Comment by nkurz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nkurz | Hacker News Reader

I think this article is "directionally correct", but wrong (or at least misleading) about some key details.

> Instead, Bankman-Fried’s parents promised to pledge their Palo Alto, California, home as collateral. The Palo Alto home is rumored to be worth $4 million. And that is the full extent of the collateral pledged to guarantee the $250 million bond. No other collateral was posted or promised.

The first couple sentences are true: his parents have agreed to convey title to their ~$4M Palo Alto house to the court as partial guarantee of the $250M bond. But I think the last sentence is contradicted by the actual bond agreement:

"2 non-parent sureties to sign bonds in lesser amounts to be agreed to"

This is in all-caps at the middle of page 5 of https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.59.... Which is to say, at least according to the published agreement, it is not true that "no other collateral was posted or agreed to".

> Yes, you read that right. Bankman-Fried walked out of court a free man by signing a piece of paper where he promised to pay the court $250 million if he decides to flee to another country with no extradition.

It is true that this is all that Sam did, but it intentionally fails to mention that 3 (or perhaps four?) additional people have also signed up for the same agreement to be responsible for the gigantic (potentially non-collectible?) amount should Sam disappear. Presumably the hope is that they are able to apply social pressure to keep him from disappearing.

Given that much of the failure of FTX related to overvaluing of collateral, the irony is definitely strong. But I think we should still try to be accurate when pointing out the apparent absurdities. Further corrections of course appreciated if I'm wrong about these corrections.

Edit: dragonwriter points out below that the "2 non-parent sureties" are likely just additional signed surety bonds, and thus the article is probably correct the "no other collateral was posted or agreed to".

> Which is to say, at least according to the published agreement, it is not true that "no other collateral was posted or agreed to".

This is wrong, a signed surety bond is not collateral, its a binding commitment to liability. Security/collateral for that liability is a separate thing, abd the only security provided is the house.

OTOH, federal law allows fully unsecured, personal bond of the accused if the jidge thinks it is sufficient, so having any security or surety (where this agreement has both) is optional, so really this just seems to be a bunch of people who don’t know how federal bail works being shocked not by something out of norms, but because their understanding of the norms is inaccurate.

Extending a large unsecured personal bond to a fraudster seems pretty useless and I think laypeople can recognize that.

Hence, the ankle monitor and his parents’ house.

And judge, don’t forget, Mr. SBF voluntarily waived extradition.

His parents' house is the secured portion of the bond! It's $4M, which is a lot, but nothing compared to the unsecured $246M IOU.

Its not an IOU. Bail is not a loan. People often have the model that the premium paid to an arms-length bail agent is a finance charge on a loan, which is (1) not strictly true, because bail agents don't deposit the full bail with the court and get it back, (2) to the extent it is, while not accurate, a not-too-bad loose approximation of how doing business with a bail agent works, since a bail agent is a for-profit business weighing the risk of flight and the cost of recovery and/or bail forfeiture, within state regulations.

But that's not what courts are trying to do with bail, so when you have a bond that isn't from a bail agent, the model that is tolerably-incorrect in the bail agent case becomes wildly inapplicable.

> Its not an IOU. Bail is not a loan.

It becomes an IOU if he skips on his court appearance, no? That is, the potential penalty here is an IOU. (You have even described it as a "promise to pay" earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34100971 ) Yes, if he shows up to court, no one pays $250M and everything is great. We are talking about the penalty if he skips. No one has deposited $250M with the courts to be returned when SBF shows up for trial. If he does skips on his court appearance, I find it difficult to believe that anyone will successfully recover anything like $250M from SBF and parents. Which begs the question of what the point of a $250M figure is.

The rest of your comment is just not responsive to my comment? You have replied to several of my comments talking about people in the abstract having "misconceptions" around bail agents, and these responses are wholly unrelated to my remarks, which do not mention bail agents at all and are not about bail agents. So I would appreciate it if you would respond with more specific arguments and leave out the fluff.

> Extending a large unsecured personal bond to a fraudster seems pretty useless and I think laypeople can recognize that.

Almost like there is a reason this is partially secured, not personal (there are additional sureties), and comes with extensive non-financial conditions.

Basically they can ruin his parents if he skips - take everything they own and any bitcoin or other assets up to $250 mil if they find it. They are betting he will not do that. They are trying to publicly appear to be aggressive.

