Also there's still the criminal charges to come after this. I don't really understand why he's not already in prison.
*edit: phrasing
If you borrow $100,000, the bank owns you. If you borrow $100,000,000, you own the bank.
The bigger you are, the longer it takes the establishment to bring you down, if they ever do.
If I were the prosecutors, I would let him keep hanging himself with on the record interviews for as long as possible. Everything he says seems to make the case easier to win.
The FTX dam broke a few weeks ago and so far the media generally seems unenthusiastic about covering the story. Most people I've mentioned it to haven't heard of it yet; that's the media's fault.
I don't think the media turned into a mob until after the book, as you said.
It's not like it's difficult to find FTX in the news anyway.
https://usatoday.com/story/money/2022/11/17/ftx-collapse-ceo...
https://usatoday.com/story/opinion/2022/11/19/ftxs-collapse-...
https://usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2022/11/22/miami-dade-...
I tend to agree. I've never spoke of theranos or EH with friends or more specifically my wife. The other day she brings it up...
"What do you know about Elizabeth Holmes? She just had a baby and is going to jail for 15 years"
The pregnancy / child / jail is what made my wife interested. I told her that I didn't have much information on the subject other than the company said they could do x, pulled in a ton of cash, and couldn't do x. She then proceeded to watch every documentary / book / article she could find on EH and Theranos.
It was the pregnancy topic that made my wife interested. Not the amount of money or fraud, pregnancy which is something she can relate to.
He's already being prevented from leaving the country (note, the country is the Bahamas where he had been living for years). He doesn't have access to FTX's accounts. It seems like it's harmless to leave him out until proven guilty.
The FBI and the Bahamanian government are still trying to figure out how to timeshare who interviews him when. The prosecutors are still working on understanding the full scope of damage done. Heck, there are lawsuits moving forward on where the primary forum for FTX's bankruptcy is, let alone who gets to throw him in jail first.
Keep in mind that the CEO brought in to clean up after Enron was also brought in to clean up FTX and try to organize the bankruptcy. The first thing he said to the court was he needed more time because this has the worst books he's ever seen and he doesn't even know what FTX owns. Like, he cannot find the paperwork and is trying to reconstruct some of their ownership from "third-party materials".
At least in the US, there are laws against multiple prosecutions. So if the prosecutors came at him with an easy case, they could accidentally give him immunity from the other related cases. So they have to build a big one before they actually prosecute. Imagine the uproar if he was prosecuted and punished for stealing $10MM and that kept him from being prosecuted for the rest of everything. Or if the prosecutors hinged everything on his cryptographic signed orders and it turns out the keys were taped to his monitor and, boom, reasonable doubt, so he walks.
It takes time. That's frustrating. But that little bit more time now had better be enjoyed. He's not getting out of jail for decades once he goes in.
We publicly crucify people all the time, even when no crime has been committed. Just look at the treatment of Elon Musk versus SBF. SBF commits likely crime, gets almost no negative press. Elon Musk buys a company and people go onto national news and declare that he needs to be investigated for every crime under the sun.
If people were consistent I'd be more okay with how SBF is being treated, but they're clearly not. As SBF donated heavily to media organizations it's obvious that they're treating him with kid gloves because of those donations.
[0] https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1595512579417378837?t=Mx-...