Then again, he's been much more out in the open about everything. He pretty much laid the prosecution's case out to the public for them.
2. BBG news article recently speculated some hot-shot lawyers have begun representing Caroline.
Maybe the Alameda execs are trying to say they just made irresponsible gambles (like a shitty Wall St investor) but SBF is the one who secretly covered the massive losses with FTX customer assets without telling the public and was responsible for the "dual accounting" issue where deposits were counted twice. Among all the other things that they did wrong.
Or maybe there was a more direct/overt conspiracy at play they both took part in and she snitched first.
The good news is we'll probably find out sooner than expected if the extradition gets challenged in court. We'll see exactly how altruistic SBF really is soon.
Maybe part of the urgency was also the planned congressional testimony.
Citation needed? I'm not a lawyer, but it seems plausible to me that SBF's public admissions of crimes, plus the full records of his company, are sufficient.
But this, like most of the thread, is all speculation. We’ll find out more in due course.
Bankruptcy procedings. Subpoenas. The standard ways the FBI gets records from regular companies run by people who aren't criminals and don't want to become one (the current CEO is a regular business person).
But either way, these things take more time than what has passed thus far. I’m not saying that a case couldn’t have been made without an internal informant — just that it happening so quickly makes me suspect that someone (who was high up) flipped.
They can be, but they don’t have to be, and the current management doesn’t seem interested in protecting SBF or the others formerly responsible for running the FTX network of companies.
I’m sure he was more truthful in private signal or telegram chats amongst executives
It probably reflects the inherent risk-aversion that comes with a gov lawyer job.
A more balanced tolerance to risk is often missing from much of gov policy making. Probably has a lot to do with people who care more about highly visible and immediate prosecutions to satisfy the public > balanced long-term justice. Politics selects for that. You see the same thing happen on social media where emotions reign king.
there are long term benefits to encouraging conspirators to defect early and often, even if you don't strictly require them in a given case.
I think it's often less about convenience and more about prosecutor's political antennas. Who wants to see the guy dead in jail, and who would be most upset at you if that happened.
Here’s the crazy thing. Maybe they pierce the veil and say the two companies acted as one, but hedge funds fail all the time. The fraud was SBF using FTX to prop up Alameda…
“Piercing the veil” is a term of art for holding shareholders accountable for corporate liabilities notwithstanding the civil liability shield usually provided by the corporate form.
Holding coconspirators accountable for their role in a criminal conspiracy doesn’t have a special name because it is routine rather than exceptional.
Piercing the veil broadly refers to removing limited liability protections because the individuals behaved in such a way (criminally) that they have forfeited their protections.
The most common people held to limited liability protections are shareholders in limited liability corporations (LLCs)
A different sort of limited liability is the idea that customers/partners of a fraudulent business are not liable for that fraud, unless they committed gross negligence in allowing the fraud to continue.
To your point, there is not a snappy term for that specific phenomenon, because it is so rare, but piercing the veil 100% applies here because it refers to the “veil of limited liability”.
There is no “limited liability” for criminal sanction to which the term applies. There are criminal immunities, but finding something to be within an exception to one is not called “piercing the veil” in any context.
> A different sort of limited liability is the idea that customers/partners of a fraudulent business are not liable for that fraud
“People other the person committing a wrong are not liable for the wrong” is not generally a “form of limited liability”; it is the basic rule of initial liability. An exception to that is respondeat superior in which a principle is responsible for his agents liability in a broad range of circumstances, and corporate limited liability is an exception to that, since the corporation could otherwise be seen as an agent for its shareholders.
Finding that someone committed a wrong related to a third-party wrong that makes them vicariously liable for that third-party wrong is not generally called “piercing the veil”.
And that’s all in civil liability, which is the only domain where “piercing the veil” applies at all.
> To your point, there is not a snappy term for that specific phenomenon, because it is so rare
No, again, charging co-conspirators in a criminal conspiracy, regardless of their other business relations to each other, isn’t “rare”, has nothing to do with “gross negligence”; it doesn’t have (another) snappy name because its central to the point of the crime of conspiracy.
Huh? My dude, she didn’t work for FTX.