> This is wrong, a signed surety bond is not collateral, its a binding commitment to liability. Security/collateral for that liability is a separate thing, abd the only security provided is the house.

Thanks for the detail. I wasn't sure if the "bonds in lesser amounts" were clearly just signed promises to pay, or might also include additional property bonds. It's the "lesser amounts" that confuses me. Does this mean that the additional signer(s) would not actually be responsible for the full $250M if both Sam and his parents were to flee? If so, this would seem to imply that the court has decided that Sam and his parents have non-tainted assets worth more than $250M, which doesn't match the story we've heard so far.

> this would seem to imply that the court has decided that Sam and his parents have non-tainted assets worth more than $250M,

What I think it actually implies is that the surety given is a condition described by 18 USC § 3142(c)(1)(B)(xiv) and not 18 USC § 3142(c)(1)(B)(xii), and that people forget that (i)-(xiii) are examples of options, but do not limit the discretion provided by (xiv).

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3142

Thanks for the link, and for your patience.

Unpacking that, (xii) says that "such surety shall have a net worth which shall have sufficient unencumbered value to pay the amount of the bail bond", while (xiv) says that they can instead "satisfy any other condition".

Does this mean that in your interpretation the headline $250M bail bond number is indeed nominal, and likely no one was required to show that they can actually afford to pay this amount? That if Sam does flee, the court accepts that it will likely collect less than this amount from the signees? And that bail could have just as easily been set at $1B, or $1T with no difference to the court as to his parents' ability to sign for it?

(I added an edit to the thread starter mentioning your correction)

> Does this mean that in your interpretation the headline $250M bail bond number is indeed nominal

Its not nominal, it is substantive: the bail amount is itself a financial condition—the penalty assessed for flight.

Requiring sureties (people who agree to be liable in the event of flight, for the full amount—his parents—or a partial amount—the other sureties—with a process that allows default judgement on prosecution request and irrevocably designates the court as the sureties agent for process, with only what amount to courtesy copies of any notices sent to the surety themselves at the last know address) is a separate substantive condition.

Asset qualification of sureties has a purpose, especially for arms-length sureties, but it is not what makes the bail not-nominal.

> That if Sam does flee, the court accepts that it will likely collect less than this amount from the signees?

I... would not interpret it this way. What I would say is that the court probably expects that the signees so not have nontainted assets sufficient to pay the bail.

However, should SBF effectively flee justice, that would mean the any criminal forfeiture would be avoided or indefinitely delayed, but evading the ability of the US government, when motivated, to enforce a default judgement may be... somewhat more difficult.

(Furthermore, I suspect if any of the involved parties were to be seen to start moving assets to facilitate that—and I would bet there is more than a little attention on that—there would be uncomfortable conversations and prosecution motions to amend bail conditions, at best.)

What a weird argument you're making,

>2 non-parent sureties to sign bonds in lesser amounts to be agreed to

I'll be extremely generous and interpret that as two bonds worth 3.99...M each or the absolute max. value that is less than the 4M house.

Would you extend a 250M credit to someone who offers you 11.8M in illiquid assets? Also, they happen to be the parents of one of the biggest fraudsters in recent years ...

Come on, this is ridiculous.

> they happen to be the parents of one of the biggest fraudsters in recent years

Evidence seems to be building that, if they weren’t complicit, they at least benefited from his fraud.

Arguably their careers are now both collectively and irreversibly ruined. Like the Nobel prize winner that invented some major form of fertilizer that turned out to be a nazi

Fritz Haber was not a Nazi. In fact, he was Jewish, and was forced to leave Germany when the Nazis came to power. His involvement with chemical weapons was during WW1; he died in 1934.

In addition his involvement with chemical weapons took a huge toll on his wife Clara to whom he wasn’t the nicest to begin with

Assuming you are talking about Haber, you couldn't be more wrong. He was actually a German Jew (convert to Lutheranism) who was forced out of his position when then Nazis came to power than died en route to Mandatory Palestine in 1934.

He discovered the Haber process around 1911, which was well before WWII and it was intended for fertilizer only. Eventually people realized that mass ammonia production was very helpful for chemical warfare, and many (including French nobel winners like Grignard) engaged in it.

The Zyklon B synthesis is a red herring.

