Sam Bankman-Fried accused of possible witness tampering [pdf]
storage.courtlistener.com
storage.courtlistener.com
Sending that to a witness using Signal's disappearing messages does sound like tampering. Here's hoping he gets more strict bond limitations and an obstruction conviction for this, he earned it.
Just a naive kid..
And incompetent - isn't it better practice to ask a mutual friend/colleague/third party to do the tampering for you so you can get plausible denial?
"I bumped into Sam last week - he was upset that his relationship with you might be ending"
“Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink, never wink if you can do nothing.”
In some industries (e.g. defense contracting), getting a concrete answer for where you can and can’t store certain information can be a nightmare. And often times there isn’t even a definitive answer.
So from a risk perspective, it’s easier to have a policy of minimizing the things you write down in emails and documents. You obviously need to write some things down and need a policy for those things, but if you’re just conveying a few paragraphs of information, a brief face-to-face conversation is much lower risk than writing the same notes down in SharePoint somewhere and hoping that you don’t screw up the security markings.
I guess I’ve never seen this as an official directive from management, but it’s been the reality at a few places where I’ve worked and it was never because anything shady was going on.
Even for officers of publicly-traded companies, it should not be difficult to avoid committing securities fraud if you're not actually attempting to make money in ways you shouldn't.
So, this isn’t about committing securities fraud, it’s about writing something that shows that the company knows that something bad is going on. It’s about evidence.
Also it is very common and easy for people to speculate wildly about what might be going on, to make jokes, and to use legal terms they don’t really understand. This is Hacker News; you know this. In court, such nonsense may make it look like you actually knew something.
This seems to be an allusion to Matt Levine’s writing that “everything is securities fraud”.
It’s not as cynical against companies as you think. The overall point is that sometimes there’s a lot blurrier line between legitimate activities and what someone could interpret as securities fraud than you’d expect.
This is not the case. They can and will take any information in the worst possible light. They want fine and convictions not for the fair decision to be made.
You are saying they want slam dunk cases, but are apparently obtaining these outcomes using evidence that can go either way? You don't see the contradiction there?
The judicial system is adversarial by nature. The goal of the prosecution is to put forward its best possible case that basically means assuming the worst of any piece of evidence.
The training included a case study where a drug company was sued for side effects. The key piece of evidence? A company lawyer just happened to write in an email "maybe we got the dose wrong?".
The lawyer had zero medical training, zero access to any of the data and frankly was completely unqualified to make such a statement.
But this email was presented during the trial to the jury and the company lost the suit.
The point is - you won't get a chance to provide context for things written in emails. They will be taken at face value and framed in the worst possible light.
Seems like a pretty good policy to not make a permanent record of conjecture and half-baked theories that could come back to bite you later?
It is shady, and very lawyer-driven.
"Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?"
(in addition to sending it over e-mail)
At least we might yet find out who paid said bail cough marc cough
All evidence points that he's a moron
"Too arrogant and rash to play by the rules" is a case for the prosecution, not the defence. People get ruled mentally unfit to stand trial because they can't string sentences together or have the sort of verifiable mental health condition that'll see them institutionalised anyway, not because they're running round breaking other rules
Same goes for the my client's background is in trading where in some markets losses are inevitable, and he deeply regrets not having more oversight and understanding of the compliance issues he paid other people to handle defence being a lot more persuasive to a jury if he's not blogging about how the bankruptcy team should have handed the company back to him so he could win all the money back...
Also, they'll likely be away for longer in the end and mental asylums for the criminals are really not that great of a place to be, either.
- "It's so dumb - it's brilliant!"
- "No! It's just DUMB!"
He's like a walking McSweeney's article.
He even exploits his own image to present himself as non-threatening almost incel kid at the bottom of the social pyramid - which is comical when you learn about who he is.
- The literal definition - "involuntary celebate" - that he didn't have any sexual partners despite wanting to. There was a fairly widely reported story of him and a few of the FTX guys being part of a polycule. No real way for us to prove anything around this, so take from that what you will. This leaves us with...
