Ex-Alameda CEO Ellison Emerges as Central Figure at Bankman-Fried Trial | Hacker News Reader

Ex-Alameda CEO Ellison Emerges as Central Figure at Bankman-Fried Trial

bloomberg.com

39 pointssiftrics27 comments

Look at the total compensation numbers for everyone involved. They did Caroline dirty.

Link: https://www.businessinsider.com/caroline-ellison-paid-6-mill...

It seems undeniable they were stealing from people and she knew and was part of the operation. She is likely going to get a minimal sentence by cooperating with the prosecution. The only ethical person in the room resigned as soon as he realized what FTX and Alameda were doing according to his testimony in court today. SBF managing to give his girlfriend much less compensation in stolen money than his father seems like a minor lapse compared to all the other actual criminal acts going on here.

Hmm, no, giving her significantly lower compensation would be highly criminal and bad if it was the case that it was because of her gender

I don't think it's due to gender per se (not that this necessarily matters to the trial). More likely SBF just found her to be the easiest to exploit. There's certainly a correlation (a dude would have slightly different reasons to allow himself to be exploited), but my priors are that gender isn't the direct cause here.

so it wasn’t because of her gender. but she was easy to exploit, unlike the boys.

(the woman was easiest to exploit, coincidentally.)

she was also “his girlfriend” for a time.

sbf likes easy targets with low risk of blowback. moves like a particular type of abusive personality. the little boy who can’t be held accountable.

and now she’s testifying against him.

that’s not even getting into systemic gender bias, but that might not jive with your perception of dudes’ motivations.

Out of interest, if the above were proved to be true, could she theoretically bring a gender discrimination case -- even if the whole thing is a massive fraud which she was complicit to?

Sam Trabucco joined later but made much more. It's strange that she would take such a risk for a meagre 6 million, and presumably knowing about Alameda's finances and profitability. Maybe she was not that into money and had other motivations...

She seems less... aware. There's a video out there where she answers a question about their use of math that makes it seem like she was more of a figurehead who was in over her head rubber stamping all sorts of stuff that made her uncomfortable, but doing it anyway because 'it's working'.

Or just bad at negotiating

> Look at the total compensation numbers for everyone involved.

I looked again but I don't see these in the article.

It's not in the article.

https://www.businessinsider.com/caroline-ellison-paid-6-mill...

Do you have a link for this? I haven't followed the trial closely.

Updated my parent comment. 6 million to SBFs 2.2 billion.

https://archive.ph/zSvMo

A clear warning to never go into business with your boy/girlfriend. (Ellison in this case)

Business relationships need clear, rational boundaries or there will be hell to pay.

You are right that dating at work can lead to a lot of drama and should be avoided.

That being said, that was not the problem at FTX/Alemeda. The problem with FTX was it was a fraud. San Bankman-Fried speculated with customer money while lying about what he was doing. FTX explicitly stated it did not speculate with customer money on its web site.

But are you more likely to collude or perpuate a fraud with someone you are dating or close with ? Theranos is another fraud that, while a different situation, included dating between two high ranking members of the company .

That could indicate that these sorts of relationships help frauds grow which is part of the problem.

Or people who are prone to commiting fraud also hold less reservations about workplace romance.

>But are you more likely to collude or perpetuate a fraud with someone you are dating or close with?

Of course!

(Just a reminder that 60% of adults have had a workplace romance.

In case some engineers were trying to optimize out that risk too, while wondering why they have difficulty meeting anyone.

You’re barely staying at these jobs for 18 months, don't worry about it failing and being awkward, it wont be for long)

There's not much point using parentheses if you're going to surround your entire post with them.

60%?

/me looks at wife and 1/10 of myself dubiously.

Citation needed

Oh of course, I'm not condoning his behaviour at all. That he (formally still allegedly) behaved like a crook seems clear.

Or, you know, do not steal billions from your customers.

Ohhhhhh so it was all her fault. I see now. Makes perfect sense.

Eh, the article is extremely unclear as to what the context is surrounding the assertion since opening statements should be finished on the day after the jury is empaneled, and so "when it's their turn" could refer to either opening statements (which is aimed at essentially nobody but more of an outline of the case from each side for the jury) or cross examination (which might be a bit early, but not impossible, but certainly would be directed at Ellison specifically).

It's impossible to tell without transcripts or at the very least better reporting, but the whole "it was someone else's fault" defense tends to work better when that someone else openly admits that it's their fault instead of the other way around. Federal prosecutors, in any case, don't fall for that anymore, although it is still very very very occasionally seen in state courts where a witness given immunity testifies that they were the guilty party when the issue involves identification and the act can only involve either/or and not both potential codefendants and there are no witnesses. Those are the types of cases that the feds would much rather decline prosecution to let the state prosecutors have their shot if they don't think they can get a plea anyhow. Cases where the feds are willing to go to trial on are almost always cases where defense ends up trying to mitigate instead of going for a straight acquittal on all counts, especially since this is really just a fraud/money laundering case and there's little chance of the government making their case too complicated for the jury. SBF not taking a plea is frankly idiotic but then again, the first murder trial I've been part of the defense for, we worked our asses off and got a hung jury, prosecutor offered a manslaughter 2, time served, which is as close to a win for us as we can get outside of acquittal, but the client adamantly refused and retrial on the same evidence got the kid 28 years so, lead a horse to water, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com