Mandatory Palestine is a new term that has been invented post world war 2. Back then, it was simply a country called Palestine, as can be seen from passports issued in that era.

Like the Weimarer Republik (in reality still called Deutsches Reich in the republic's constitution). Nevertheless, it is useful to disguish historical periods of the country.

> Would you extend a 250M credit to someone who offers you 11.8M in illiquid assets?

The Court is not extending $250M of credit based on the collateral of the house.

The Court is assessing that the combination of the $250M penalty, the security given in the form of the claim on the house, the particular full sureties on the hook, the additional partial sureties on the hook for a lesser amount, and the nonfinancial conditions of bail are sufficient to adequately guarantee SBFs appearance (in part, based on the prosecution also accepting that.)

Given that they know that they cannot collect the full $250M in the event of default, is there a reason that they picked that number? If they had called it a billion or a trillion or a squillion, what would have been different?

Or for that matter, if they had said that the penalty was $0, and that the securities and sureties were sufficient?

Presumably, they'll never find out, so perhaps it's moot. But I feel like there's a legal distinction or rule I'm missing.

> Given that they know that they cannot collect the full $250M in the event of default

I would not assume they know that, or that that is true.

In fact, I think there is plenty of reason to think that:

(1) SBF has control of assets exceeding $250M (not untainted, and they would likely be subject to criminal forfeiture if he was convicted and they were identified, but in the case of flight...), and

(2) He would not necessarily be successful keeping them out of the reach of a default judgement in favor of the US government if he fled justice

> Or for that matter, if they had said that the penalty was $0, and that the securities and sureties were sufficient?

Security and sureties apply to the penalty, and are meaningless if it is zero.

Thank you. I appreciate your help understanding.

> What a weird argument you're making

What argument do you think I'm making? The argument I'm trying to make is that an article serving as an explainer of a complex legal topic should be factually correct, even if it complicates the desired narrative. Do you disagree with this?

> Would you extend a 250M credit to someone who offers you 11.8M in illiquid assets?

As to the bigger question of whether this bail arrangement is reasonable, I don't think we have enough information yet. $250M is an arbitrary large number, and I don't think a percentage is important. The real question is whether whatever agreement has been made is sufficient to pressure Sam into showing up for the trial. Personally, I'm worried that he may still have control of sufficient funds that he can afford to flee and repay in excess whoever takes the loss. But depending on who the unnamed unrelated party (or parties?) are, and what other assets are available for collection, maybe this worry is unfounded. I think we should call attention to the possible impropriety of the arrangement, apply pressure to find out the missing details, but reserve judgement until we know more.

> The argument I'm trying to make is that an article serving as an explainer of a complex legal topic should be factually correct

It’s weird that you’re pointing out an irrelevant technical detail which misses the point of the opinion piece. The point is that SBF was able to walk out of jail without paying anything and the author finds this absurd.

> Would you extend a 250M credit to someone who offers you 11.8M in illiquid assets?

Sounds like something SBF would find reasonable.

The court is not a creditor and your credit worthiness (thankfully for most folks) does not apply in court. The court is taking the promise of property (defined widely) should Sam fail to appear. This system, if the value is high enough, will keep him in the country to face justice.

Phrased another way, we're about to find out if SBF is morally bankrupt enough to take away a huge portion of his parents assets as well.

> Phrased another way, we're about to find out if SBF is morally bankrupt enough to take away a huge portion of his parents assets as well.

huge portion being +/-10x their net worth and a debt that can not be discharged through bankrupcy.

>Phrased another way, we're about to find out if SBF is morally bankrupt enough to take away a huge portion of his parents assets as well.

If he has hundreds of millions hidden away, he could easily ensure that his parents get some of it later to compensate them.

That said, I don't think he will run. His parents are both Stanford law professors and he has an insane number of connectionsand people that owe him favors. I think he will go to court and put up a very strong defense and end up with around ten years in jail at the end of it all.

>The court is not a creditor

Never said it was and the whole point of this is not whether they put some collateral or not.

The whole point is, how come a 250M bail can be secured with a 4M house? That is the whole thing that is driving everyone nuts.

Divide by a thousand and you may be able to get a better graps of it. Imagine you have a bail set for 250k and you tell the judge, well I have this really shitty used car which (may be) worth 4k, you can keep it, but also you can't take it from me now because well, it's my car :). You would stay in jail.

