the opportunity to slam dunk on someone when you discover you’ve been scammed into agreeing to be a speaker for their scam. A fairly normal degree of personal desire for retaliation would suffice.
SBF is a dumb criminal, who then screwed over everyone he abused into creating this theft. I honestly can't imagine many easier setups, less sympathetic defendants, or parades of pissed off co-workers willing to put the knife in him before he got it in them.
> SBF did not have any intention of committing a crime.
His fraud started early on, and he used the same tactic over and over again. He lied to his customers about how their funds were held, then abused them whenever any problem involving money came up in his life. Least self aware villan ever created.
While I understand the sentiment, we sure are softies when we sympathize with the guy who got in trouble for trying to scam us. He earned that consequence 100%.
> When I read the thread now, it's obviously full of red flags. I was successfully manipulated, and whilst I'm certainly not as clever as all the people pointing out they would have caught this from sentence one, I believe I'm also not the lowest hanging fruit in terms of a target :-)
I think it's soo easy to spot scams because 99% of them are so shit, poor spelling, talking nonsense.
If scammers simply spell checked their scams I would fall for them all.
> Besides, the person adds, it’s foolish for anyone to put faith in a SPAC, a Wall Street invention that has birthed its fair share of scams: “You’re the person participating in the heist. Ultimately, you can’t really turn around and complain that your share of the takings wasn’t what you thought it should be.”
It doesn't reach me personally, but of course con men have charm. It's kind of necessary in that line of work. You can't scam people of billions of dollars without a little bit of "charm".
>Why would you be inclined to give a convicted fraudster the benefit of the doubt?
Lol, thanks for that!
I'm currently going through some sort of anxiety moment after I realized my whole life I had to defend myself over things I would never do. I built and sell a SaaS offering and there's always this element of "I have to convince the other party this is not a con" because after all you're a salesman to them and you're always going to be biased towards your product.
I then contrast that with people who are blatantly lying and I feel like I live in two different worlds, one for myself, one for those others. Bankman-Fried, ESG, Holmes of course, not only they steal but even afterwards they still get to have the "benefit of the doubt" and other people make excuses for them about their behavior etc ... where the explanation is quite simple and doesn't need 20/20 vision "they are fraudsters, they steal money through lies and their schemes". Clown world.
>The one thing that strikes me all the time is how arrogant, smug, full of themselves these scammers always sound.
You're reversing causation... Humans as a whole are more apt to follow people that sound confident. Therefore as a scammer, if you want to boost your success rate you need to sound confident. The scammer never wants you to doubt their ability, but they want you to constantly doubt your own.
I genuinely find that fascinating, because from the first I ever saw or heard him (before the FTX stuff erupted), my reaction was the exact opposite. My most charitable reaction was that he was a scammer.
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