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Comment by ilrwbwrkhv | Hacker News Reader

Nah. They have already siphoned enough money through shell companies to buy many houses. International money trails are almost impossible to disentangle.

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They’re not impossible any more and with this getting so much press and the US government likely looking to make an example of SBF, look to get a very detailed trail of where all the $ went. I mean, do you really think, factoring in that he had no accountants and no compliance at all, that he somehow had some of the best money launderers and embezzlers in the world? I highly doubt it, it was probably as amateur as the rest of the company.

> the US government likely looking to make an example of SBF.

Considering the silence from top officials, I don't think this is going to be true. Don't forget he donated ~$50M to the democrats for the mid-terms and was the second biggest dem donor.

Madoff was a Democratic mega-donor and he went to jail as well.

In the primaries, to House candidates, many of whom lost their primaries to other Democrats. So there's a fair amount of bad blood between SBF and the Dems that actually made it to the election.

And on top of that, the GOP won the House. What sort of quid pro quo are you expecting him to get from the losing party, most of whom he pissed off?

I wouldn't be so sure about that yet.

FTX was directly involved in the joint bi-partisan committee to regulate crypto. Heads will need to roll for this so that others can save face.

>From 1991 to 2008, Bernie and Ruth Madoff contributed about $240,000 to federal candidates, parties, and committees, including $25,000 a year from 2005 through 2008 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.[1]

The "Government access" portion of Madoff's Wikipedia page goes on to detail high-level government connections akin to what SBF had. There's historical precedence for them burning someone just like SBF.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Madoff#Government_acces...

Do you have any familiarity with the mechanics of the American federal criminal Justice system? Unless SBF gets a pardon from Joe Biden (which he won’t), those donations won’t matter at all.

Once it's clear that no more donations from SBF are forthcoming, they won't hesitate to publicly burn him at the stake to get the virtue points with voters. "You knew what I was when you picked me up."

Sure, but you only need to solve one or two of those paths to put them behind bars for a while. Then you have, literally, all the time in the world to untangle the whole mess.

>Nah. They have already siphoned enough money through shell companies to buy many houses.

Is there any evidence of this? Sure, maybe wearing a t-shirt and flip-flops, driving a Corolla, and sleeping on beanbags is some sort of act to divert attention, but the simpler explanation is that he just fucked up. Not everything has to be a heist.

I don't know. We live in a society in which PR is king. Fake it til you make it. It seems that what FTX was really selling was the wunderkind genius, SBF. The beanbag, disheveled appearance, mit education and league of legends playing on pitch meetings all helped sell this image. Whether or not he was doing this consciously, he was playing this part to perfection and many people ate it up. My guess though is that if it hadn't been SBF, it would have been someone else who embodied this archetype in some other way. You can't disentangle SBF from the surrounding environment that enabled his rise.

Unless you think the new CEO's findings are incorrect (highly doubtful) or that FTX was buying houses for everybody except SBF himself (possible, but again doubtful), there is evidence right in front of you.

I mean, page 9 of the bankruptcy filing says Alameda Research loaned SBF $1,000,000,000 [1], and a couple billion in loans to other owners or companies owned by the owners.

Maybe he just fucked up. But when the music stops and instead of having your customers' money, you have a bunch of loans to the owners of the company... I'm not sure if "he just fucked up" is the simpler explanation, or the more credulous one.

[1]: https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/FTXFILING.pdf

> I mean, page 9 of the bankruptcy filing says Alameda Research loaned SBF $1,000,000,000 [1], and a couple billion in loans to other owners or companies owned by the owners.

oof, okay that's pretty bad.

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