$4K is a little different than $4M. I don't think "everyone" is going nuts over this. Just some subset of people.

It doesn't really look any different than normal bail. Maybe this is many people's first exposure to the concept of bail though. Bail is also not just a dollar amount, it's about convincing the judge you've put forward enough to motivate you to stay.

Well, if I get to put ankle monitors on you, put you under house arrest, confiscate your passport and send you to jail if you don’t make payments on time…creditworthiness might not be the main factor in my decision.

Seems like there's a group of people who want him to be obliterated and will be dissatisfied at every step if it isn't mounting his head on a pike. It's honestly one of the more disturbing parts of the story for me.

> group of people who want him to be obliterated and will be dissatisfied at every step if it doesn't result in his head on a pike

He’s a fraudster who was content evading justice in the Bahamas for years to come. Of course there is popular desire for retribution, even beyond that which exists and continues to build against crypto at large.

If you believe he's guilty beyond a shadow of doubt, it shouldn't disturb you that he's on house arrest instead of in prison. His trial will last a year or two, his sentence probably be 10 to life (probably closer to the "life").

> believe he's guilty beyond a shadow of doubt, it shouldn't disturb you that he's on house arrest instead of in prison

I don’t believe in his guilt beyond even reasonable suspicion. I do think he is a flight risk. He is delusional enough to attempt it, and may have the hidden means by which to make it.

Okay. So he's on house arrest, wearing an ankle monitor, and if he flees his parents will never recover financially. What's the problem?

> on house arrest, wearing an ankle monitor, and if he flees his parents will never recover financially. What's the problem?

That it’s not a jail. Jails are tougher to get out of than ankle bracelets.

His parents are going to spend the rest of their lives fighting civil lawsuits, if not criminal cases of their own. Losing their home is a matter of time. It is difficult to even say to what degree their plight matters to him.

What do you believe their motivation is for contributing towards his bail based on the consequences they're facing? It seems somewhat strange they didn't say, "nah, lock him up until trial" considering the sword of Damocles above their estate and past performance of the accused.

> What do you believe their motivation is for contributing towards his bail based on the consequences they're facing?

The love of a parent for their son. That's a benefit of doubt I'd need to see extraordinary evidence of sociopathy to discard.

Some people may see it as unjust that SBF gets to chill in a $4mm Palo Alto house while some of his depositors may not have houses as a result of having their funds stolen by SBF.

That makes sense, but shouldn't impact the decision of the court, since he's presumed innocent.

I'm totally game for working for a more equitable society where everyone gets to live in dignity even if they put their money into bad crypto exchanges though. Let's definitely do that, regardless of what happens in this case.

Why not? He did plenty more harm to plenty more people than many others who had to wait in jail for their trial. I think it's perfectly rational to be upset that someone who destroyed billions in wealth is treated more kindly by the justice system than than people who've done far less damage.

I agree the inequity of the justice system is terrible. I disagree with what I perceive as calls for his head.

You are intentionally exaggerating this situation. People are calling for him to be jailed — a perfectly reasonable call.

Intentionally? Are you proposing I have some kind of agenda, or just that I'm being willful in some way?

This is my honest read of the situation, you're welcome to disagree. I have no agenda, only an opinion.

Intentional in the sense that you understand that you are exaggerating and still repeatedly do it. No one is calling for him to be flogged or beheaded in front of the White House. Jailing a fugitive, a flight risk financial scammer is not unreasonable. He was extremely wealthy at one point and so there is a chance he has enough money stashed somewhere to make fleeing a possibility. In addition, defrauding thousands if not millions of people is a heinous crime, for which the perpetrator should not be given any easy treatment. When we ("the society") catch a serial killer, we agree that letting them go free on a negligible bail and an IOU note is not wise.

No, I am not exaggerating while secretly agreeing with you or something. That it may interpretation; you are free to disagree with it, but it's my sincere interpretation. Please avoid supposition about my mind state and intentions, if you want to know something about those subjects, just ask.

We deny bail to serial killers to avoid putting lives at risk, not because they're extra guilty. There's no indication SBF is a danger to anyone around him, and the conditions of his bail include counseling in case he's a danger to himself. Maybe he does have a house in Argentina with a stack of unmarked bills, who knows, but that is that the bond and the ankle monitor are for.

Did he destroy billions in wealth?