If you’re saying that she in fact did (and was therefore a co-conspirator), then we agree that FTX was a sham corporation that acted on behalf of Alameda, but then why are we here?
Oh yeah, because you wanted to sound smart without fully understanding a situation; I guess I already knew that.
You're supposed to count everything twice in corresponding accounts. That's double-entry accounting.
The badly labeled @fiat account ... ? I am still in awe over that 11yo's soda stand spreadsheet.
She was staying completely silent since the moment FTX collapsed while he was spilling the beans everywhere. She obviously cut a deal while he was parading on social media for god knows what reason instead of shutting his mouth. SBF is a complete moron who didn't understand how the party was already over for him, I put it on his upbringing given the kind of ideology his scholar parents preach at university, especially the bits about personal responsibility...
Matt Levine:
> “Sam Bankman-Fried Should Shut Up, Bernie Madoff’s Lawyer Says,” (...) perhaps it is one more case of us watching in real time as crypto re-learns the lessons of traditional finance. Maybe in six months all the busted crypto leaders will be saying “oh wow we should not have given all those interviews.”
But you have to look at the larger picture: The Federal prosectuion conviction rate is 95%. The Federal government is very good at getting prosectuions in cases they choose to prosecute. They tend to plea out cases that are riskier. A key tactic in doing this is they get one or more cooperating witnesses. That witness gets a better deal in exchange for their testimony that pretty much turns the case into a lock.
It's classic Prisoner's Dilemma. The first to take the deal is always the best off. Lawyers know it so if their clients are at risk, they'll tend to push their clients to be the one to take it. Ellison will most likely have direct knowlege of the situation and will be able to produce evidence such as emails and texts.
Importantly, she's not the main guy. It's SBF who opened up custodial assets to be used in that way (or so it seems). That's the primary offence here. It's a bit like how in a murder case the cooperating witness might be a driver or a witness but unlikely to be the actual shooter. They may get embroiled in a felony murder conviction otherwise thanks to the US-specific pecularity (and some, including myself, would call a miscarriage of justice) of felony murder but that's another story.
So Ellison fits the profile of an ideal cooperating witness, there's supporting circumstancial evidence and the fact that Federal prosecutors indicted SBF so quickly further suggests a cooperating witness with firsthand khowledge or they'd otherwise be mired in subpoenas for communications, conducting interviews and otherwise building a case.
A criminal indictment represents the end of the investigation, not the beginning. SDNY has already built their case to their satisfaction. People seem to think an arrest happens and the investigation continues. That's not how Federal prosecutions works.
SBF’s situation is different in that the game ends as soon as someone defects.
That's why underlings have strong incentives to defect, and defect quickly. (Defection is also rarely an option for the person at the top of the pyramid.)
Caroline's option to save Caroline regardless of what Sam does by testifying looks a lot better.
Consider the payoff matrix in this example, somewhat analogous to the case we're describing:
- Both defect -> both go to prison for life
- One defects, one cooperates -> the cooperating one goes to prison for life; the defector gets some minor punishment and otherwise goes free.
- Both cooperate -> both go free for a moment, spend some months or maybe even a few years living in fear, then with 95% chance go to prison for life. That's because the whole deal is about saving work for the Feds, but they will put in that work if needed, and come back with bullet-proof case.
There's hardly anything they can do to meaningfully increase their chances of surviving the "both cooperate" option, so the two prisoners will both try to defect.
This isn't necessarily the case. The Feds convict on 95% of the cases they decide to prosecute. Which means that they decide not to prosecute marginal cases.
It could be the case that there just isn't enough evidence to bury them.
But even if not, then have the prisoners multiply that 95% by whatever they believe is the chance Feds will eventually prosecute. Is it 50/50? That just gives them 52% chance of avoiding spending rest of their lives in prison, which is still not a good bet.
(Note that prisoners won't be unbiased here - the Feds will be trying to make them believe this chance is much higher than it really is.)
There is a third factor here, whether the prisoners can disappear before Feds go after them - I assumed they effectively can't, and/or it comes with sacrifices so big that it's not much different than prison.
