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Comment by 1337biz | Hacker News Reader

My personal highlight of all the FTX stories is still that there have been zero arrests and consequences to the leaders of that criminal syndicate.

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I guess they have to collect all the evidence first. He’s on an island tax haven outside of US jurisdiction, so he might have to be extradited?

People have completely unrealistic expectations of our criminal justice and regulatory system. FTX failed less than a month ago, investigators need to collect evidence of their wrongdoing, establish some sort of jurisdictional claim that allows them to be prosecuted in the US, present that evidence to a Federal Grand Jury, and then have them authorize an indictment. At that point the DOJ would need to get cooperation with wherever the executives are physically located to have them arrested and then eventually extradited.

They didn’t set up in the Caribbean for the weather, but to ensure they were largely free from US regulation. As desired by most crypto enthusiasts!

None of this is quick but as true as before, “The wheels of Justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine.”

Complex financial crimes can take years to get to the arresting point. It's very silly to expect something of this nature to lead to arrests in under a month.

Meanwhile a murder suspect gets to spend these gathering years in jail awaiting trial...

Once a murder took place there is no doubt that there was a crime and more or less which crime and the suspect is ... well - suspected. For a financial crime the work consists in determining if there was a crime. And if so which one.

Why is that surprising?

It’s a lot easier to do a second murder than a second FTX.

In complicated murder cases it can take decades to get an arrest, too. For example, a murder in 1963 and a conviction in 2001: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/thomas-blanton-dead.ht...

I want to see him in jail just as much as you but I’d counter point that: 1. No bodily harm occurred in this act 2. Murder trials are usually easier to get evidence from

In another jurisdiction, the tornado cash developer is arrested almost immediately after the system was sanctioned. Still held under arrest as of today. For writing code? Might there be more to it but it really makes you think specially with all those puff articles stating that SBF was some robin hood that was poised to save the world until some bad luck strikes his plans.

Imposing those sanctions would be preceded by an investigation. The fact that only one dev got arrested is probably indicative that it’s more than just “for writing code”.

The right to a speedy trial means it is often better to build out a comprehensive case rather than do charges immediately when the first crime is found.

Contrary to popular belief, being an idiot is not a crime.

Evidence seems to be pointing towards SBF being incompetent, not a criminal.

Using your clients' invested money to bail out your unrelated company is not a crime?

Humans like spending other folks money for them without their permission.

“Criminally negligent” can be a thing, and I strongly suspect SBF/FTX crossed well over the line into wire fraud at the very least.

Even if that’s the case (which is not) negligence is considered a crime in the brave new world of world finance.

Where did you get your legal training?

> It is now clear that what happened at the FTX crypto exchange and the hedge fund Alameda Research involved a variety of conscious and intentional fraud intended to steal money from both users and investors [...] [T]he funds were sent to the intimately linked trading firm Alameda Research, where they were, it seems, simply gambled away. This is, in the simplest terms, theft at a nearly unprecedented scale

https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/11/30/ftxs-collapse-was...

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