- The vibe of an incel - a socially awkward, introverted, depressed NEET. He doesn't really fit this either, he seemed comfortable talking, wasn't obviously troubled (a little twitchy, but he did a lot of "self-medication" so ...), he had a real job @ Jane Street for a few years before FTX.
I don't really think "incel" or even "almost incel" is the right term for him.
I get distracted wondering why my Mc-A-Fee benefaction has expired, why my nortonn subscription has expired ... thinking about Charming Russian Girls, and when I come back to the internet there's a new language I have to learn.
But to fill you in on these words. While a couple is a relationship involving two people in a (usually) monogamous relationship, a "polycule" involves a few people in non-monogamous relationships. Not my thing, and I've personally seen them explode for reasons that are probably obvious to you or I from the start, but there we go :)
NEET is shorthand for "Not involved in Education, Employment or Training" - it's usually a long-term unemployed person who has lost the motivation to try to get out of that situation.
Ideally this perspective would lead to a push for better access to mental health professionals and viewing prison as rehabilitation vs. retribution. However I could see it being used to support things like capital punishment.
The irony is that if one truly believes that position, then it is also pointless to try and persuade people to also believe it. Because if free will does not exist, then whether or not people are going to hold criminals culpable is also pre-determined. I'm either someone who does or someone who doesn't.
Now, if you truly believe that position, then you also can't fault her for writing that piece. Because she was going to do that regardless. She didn't have the choice to not. And it could convince people. Because they were going to be convinced by that argument the minute they came across it.
It's turtles all the way down. If free will doesn't exist, nothing actually changes. Because we can't choose to defy our inclinations.
So that piece is either written by someone stupid or someone who thinks other people are stupid.
Someone moderately intelligent can reason to the turtles and realize that you can't really change people if that were the case. Enough people in the right places just can't be convinced and your work is in vain.
So this has to be someone who either doesn't see the full implications of their position. Or doesn't expect anyone else to see it. The first is ignorance. The second is hubris.
Your one-line summary is incorrect, if you are referring to the above article.
“United States parental income and education are the most powerful predictors of whether a three-year-old will end up in the boardroom or in prison”. She is following the belief that incarceration is retribution, which is not particularly effective at preventing crimes, and perhaps there are better ways society can avoid future crimes. I admit I didn’t read most of the article, because it is written in a style that doesn’t interest me.
"Earlier I mentioned a third position on the issues of determinism, free will, and moral responsibility: skeptical incompatibilism. The skeptical incompatibilist agrees with the libertarian that we are blameworthy for our actions only if we have free will in the requisite sense (the incompatibilist part). But, contra the libertarian, the skeptic concludes that we don’t have the requisite free will, or at least there is no persuasive evidence that we do. Although a minority view, skeptical incompatibilism has many eloquent defenders in contemporary moral philosophy. I have trouble seeing the case against it."
and
"Why, then, have so many thoughtful people invested so much intellectual energy in making the world safe for blame? Here are some possible explanations.
(i) We can’t not believe in free will, and hence in moral responsibility, because each person’s daily experience of life is as an agent. [...] The fact that we are all instinctive libertarians has given libertarian incompatibilism a free pass on the empirical front. If those instincts are impossible to dislodge—if they are the firm deliverances of ordinary experience—then some accommodation must be made. But if the predisposition to blame is no more than an instinct and habit, the argument for accommodation is not a moral one. [...] (ii) Even if conduct is not blameworthy, blame is an indispensable tool to control antisocial behavior. This justification does not rest on the moral desert of the party we blame. It rests on the social benefits that flow to the rest of us from locking up the morally blameless and throwing away the key. [...] (iii) Blaming others is a way to show respect for them. [...] (iv) Blame is here to stay, and if we can’t beat it, we might as well do what we can to civilize it."
I can't see how this can't be seen as anything except a hard refutation of the concept of blame as morally just, arguing instead that we continue to use it out of instinct and convenience even though it is objectively immoral to blame -- because free will does not exist or at least we cannot prove that it exists.
Looks to me like a summary of other people’s arguments, and lack of free will is only one explanation.
I read the article as trying to diagnose why the justice system blames the individual, even though a majority of an individual’s actions come from their society.