Crucially, these particular prisoners have a very good idea of whether the Feds have enough evidence to go to trial (assuming the Feds get everything, which is probably prudent to assume). Especially with the advice of good council, which they apparently can afford.
> Note that prisoners won't be unbiased here - the Feds will be trying to make them believe this chance is much higher than it really is.
Which is mitigated by the advice of council. Of course, there is a chance that they are influenced too far in the opposite direction - their layers may be banking on raking in fees from going to trial.
That's the kicker though, and it's the lever the dilemma orchestrators (here, the Feds) have to force a result: smooth out any real-life considerations by making the payoff matrix more extreme. If the cost of failure is life in prison, "slightly increase" and "won't always work" isn't gonna cut it - they can practically guarantee the prisoners will make a specific choice.
https://www.amazon.com/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute...
That's oversimplified, especially when dealing with wide ranging investigations into complex issues, as the many indictments (including successive, either superceding or in different districts or, in some cases, both) indictments of the same party in the course of, for an obvious recent example, the Mueller investigation attest.
If they wanted her cooperation, but didn't absolutely need it, they may have struck a cooperation deal in which she still sees some prison time, but a lot less than she would have after a full prosecution.
My gut says that because he was so sloppy in implicating himself, that DOJ may not have strictly needed her, and so total immunity for her is unlikely.
The witness is supposed to say they cooperated because the law provides lighter sentences for those who cooperate voluntarily.
The informal one is basically just telling (some of) the truth during interrogation and agreeing to testify, where her lawyer gets to enter “she cooperated” as evidence during sentencing, but she might still get off scott free, or a judge might ignore the cooperation entirely if she’s found guilty. If SBF pleas guilty anyway, this cooperation is pretty much useless but carries the most credibility.
She can cooperate as part of a guilty plea [1] in which case the prosecutor provides the judge with a sentencing recommendation. The judge can still sentence her within the guidelines at his discretion, though usually the plea deal is on a smaller set of charges than the indictment so its a net win regardless and brings double jeopardy into play since it counts as a conviction.
The last kind is total immunity which sounds nice in theory but is more dangerous for both sides. She’d have to spill all of the beans on everything within the bounds of her immunity which will be broad. If she is ever caught in a lie or a deliberate omission, the immunity deal flies out the window and everything she said as part of the deal can be used against her at trial. Waiving one’s 5th amendment rights is usually a stipulation of immunity agreements - total honesty or guaranteed prison time.
It remains to be seen how much she is cooperating.
Edit: [1] turns out the DoJ has several different types of plea agreements and even a handy guide: https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/basic-gu...
Strongly disagree with this. Look at how they threw the book at Elizabeth Holmes (vs, say, Adam Neumann, or any other male founder from the last decade plus). If anything women have been getting it harder.
There are plenty of male founders who got popped for fraud. Trevor Milton (of Nikola infamy) is an easy one that comes to mind.
Jeff Skilling (Enron) served 12 years.
Ken Lay (Enron) died before sentencing, but was facing up to 45 years.
Bernard Ebbers (Worldcom) served 13 years.
I can't think of a reason offhand to compare her to Neumann and not Sunny Balwani.
Can you explain further?
For example, selling some of his wework shares, buying office buildings, then leasing the buildings back to wework at above-market rates. Registering the 'We' trademark for himself then selling it to wework. That would be illegal due to being a conflict of interest, were the company publicly traded - but it wasn't.
(There was also drug use and sexual assault claims)
from: https://news.bitcoin.com/document-claims-alameda-ceo-carolin...
"...Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison’s personal account was in the hole by $1.31 billion in May 2022."
I don’t think this is being reported correctly - it’s not her personal account most likely Alameda.
I think Ellison will get off scot free since she only controlled Alameda, and not entirely. Her crimes are probably minor and worth forgiving for her testimony. At least that’s my hot take.
But it's quite possible that after the DOJ finishes twisting enough thumbs, they will have a stronger case against her than you or I do.
If Alameda executives knew that FTX customer funds were being commingled with Alameda’s then they were well aware their source of capital was from customer money they shouldn’t have been touching. It’s not just that they were given unlimited margin from FTX.