Seems to me that he made chart go up for no reason and everyone was perfectly happy with that, and when chart went down for the same reasons (i.e. fraud/no legitimate reason) then everyone is upset about it.

If people are upset about lesser offenses getting handled more aggressively, they should spend some time lobbying for lesser offenses to get handled less aggressively.

He didn't destroy money, he transferred it from whoever trusted him to the people he bought things from or made losing trades with on the market. He destroyed wealth by directing it away from honest business, and that's very hard to quantify the effects of. If I had to guess how he justifies it all in his head, it's that he was taking money away from the financial sector and giving it to the Future Fund.

This is an absolute guess because I don't know, but I think a lot of it was average joe crypto-curious investors having their money stolen and then given to the smart financial firms who were on the winning side of his secret bad bets. There may also have been some pension fund involvement because they seem to be caught up in this stuff on a regular basis. (Because of the way bonuses work, managers can skim off the top by investing in known Ponzi schemes and taking the credit for the 20% returns. They know they're not going to have to pay those bonuses back when they're inevitably "surprised." This happened with Madoff and was a big contributor to his success.)

Right, so he stole $x and "destroyed" $y. My position is that the theft is real and the destruction is not.

Yes, he destroyed (or stole) billions in customer deposits.

This has nothing to do with the chart. FTX terms of service promised that if customers had a simple account, without signing up for higher-risk stuff, then FTX would hold their full assets at all times without putting them at risk.

Then SBF allegedly moved those assets over to Alameda for risky trades, and also pulled some out to buy fancy houses.

It's still early to tell but as far as I can see, there's <$2B of customer deposits missing, and even insofar as those are missing, they have been stolen and not destroyed.

The "billions destroyed" seems more likely to refer to the general "destruction" of nominal wealth which, I posit, wasn't real to begin with.

Where are you getting this $2B figure? The claimed "liquidity shortfall" was $8-10B and most of the assets (MAPS, SRM, OXY, FTT) are worthless. I would expect people in the FTX creditors telegram group for example to post about it if there was news that caused the expected value of our claims to increase from 10-30c to 80c.

Ha just replied to your other comment. I'd trust your $10B figure over mine!

He stole like 10 billion dollars from his customers. Not sure how much of it he managed to subsequently destroy vs. successfully convey to other people, but does that matter?

Well one way in which it matters is that destroyed wealth is irrecoverable. It no longer exists. Stolen wealth might still exist somewhere and might be recoverable.

Also is it $10B in stolen deposits?! I seem to be coming across a $1-2B figure but admittedly haven't been following super closely.

Yes, about $10b of customer funds.

Funds misappropriated by Alameda and spent on VC investments may ultimately have become people's salaries. Some politicians have announced their intention to donate an amount of money equal to SBF's contributions of customer funds, but it's unclear whether they mean "donate to my own 501(c)(3)" or "return to FTX to be paid to creditors" and the phrasing certainly sounds more like the former. Most of the funds were probably embezzled (you will hear these people say "loaned" I guess) by FTX/Alameda executives or lost as part of Alameda's trading operations. Recovery of trading losses is extremely unlikely, especially trading losses that occurred long before the bankruptcy on venues other than FTX. SBF and BlockFi are currently arguing that each of them should receive the $441 million of Robinhood shares that SBF purchased using customer funds. "Hackers" stole about $500 million of customer funds from FTX US and FTX Intl immediately following the bankruptcy, and these funds have (mostly?) made their way into RenBTC and been bridged to native BTC and sent to mixers.

Some FTX customers who withdrew funds as part of their normal operations will face clawbacks, and some other FTX customers such as Modulo Capital and @AlgodTrading who have essentially stolen from all other creditors will hopefully also face clawbacks, but the total amount recoverable this way is maybe $1-4 bn, and all of these people are creditors anyway, so giving the money to other creditors doesn't do anything to address the shortfall.

He operated a Ponzi scheme, so yes, he did in fact destroy billions in wealth. What is the evidence to the contrary? The fact that FTX destroyed billions in wealth is not relevant to this trial at all. It’s whether or not he intentionally and maliciously defrauded his customers.