"I have trouble seeing the case against it". (i) is expressing the view that the inability to not believe is a wrong and cognitively defective position: "the predisposition to blame is no more than an instinct and habit,"
Success: due to my own brilliance
Failure: due to environmental factors
(Not ragging on America, I love the US, but I do think it celebrates individual achievement at the expense of reality far too much.)
I guess the SBF analogy would be something about other shitcoins staying afloat during a wider crash.
[0] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dC7mP5nSwvpL65Qu5/why-the-ta...
I don't know what this says about his intelligence overall. My guess is that he's an above-average intelligence guy who is in denial about how his future is outside his control, so he is frantically floundering in a futile attempt to regain control. I think I'd probably feel the same way in that situation, however I'd probably listen to people on my side (lawyers, parents ... or lawyer-parents) if they told me "shut up, stop talking, you're making everything worse"
He’s turning what could’ve been a 10-15 year prison sentence into a 20+ one.
By that logic, if you're looking at life and upset the judge, you should be let go?
> This just tells me the justice system is fucked.
It's not. It's based on the moral that people who made a mistake and regret it (or at least plea to change) are less bad than people who did something wrong and continue to refuse to even accept it being something wrong. You can also frame it as them being 'closer' to living a good life and therefore needing less punishment to get them to actually be good, though technically punishments also have the secondary effects of determent and protecting society.
This makes no sense at all. You can't impose much punishment past life; I was never proposing SUBTRACTING time for offending the judge just not adding it. I'm baffled by your logic. I was comparing the above offered differences of life to 10 years, which the difference of the two is life minus 10.
>It's based on the moral that people who made a mistake and regret it (or at least plea to change) are less bad than people who did something wrong and continue to refuse to even accept it being something wrong.
The law isn't about bad and good though. Growing a pot plant could possibly be "not bad" but still be illegal. Selling a prescription opiate in some circumstances may be "bad" but legal. The law is in essence a description of punishments for behaviors that may or may not have objective connection to good or bad. Also I reject the thesis that 10 years versus something more must make them more "good" and in fact hypothesize it may have the opposite effect.
IMO the judge should be objective purveyors of the law. Your 1A opinion to whether your breaking of the law was good or bad should be irrelevent to senencing. If somebody says "fuck the law and I'd be happy to do it again" even regarding events of horrible violence IMO should be first amendment protected speech free from additional punishment. Of course these are mere opinions, and not to suggest yours is wrong.
He was basically caught with his pants down - logged into SR mastermind account and his laptop was full of incriminating evidence. And after all that he still said that he was not the DPR and didn't own the SR server.
His offence level was off the charts and he treated everyone as if they were idiots. Why would the judge be lenient after all that?
Honestly it's pretty hilarious to note the government was like "look, it's violent because the government arrived and offered violence." Hopefully they locked away the officials and the informants/undercovers offering this violence as well, if indeed it is to be treated as genuine violence.
The other 5 were organised by a Canadian scammer who also stole a lot of money from Silk Road customers. The whole case is hilarious. Some dude goes to SR and robs his customers blind. And then he approaches the site admin, pretends to be a Hell's Angels member and offers to kill the scammer for money. And then steals that money too. Oh and if I recall correctly - he then asked Ross for some money up front and promised to sell a large amount of drugs on SR. He stole that money too and disappeared.
So even if we consider that one murder to be entrapment. Ross is still guilty of the other 5, because law enforcement wasn't involved in those in any way.
Paying for 5 murders to other criminals makes you a violent criminal. Even if those other criminals turn out to be scammers.
What conviction found he must have been involved in the murder scheme? I know his conspiracies alleged that could have been a possible overt act, but did the jury actually ever convict him on anything involving murder or state the overt act for the various generic conspiracies was actually the murder allegation?
As far as I can tell the prosecutor said, here is a list of a bunch of possible acts that cover the more generic drug and kingpin conspiracies. And the jury found him guilty that at least some of those happened, but not necessarily the murder-for-hire one. He wasn't found guilty of an actual charge that required murder. It looks like the judge just short-circuited to sentencing him for it despite as far as I can tell no evidence that's what the jury convicted him of.