I've seen considerable evidence that the FTX empire, including Alameda, was jointly run by a narrow set of leaders, in which Caroline was #2, not a set of separate, arms length enterprises.
No way Ellison is getting off scot free. I'd expect her to get a huge reduction in her sentence, but would still be shocked if she got no jail time.
It has been reported that there was a meeting that included SBF, Ellison and the other high ups at FTX where the decision was deliberately, explicitly made that Alameda would use customer funds to prop itself up. That is most definitely a crime on Ellison's part if true.
> which is, in and of itself, insane because FTT worked more like a stock of FTX itself - a company doesn't put its own stock on the asset side of the balance sheet
Thinking about it, it makes sense. But I never did before. So where does a company’s own stock normally end up at, balance-wise?
The company’s own stock is in the equity section (treasury stock – stock that the company has repurchased after it was issued is a contra equity account, since the act of purchasing reduces stockholder equity.)
Though I would disagree that FTT really functioned equivalently to ownership shares.
* FTX's success was helped a lot by the reputation of Sam and Alameda as the best of the best * Alameda bankruptcy proceedings would have unveiled some skeletons, like the unlimited borrowing of user funds (confirmed by court filing recently)
This is most definitely a hot take.
Sam Trabucco - now there is a name you never hear ... yet he was CEO and left 2 months before they went bankrupt ...
Granted they technically have no fiduciary duty to users since nobody signed a contract with them, I doubt they get off scott free.
Many news outlets reported this. She participated on the crime
At the very least she will be deemed unfit or proper, which means she will be barred from any financial activity for the years to come.
On top of that, as a MOO & RO she will be professionally and personally liable to millions in fines, and most likely jail time.
Negligence _is_ a crime, a lack of means _is_ a crime, a lack of knowledge or control are crimes as well, for any regulated person, especially at the MOO/RO level, a lack of chinese wall between investment and retail is a crime, accepting money from an unverified source is akin to money laundering for an investment firm.
Edit: MOO, ROs (responsible officers) and MICs (managers in charge) are regulated activities that should be assigned to individuals performing specific duties in an investment fund. Each regulator will have different names and variations on their duties and structure, but overall it's pretty much aligned.
It is mandatory for a regulated firm to have a specific amount and hierarchy of these regulated activities, and each one of them comes with a set of duties.
These activities are the main vector by which regulators enforce and control individual managers.
MOO is often assigned to the CEO. ROs are often the key investment officers, and MICs are often the key tech & operation officers.
Edit2: Hedge funds are no less regulated than any other investment firm. You are mixing "prop shops"/"family offices" and hedge funds.
Alameda was definitely an asset manager as it received external funds and was selling (debt) securities.
Hedge funds are not magic places where you can say teehee i just used money I found
I’m not saying she’s fully innocent, maybe there’s some incriminating text messages or something, but from the public information so far it doesn’t seem cut and dry to convict her of a serious crime.
These are not only for customer protection, but anti money laundering as well.
Small regulators often overlook the client risk part so as to attract foreign money (that's why most of these regulators will be OK with little to no restriction of derivatives). The anti money laundering part though is very important for these small regulators as they could be fined internationally and don't want the bad publicity.
You cannot just "accept money and trust its from a legitimate source".
Well if you look at what the mainstream media are saying, the very same mainstream media who were presenting SBF as the second coming of the Christ on their front cover, you're not looking very much.
For a start it's proven that some people who wanted to send hefty sum of money to FTX had to wire it to Alameda to dodge controls. That's wire fraud.
Then it's clear that Alameda manipulated the market and were the ones behind the pump and dumping of several shitcoins. Including several shitcoins of SBF's creation.
But really... People who actually called SBF for the ponzi boy and FTX and Alameda for the complete ponzis they were, months or even years before they failed, have lots of evidence that Alameda was part of a bigger criminal operation, before FTX even existed.
If you really believe it's a coincidence the top lawyers at FTX and Bitfinex happened to be colleague at a company caught in an online poker cheating scandal I've got a bridge to sell you.