It's not correct that he operated a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme involves selling people equity, then not actually having the underlying business, lying about returns and paying redeemers using money from other depositors. If I open a bank or "fintech" and let people deposit dollars and just steal their dollars without ever claiming that their balance of dollars has increased, it's not a Ponzi scheme.

actually it seems like the opposite

It's just clearly not a $250M bond. Almost nothing to do with SBF himself. I mean, also, fuck the guy, but the prosecutors claiming this is a 250M bond are just being absurd. This is a $4M bond, or maybe up to $12M depending on the assets pledged by the lesser guarantors. It's a far cry from $250M claimed by the prosecution.

> It's just clearly not a $250M bond.

It is, in fact, a $250M bail bond, people just have a very wrong mental model, based on a bad generalization from an already slightly wrong mental model of the terms when an arms-length bail agent provides surety to the court for the defendant, of what that means.

I get that this is technically not how bail works - it just turns out that how bail works is stupid.

> people just have a very wrong mental model, based on a bad generalization from an already slightly wrong mental model of the terms when an arms-length bail agent provides surety to the court for the defendant, of what that means.

Are you familiar with the "please don't sneer" guideline?

I don't think "please don't sneer" means "forego all metacommentary," and I didn't interpret this as particularly sneering or mean or rude. Cursory inspection of dang's citing this rule seems to be really broad, really rude snark, I don't think this comment fits the pattern I'm seeing there.

I'd propose our discourse would be hobbled if we couldn't make comments like, "many people in this discussion have misconception X". But perhaps "very wrong mental model" was too many superlatives and "misunderstanding" would've been sufficient.

What?(!)

The guy stole billions from average people AND big time investors (he pissed on both buckets), he then proceeded to make such dumb mistakes that make him seem like it has a borderline mental issue, he also happens to be an absolute zero for charisma. How do you expect someone to sympathize with him, honestly?

What would you like to happen then?

He's been charged, there's a mountain of evidence against him, and he's facing trial. That's what my expectations were. I don't think see a need to crank every step of the process up to 11. He's on a conveyor belt leading to a meat grinder.

People are upset that he is getting special treatment. Again. He doesn't deserve it.

Is he getting special treatment or do people not have detailed knowledge of how the criminal justice system operates and so are objecting to any perceived leniency at every step?

No, probably just special treatment: https://twitter.com/whalechart/status/1606293657518080001

That judge recused herself because their husband works at a law firm that advised FTX - note the husband did not work with FTX, other people in the same law firm did. We found out about it from the judge, to avoid the appearance of impropriety - not because any impropriety is alleged to have happened. This wasn't even the same judge who approved the bail. I'm not seeing the conspiracy.

This really seems to me like a Thursday in the criminal justice system, with every single step being scrutinized and cast into the worst possible light.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/judge-sbf-case-recuses-h...

That really makes me wonder if these people have ever followed a rich person's trial before. They all get special treatment. They even get special incarceration.

Do any of them deserve it?

> People are upset that he is getting special treatment.

He's not, and the perception that he is comes from a misunderstanding of the systems involved, which is why the descriptions of how this is supposedly special treatment or surprising tend to include as the foundation multiple layers of wrong assumptions about how bail works in general.

At least in my circle the people screaming the loudest for his head are the same people that are adamantly opposed to any government regulation of crypto. I think they're just mad that SBF spoiled their get rich quick scheme.

He was pushing for absurd regulations himself, such as KYC for front-ends of decentralised exchanges, so it is no surprise that they weren't his fan. More importantly, people who are in those groups tend to be aware how much he stinks of government corruption given his family ties, religion etc. - so it has always been assumed that he will get unfair treatment - and now it is seemingly turning out to go as expected. He is part of 'the establishment' that acted against the interests of the space. Regulations are also seen as only protecting the interests of the traditional financial system rather than actually protecting people; that's exactly how it seems to go so far

> More importantly, people who are in those groups tend to be aware how much he stinks of government corruption given his [...] religion...

He "stinks of corruption" in part because he's Jewish? How am I meant to interpret this as anything other than bigotry?

How is it turning out as to be expected? He's being prosecuted and faces a very severe sentence if convicted.

Still seems like the system is bending over backwards to give him some freedom (and chance to run) before spending the rest of his youth in prison. The alternative is they keep him in jail pending trial if he can't come up with the $25m (10% bond). This is the reality any "normal" criminal would face. Why does he get special treatment?

Perhaps bail is lower for people with lesser means. I know I haven't heard of $25M figures thrown around very often.

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