I find it pretty chilling you can just use a generic conspiracy charge, have the prosecutor say "coulda done any one of those things" and the jury say "well he did at least one of those things, not necessarily the murder bit" and the judge just short-circuit to sentencing like he was guilty of paying for the hit. If the charge is so vague as to not know which elements of the crime he actually guilty of then IMO the sentencing should not be able to presume it must have been the worst thing the prosecutor alleged.
If you're convicted of a crime that carries, say, 1 to 3 years in prison then the judge could not sentence you to anything more than that. So even if you had some weird murder for hire chats on your computer - you would still get 3 years max.
Mitigating and aggravating factors don't have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
So the moral of the story is - if you do something illegal - don't commit violent acts as part of it. Judges really don't like that.
Alcohol and cigarette vendors aren't allowed to sell their goods to minors. If they do that - they can be punished and the minor who bought that stuff is considered a victim.
So it's no different with SR and other illegal markets.
SR is actually worse than street dealers, because at least some of them refuse to sell drugs to children.
"assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Howard, who was co-responsible for prosecuting the case, testified that no such plea offer existed. He further testified that the only plea offer had been made before Ulbricht's indictment. The plea offer had required Ulbricht to plead guilty to charges 'carrying a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, with a recommended United States Sentencing Guidelines range of life imprisonment'."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Motion_to_vacate...
As I understand - they offered him a deal that included drug distribution charges carrying a 10 year minimum (but not necessarily life). And when he refused and chose to go to trial instead then they added the infamous Continious Criminal Enterprise charge - AKA the Kingpin charge that carries a 20 year minimum. That's usually reserved for mafia and cartel bosses not ordinary drug dealers.
I got this info from Nick Bilton who wrote American Kingpin and researched this case extensively.
It's just insane to me the government was like, "look, when us and our informants showed up shit got violent! And hey he was convicted on a conspiracy that could include murder as a overt act no matter that the jury was never required to indicate that was the overt act on which they convicted but fuck it we'll use it in the sentencing"
Regarding your statement. I think both are wrong. If agreeing to pay someone for murder is real violence, then so is offering murder. Both the cop and the one paying should be jailed.
Someone who orders and pays for murder wants someone to be killed.
But a scammer/cop who doesn't want to kill anyone in the first place can't be guilty of murder. And they aren't violent, because they haven't committed any violent crimes.
At most they have committed fraud. But as I understand - illegal contracts are unenforciable. You can't sue someone for not doing something illegal on your behalf.
So idk if it even counts as fraud if the contract is legally void in the first place.
I personally applauded the "soft" msm interviews with SBF as everything he does when given free reign, including these messages only makes things worse for him. They would be better placed letting him attempt witness tampering and who knows where it might lead.
If the people he wants to talk to are overseas, SBF can give his counsel their contact details, and have them arrange for a local lawyer to be on the spot.
I'm really surprised he's not in jug!
To summarize the pattern:
Brooks: "I want to do <thing>"
Judge: "You can't do <thing>, because <we're not at that phase yet | we're past that phase | that's not actually a thing you can do in court>"
Brooks: "So I can't defend myself?"
Brooks' response expands a specific constraint into being completely restrained from defending himself. Your statement seems to be applying the same logic. I don't think that logic is particularly sound.
A defendant being unwilling to follow court process and procedure is in no way the court restricting that defendant's right to defend themselves.
Or just reas the brief in full, it is short and a pretty pleasant read.
That's pretty much everyone he knows from the last 10 years of his life.
If that's really what they want, just say it, don't play semantic games like this.
That's pretty much what a lot of laws are
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34089507
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34089879
There is no overreach here, his agreement lays out who he can and can't contact without lawyers being present. His former employees are very clearly not to be contacted as they will certainly be witnesses in his case.
This isn't some rule they made up for SBF, this is how every court case works. Why are you constantly shilling, and very incorrectly at that, for SBF all the time?
If he really wanted to reach out as a friend then he could have done so on the record via his lawyer as the law allows for.
That's not how reality works. He's guilty or innocent already, and what happens at trial won't change that. He's entitled to a legal presumption of innocence, same as any defendant.