From the very start even just the naming of Alameda as "Alameda Research" was part of the con (SBF says on video he added "research" to dodge banking restrictions more easily).
The goal of Alameda Research was, from day one, to engage in criminal activities.
This entire "leveraged trade gone wrong" is lies, lies and more lies, relayed by certain media (once again: the same who were presenting SBF as an altruistic genius that was going to save the world).
Now maybe that Alameda also fucked up trades but I'm pretty sure that a lot of the missing billions mysteriously ended up at the hands of those behind the iFined/tether/Bitfinex/Deltec cartel.
Funnily enough this may make tether a bit more backed now.
One of the latest development btw is that one of the shareholder of Bitfinex is a now convicted money launderer (China just arrested sixty people in relation with chinese mafia money laundering through stashes of cash that found their way to Hong Kong and then were exchanged for USDT: $1.7 bn at least).
FTX / Alameda are one and the same and it's highly likely they were just a front for tether, with SBF as the useful idiot.
Some are going to say: "there's no evidence" but this entire thing stinks.
And nobody will convince me that Alameda didn't commit any crime.
Alameda, just like Moonstone bank (bought by SBF from Deltec) and the tens if not hundreds of companies SBF had, were part of a criminal operation.
Did she get any special loans or other gifts from FTX like SBF's parents got a free condo in the Bahamas ???.
[1] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gende...
Nothing about justice requires that punishment be meted out in strict accordance with the demographic breakdown of a population except insofar as wrong things are done in strict accordance with the same demographic categories.
Maybe you're assuming that to be the case, but I don't think you'll find any evidence to support such a claim.
Why is it ok for 'spaulding to just shut down the argument as "nothing about justice requires that punishment be meted out in strict accordance with demographic breakdown" but suddenly a fallacy when I insert an actual demographic? I knew it would make people upset because well if we're talking about men then no defense is necessary, no woodruffw to the rescue with "affirming the consequent", but if black people cue up the folks with the torches.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-...
2) That's not how logic works. Correlation does not equate to causation.
The argument isn't either "valid or not" in a general sense. The argument needs more nuance and if that's your concern, ask for it and point out where it is lacking. Demand better comments instead of trying a quick mic drop.
[0] Most people aren't confused with spurious correlations like: US technology funding vs number of hangings. (99.8% correlated) http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
See how the causal factors in these arguments are different? The former is a demonstration of an unfair set of opportunities that disproportionately affects a certain subset of humans while the latter says that the arrests are destined because of genetic makeup. We know one is true and the other is false.
If you're making arguments akin to the former and getting called a Nazi, get off Twitter and touch some grass. Talk to some real people. Specifically people of color. But maybe listen first before you open your mouth.
These are people who literally start every discussion with the idea that people of different races should be treated differently based on the color of their skin. So I suspect they're projecting a bit, since that is precisely Nazi ideology cloaked in a different skin (literally).
Yes, because if we don't, then it does lead to what's been on display (which is also a selection bias). Start with the assumption of good intentions, but you don't have to keep that after they play their hand.
> A general rule of thumb is that anybody engaged in identity politics is a horrible human being, and discussion with them is generally an exercise in futility.
I found the problem. If you treat everyone you meet like an asshole or terrible person then it is no wonder they respond that way. You can't expect anyone to be nice to you if you are being a dick to them. People can tell what you think of them. You probably aren't as good of a bluff as you think you are.
I happen to think we should treat everyone the same regardless of skin color. Do you?
Is the explanation right in this case but wrong in that. Right in both? Wrong in both?
Is one of many articles on the topic. I had an old textbook (maybe 2003) textbook on markets and trading that had a sidebar that lionized him but almost everything on the web is colored by his scam.
That may have been revised down to 3 from 6...
I just learned that people have been theorizing on the internet that Caroline Ellison is Gary Gensler's daughter, which is completely nuts and totally false.
From The Verge article about the arrest of Bankman-Fried ( https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/12/23506483/sam-bankman-fri... ) :
John J. Ray III, who has taken over for Bankman-Fried as CEO of FTX and whose credentials include supervising the corporate cleanup after Enron imploded, has already said, 'Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.'
