Can someone knowledgable chime in with the realistic possible penalty for SBF? The news is saying "over 100 years" which I assume has only a tenuous relationship with reality.
I don't know enough of the details to plug it in to get an accurate estimate, but I'm pretty sure he managed to hit the maximum fraud offense level, at which point I'm getting an offense level of 40, which for a first time offender, is 24-30 years. Which is high enough that other factors (such as maximum sentences for crimes) are going to come into play, but it does strongly suggest that realistic prison time is going to be involve decades.
[1] This isn't entirely accurate, but maximum is a more accurate estimate than adding them all up. You actually group offenses by relatedness, and max within groups and sum the various groups, but for most practical purposes, there's only one group of offenses.
It's pretty cut and dry - he's looking at about 45 points on the sentencing table. Not too long ago these were mandatory guidelines and as a result he'd be looking at life in prison.
Now a days these are recommendations and since he got pretty lucky with the judge they'll likely discount it 50ish %. So realistically he's looking at 20 years and with good behaviour he'll be out in 10.
Just off the top of my head RDAP will get him 1 year off (he for sure qualifies) and then a halfway house is another year although not everybody loves those. I have no idea if he’d be able to pull off a 35b or not. But you get the idea, it’s not JUST time off for good behavior.
e.g.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/05/sam-bankman-fried-could-face...
It's really hard to say. On one hand he's a privileged white guy. On the other he stole from a lot of rich people. Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years, but in reality anything over 20 was a life sentence for him. I'm kind of expecting the court to throw the book at SBF simply because he was so brazen about it. When you get that far out of line people want to make an example out of you.
But yes. If you're a rich guy, best to avoid stealing from other rich people; it does seem to be one of the few things that results in them going to prison.
Oh man, that hurts, ha! In 15 years he'll still be younger than I am today. I know I'm old, but still, ouch.
The future is now, old man!
FTX was just a particularly fetid pool in a massive swamp of an industry.
This isn't to say he shouldn't get a decent chunk of prison time.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-14/celsius-b...
https://fortune.com/2022/06/14/celsius-freezes-assets-big-ca...
FWIW, and I don't know whether to be cynical or impressed by this, but claims ($19.5BB) against Madoff's fraud have been largely restituted ($14.6BB, ~75%).
There were individual human investors in both Madoff and FTX. There were also wealth funds and the absurdly rich in both.
But as it stands today, FTX may have done more harm to humans than Madoff.
She also claimed mitigating circumstances.
A. Max sentence:
Wire fraud on customers (20 years max) + conspiracy to commit same (20) + wire fraud on Alameda lenders (20) + conspiracy for same (20) + conspiracy securities fraud on FTX investors (20) + conspiracy commodities fraud (25) + conspiracy money laundering (20).
145 years total possible
B. Determine SBF's offense level under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, §2B1.1 (fraud): See https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/guidelines-manu... and Ctrl+F for "2B1.1" to ride along:
Base offense level (7 levels) + Greater than $550,000,000 loss (30 levels) + Resulted in substantial financial hardship to 25 or more victims (6 levels) + Offense otherwise involved sophisticated means (2 levels) + Defendant derived more than $1mm in gross receipts from one or more financial institutions (2 levels, maximum, due to a cap from earlier calculation) + Violation of securities / commodities law and defendant was "associated with a broker or dealer" or officer/director of a "futures commission merchant" (4 levels)
51 levels
C. Determine the Guideline sentencing range. See https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/guidelines-manu...
x axis: no criminal history. y axis, we calculated 51 levels.
The Guidelines therefore counsel life in prison.
D. Calculate sentence
The maximum sentence for each count is between 20-25 years. Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines § 5G1.2(d) and Second Circuit precedent, sentences will be stacked consecutively "to produce a combined sentence equal to the total punishment." United States v. Evans, 352 F.3d 65 (2d Cir. 2003). In our scenario, that would be 145 years. This is the same legal reasoning used in stacking Bernie Madoff's sentences in the same federal district court, by the way.
E. Judge chooses sentence. He can depart downward from the Guidelines
Appeals courts are deferential to trial court choices in sentencing, so Judge Kaplan will have substantial latitude in choosing a sentence. That said, a judge may not be too favorably disposed to a defendant who stole billions of dollars from over 1 million customers, most of whom were ordinary people; who used Tom Brady, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Shaq, and Larry David as unwitting pawns; who advertised his scam in the Super Bowl and splashed its name on an arena; who used customer money to buy lavish real estate in the Bahamas, purchase favor from politicians, and make reckless leveraged bets
Given that half of the chart is taken up by >75-year sentences, with some of them in the 200s and 300s, before hitting life, federal prosecutors seem to be a lot more confident in the miracles possible in the federal prison medical system than I am.
High profile trials (Musk, Trump, OJ Simpson, Madoff) are high variance in outcome.