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Comment by lr4444lr | Hacker News Reader

They watched their own flesh and blood son transition with breakneck speed from a high rolling billionaire who hobnobbed with society's elites to facing spending the best years of his life in prison, a disgrace to his family and their legacy. How do you think you'd cope with that psychological ordeal?

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> ... a disgrace to his family and their legacy

Count 8 of the indictment: "Conspiracy to defraud and violate the campaign finance law".

Who was running the fundraiser? SBF's mom.

Who was helping SBF trying to obtain regulatory capture of the crypto currency exchange market in DC? SBF's father.

I'm not sure SBF is the only one to bring disgrace to that name, that'll from now on always be associated with fraud indeed.

And quite probably are near the top of the clawback list if it turns out that any of the funds ended up with them. They have very good reasons to be distressed, their sons future behind bars is only one of the things they need to be worried about. Their whole world is crashing down around them, besides of course becoming persona non-grata to pretty much all of their friends and quite possibly family in case others got sucked in as well. I don't envy them.

Oh, it's worse than that. There will at least be civil suits. Possibly criminal prosecution.[1]

NYT: "Mr. Bankman was deeply involved in FTX. In its early days, he helped the company recruit its first lawyers. Last year, he joined FTX staff in meetings on Capitol Hill and advised his son as Mr. Bankman-Fried prepared to testify to the House Financial Services Committee, a person familiar with the matter said. FTX employees occasionally consulted him on tax-related matters, the person said. Mr. Bankman visited the FTX offices in the Bahamas as often as once a month, a person who saw him there said. ... He and Ms. Fried stayed in a $16.4 million house in Old Fort Bay, a gated community in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas; the couple’s names appear on real estate documents, according to Reuters, though Mr. Bankman-Fried has said the house was “intended to be the company’s property.”"

His class at Stanford has been cancelled.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/technology/sbf-parents-ft...

It appears that his goose is fried, not cooked. As a lawyer he really should have known better.

That’s what gets me about this whole thing: two law professor parents. A gaggle of young, incredibly wealthy people who all had their tickets pre-punched with prestige schools, A-list jobs like Jane Street, etc. I have to admit, this story has pissed me off more than most of these corporate frauds.

It's never enough I guess. Holmes is another case like that.

From that quote it isn't clear precisely how Mr. Bankman was involved with his son's firm, how much he was an insider, particularly in the later days as the fraud presumably intensified. It's plausible that SBF, digging himself deeper in fraud while getting high on his own supply, insulated his law professor father from the seedier proceedings at his darling company. Probably will take the courts to determine the apple's proximity to the tree.

Sure as hell wouldn’t laugh and put my fingers in my ears during a hearing. They are professional lawyers. Time to man up and not put your son at even more risk. Who knows how involved they’ve been in his shenanigans up til now, but it’s time to stop the madness..

This reads like a stress response to me. I don’t think realizing your child is probably going to live behind bars for the rest of your life and your family will never recover is something you “man up” through.

I agree. People act weird under extreme stress. Once when I arrived at work my boss was grinning. I asked him what was going on and he told me my co-worker tried to kill my supervisor. I laughed. Other co-workers were laughing and grinning too.

What happened with the co-worker? (Prison?)

Academic lawyers (his parents) are nothing like trial lawyers. Don’t expect them to have a good poker face.

The act never ends. Surely, in a decade or two or three, SBF will be looking all innocent from behind bars and still unable to open his mouth without incriminating himself.

I wonder how many others will be charged. This will be more difficult than walking all over this guy, and I seriously doubt he is alone in all of this.

Best years? More like all the years.

He should not go to prison for life. Nobody should ever go to prison for life, for wasting money. Money is literally made up. Sure, opportunity cost is real, but seriously nobody should ever lose their life for money.

What happens if they money was someone else's means to pay for their health care?

Money is made up - that doesn't mean it doesn't have consequences.

I am of the mindset that non-violent offenders, should not suffer a life penalty regardless of their alleged crime. They played a game and lost, they should not lose their head as well.

A game with whose stakes?

As warning, not as victim blaming, I'd like to point out that you should never ever risk money that you can't afford to lose on high-risk investments. Especially not extremely high risk stuff like cryptocurrencies, NFTs and similar scams.

Hear me out, what if we allowed people to access health care regardless of who has how much money?

While your direct point is valid (for the US), you're missing the general point.

Money can be tied to life changing/life threatening events or situations in many more scenarios.

The archetypal scenarios are people losing college money, retirement savings, downpayments for their kid's apartments/houses, etc.

There are many ways in which money is very, very real.

Anyone who still clings to this "fiat" thesis is just detached from human reality.

DPR is rotting for life, for contracting a hit on an entirely fictional person and mostly conducting a very upstanding market. I never thought that was fair, but US laws are US laws.

I'm not familiar with what you are referring to, however I would argue that attempted assassination <> losing custodial funds.

DPR == Dread Pirate Roberts == Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road operator)

DPR =/= Ross Ulbricht, at least not in reality.

FBI agents who were proven to have access to that handle are also in prison for it. There's no 1:1 "Ross is DPR," and that's part of the problem.

Think about it this way. Money is people's time. SBF stole billions of hours of people's personal time. Effort, savings, sweat, tears all bundled in what we call money. Why shouldn't he repay them with his own time in jail?

That doesn't really repay them anything.

He stole billions of possible retirement money. Of course he should go to prison for life.

How will wasting his life behind bars help bring restitution?

Making him grind out restitution at $1/hr on hard labor would do it.

Contrary to popular belief, prison is not entirely about reforming people but part punishment as well as protecting society from repeat offenders.

Also, he chose to open himself to the dangers of wasting his life behind bars when he enganged in incredibly illegal activities. It's not hard to not do that.

True. The focus should be as much on rehabilitation and restitution.

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