Source on pay: FT.com -> https://www.ft.com/content/5d826ca9-389e-41ec-a38b-da43211da...
FTX disclosed in court papers that Ray was billing his time at $1,300 an hour and had been paid a $200k retainer fee.FTX US had (at least) nine board members. FTX International (non-US entity) was private, as I understand, and essentially unregulated, so who cares about the board.
[1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/sbf-caroline-ellison-allegedly... and elsewhere
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/business/ftx-sbf-crypto-m...
Getting one of two culpable people to testify against the other and let them off the hook seems a dreadfully lazy approach to prosecution.
If you've just got wiped out financially? Unless they can expect donations from your allies, or from your peers in industry who are eager to see you released, they can just stop returning your calls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ivqzyjfHG0
he walks through a lot of how the points are calculated.
You think there are only took culpable parties here?
From the WSJ:
https://archive.ph/2022.12.12-111902/https://www.wsj.com/amp...
Beachfront properties, random companies, journalists... but no Lamborghinis.
Got it.
Don't get me wrong though, I'd say 2008 was blamed a lot on an industry that largely played fairly outside of some truly revolting players. Letting too many bent actors get away with their misgivings emboldens the next generation, and you could certainly argue a lot of this next generation of bent actors are playing fast and loose in crypto.
How did any of that change exactly?
That 2008 style Wallstreet corruption is bigger than ever, it's just a matter of time before the world sees that the upcoming/ongoing inflation is not actually "due to the war in Europe and Covid".
The same political conflicts of interest exist, regardless of whether the funding comes from a carbon Super-PAC, or a crypto con man... But you wouldn't be able to tell that from any of the blatantly partisan rhetoric around it. It's all very "We're not mad that campaign funding works the way it does, we're mad that the other guys got more of it."
Trying to limit 'who' can contribute is fraught with violations of free speech or picking and choosing the definition of what a 'company' vs an 'organization' is.
'The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative…” — U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 2, clause 3'
As it is now, they decided to stop.growing the House because ... big bribes to the controlled-by-lobbyists Reps.
That case is even murkier, but the intent seems clear.
Did I miss something?
He can claim it was just a mistake and an accounting error if he wants, but the judge and jury will have final say if he goes to jail.
It also sounds like alameda's job was to market make the FTX coin, which they presumably did with that money in part. And likely kept doing until they blew up.
He's a fraud. He knows he's a fraud, and his PR campaign is an attempt to prove he's not a fraud but instead just really really dumb and stuff. Because being dumb isn't illegal, but running a fraud is.
It's pretty easy to lose any amount of money if you're paying $10 for $5 bills.
Everything he's done since FTX first crashed has pretty much been straight out of the most fantastical dream any federal prosecutor has woken up from in the middle of the night, certain that no defendant on the planet would actually be that dumb.
Nit-pick: it very much can be. Being dumb can lead to gross negligence, which can be criminal.
[1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2022/11/17/sam-bankma...
He cashed out $300M at Series B and took a $1B loan from FTX. So yeah, ~10% went to Lambos and the rest of the $10B to his gambling habit.
I was on the jury of a federal fraud case, where the defendants took millions of dollars in customer funds and used it to make bad business decisions and/or placate earlier customers.
It was very clear to us that even though they lived a very simple life (old car, $1,500/month rented house), they wanted to build the biggest company in their industry, and fraudulently used their customer's funds to do it.
> But he would offer only limited details about the central questions swirling around him: whether FTX improperly used billions of dollars of customer funds to prop up a trading firm that he also founded, Alameda Research. The Justice Department and the S.E.C. are examining that relationship.
> Alameda had accumulated a large “margin position” on FTX, essentially meaning it had borrowed funds from the exchange, Mr. Bankman-Fried said. “It was substantially larger than I had thought it was,” he said. “And in fact the downside risk was very significant.” He said the size of the position was in the billions of dollars but declined to provide further details.
> Around the time the crypto market crashed this spring, Ms. Ellison explained, lenders moved to recall those loans, the person familiar with the meeting said. But the funds that Alameda had spent were no longer easily available, so the company used FTX customer funds to make the payments. Besides her and Mr. Bankman-Fried, she said, two other people knew about the arrangement: Mr. Singh and Mr. Wang.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/technology/ftx-sam-bankma...
