Holmes got 9 years, but her actions had severe real world effects on people. Is that the ceiling for SBF?
But considering that he was found guilty on all accounts and after the mess he was making during the trial, his sentence will most likely be no good news for him.
He is also kind of being made an example of to encourage more due diligence in the industry. Being bad at business is one thing, but handling billions without basic risk management is basically gambling with customer funds.
He actively gambled with customer funds, not just basically did because of poor institutional controls.
I believe the evidence in this trial will support a civil trial against him showing that he pierced the corporate veil, and that he was personally tied to FTX with some of his purchases with company funds.
As for what happens between conviction and sentencing, the typical law answer is: it depends..
He certainly has been in jail for some time already, as he could not help himself from doing stupid things, like contacting witnesses. Maybe it continues, maybe not. Maybe he'll be free for some time after sentencing too. They set a date when he has to show up at the prison.
Until then, it's mostly up to the judge. If he is deemed a flight risk, or continues to run his mouth, he very well may spend the time up to his prison sentence in jail. Though, as he cannot mess with his trial any more and he is not generally a danger to community, he could walk around some more. It depends..
My understanding is she was convicted for financial bits, not harming people.
I feel like for the most part Holmes had theoretical effects on people – tests that were fraudulent, but where an equivalent standard test was done at the same time, and so most likely everything was caught. I think the time she got made sense for the level of fraud, but thankfully I don't think her actions ended up being actively harmful to individuals (other than her employees) in almost all cases.
SBF on the other hand has conducted a significantly larger fraud in monetary terms, and caused many individuals to lose significant amounts of money. In a way I'd say these are bigger real-world effects. I think it's possible to conclude that he had a substantially bigger negative impact on the world than Holmes did, and therefore feels reasonable that his sentence will reflect that.
My guess is that he’ll get something closer to Bernie Madoff’s sentence than Elizabeth Holmes. She at least was pregnant at the time of sentencing and her defense was seemingly successful in painting her business partner as the puppeteer.
If you add up all of the crimes SBF was convicted of, the max could be 110 years. It isn't that simple. Sentencing is a complicated thing that could be replaced with a simple spreadsheet. Instead, judges have to do the calculations by hand with charts and checklists.
Madoff was sentenced to 150 years.
https://www.robertslawteam.com/blog/2013/05/early-release-fr...
> Federal law allows a credit of 54 days for every 365 days (or one year) of good behavior. To be eligible for early release, a person must be sentenced to more than one year in prison. ...
> The maximum number of days that can be awarded for good conduct is 54. The Bureau of Prisons has discretion to award any number of days less than 54 based on its evaluation of the inmate’s conduct.
The specifics are https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2021-title18/pdf/...
If sentenced to 30 years in federal prison, you'd be serving 85% of that time -- a bit over 26 years (after 26 years, 1404 days will be credited which is 3.8 years).
He's never going out of jail in his life. Sentencing is expected to be harsh, remember he had his bailed revoked for witness tempering!
On top of that, he's been convicted on 7 counts, but there's another trial in March 2024 for other felonies. He will spend the rest of his life between prison and the tribunal.
Both his parents are likely to be sentenced to jail as well.
I don't care if he does zero year, one year or 100 years. It's not as if he was a killer representing a serious menace on society. With what he did nobody will want to hire him, not even as an accountant for a small town's tennis table club.
Sure, he's a despicable person who was using stolen money to rent private jets to have amazon shipments sent to him in the Bahamas and he didn't hesitate to lie in court by pretending it was all the fault of his co-conspirators (co-conspirators who pleaded guilty btw) but all that counts is that now he's not going to scam people anymore.
The two private jets he bought, the luxury houses in the real estate in his parents name (another trial coming for his parents btw), his scamming company all have been seized.
The supposedly "billionaire kid genius", his parents, and his effective altruism guru (who bought a $15m mansion using stolen funds donated by FTX and who was part of the Alameda scam) all got exposed.
The true color of these people has been revealed.
It's game over.
Then there are a BUNCH of lessons to learn here. You kinda touch on a couple: "kid genius", "altruism guru", "bahamas" and so on. So how can we all learn from this? 1) there is no fast money?, 2) turtle wins the race?, 3) regulations are there for a good reason (in most cases)? 4) when you see athletes promote financial products run away?, and many many more..