It's not so much that he was cozying up with them as it is that they were one of them. I think the reason SBF ultimately succeeded and disarmed investors' critical eyes is two-fold: he had a pedigree of Stanford/MIT and thus isn't a complete idiot so he could spin together a temporarily believable narrative even if they were on shoddy ground; the second and more important reason is that his parents were both Stanford professors and Caroline's dad was an econ professor at MIT, both the parents had a an expanding list of contacts which helped them secure the first critical set of funding rounds and further on had them ably play the dance with political players and regulatory bodies.

Anyway, the lesson I got after seeing SBF's philanthropic forays, which were all a ruse, was to never trust a techbro no matter how inspirational outwardly they may be. Ravening wolves they are the lot of them, in sheeps' clothings.