It was substantially larger than I had thought it was -- whoopsie!
the funds that Alameda had spent were no longer easily available (and why is that, hmmm?) , so the company used FTX customer funds to make the payment -- didnt want to, just rearranging some furniture!
Ha, After typing this I went to double checked my memory of the article. They literally refer to him as a villain in the first paragraph. Even my hyperbole can't stand up.
- No question about commingling funds between FTX and Alameda
- No question about his relationship with Alameda's CEO
- No mention of the tweets he deleted
Covers the first two. They refer to how intermingled they were several times. Its a major point of the article.
"He lived in a five-bedroom penthouse in the Albany resort’s Orchid building, with Ms. Ellison, Mr. Singh, Mr. Wang and six others. Mr. Bankman-Fried and Ms. Ellison were at times romantically involved, two people said." This covers point 3
It didn't mention the deleted tweets though but that's minor compared to everything else. Are we talking about different articles? This is the one I normally see people complaining about from them: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/technology/ftx-sam-bankma...
Despite not being present at the scene of any of the crimes, Manson, a victim of America's "cradle-to-prison pipeline" starting at age 5 when his parents were both incarcerated, and was allegedly raped at a reform school, was convicted on seven charges of first-degree murder. The prosecutors also conceded that Mr. Manson never directly instructed anybody to commit the murders, yet he was sentenced to death.
Manson, who earned a following preaching a unique, persuasive self-made philosophy based partly on the Bible, Dale Carnegie and the Beatles, has remained as perhaps the most popular and controversial criminal in the United States in the 20th Century.
By contrast imagine your motivation is to remain impartial, to say nothing of critical given your long-standing antagonism of billionaires and crypto, and here you have a billionaire player in crypto. Would you do things like press him on the discovered backdoors, where exactly the money went, illegalities of misappropriation, etc? Or would you simply take hand-waving deflectionary non-answers at face value, let alone publish them? Would you invite him to come speak alongside world leaders at an event you are hosting?
I think this might be the confusion between the two parties in this discussion. When people say 'puff piece', they don't just mean that they're engaged in mindless cheer-leading, but rather that they're taking a turd and instead of reporting on a turd, they're reporting on a diamond in the process of being made, while remaining aware of what the reader is going to see when they look at that 'diamond in the making.'
People think he should be punished by being ignored by the larger publications or something. He was still giving Twitter interviews with lots of popular crypto people all the time so I doubt it would have done anything.
Best bet for an ex-con is to bootstrap a crypto-native company anonymously, or a crypto trading firm. Given how Alameda went, more likely the former, but I suppose that's getting harder too.
Still surprised they moved that fast, I thought they'll wait for a demand from the DoJ.
Edit: According to vice.com, the US asked for his arrest.
Madoff was arrested before the news broke.
And Madoff was more out in the open. He confessed everything to his sons, and the very next day he was arrested.
Madoff was less than 11 days after discovery of his fraud:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/mar/12/bernard-mad...
[1] Then following that admission with "and if people just give me another 8 billion dollars, I can fix everything" does perhaps point to him being a bit out of it. Or looking for the dumbest of marks.
But his admissions and the public and transparent nature of the fraud are effectively equivalent. Anyway, now that action is being taken I’m placated :)
I hope this is a lesson to those who think they can just talk their way out of things. The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
With Holmes the prosecution probably had to do a hell of a lot of legwork to prove crap like intent, damage, etc.
I dunno. Wonder what other people think.
Seems the investors of FTX never asked for a detailed balance sheet. Companies that FTX bought out were often compensated with significant strings attached.
Holmes at Theranos was giving investors tours of it all working while doing it manually and with more blood behind a curtain.
This guy had a big mouth and poor motor control over his tongue. Who knew what he would spew? Maxine is relieved, is my opinion.
https://www.pointoforder.com/2013/05/22/taking-the-fifth-bef...
I no nothing about law, but I can imagine the pressure on Southern District to act after the cast was outlayed so well in social media.