Sam Bankman-Fried: Convicted 'Crypto King' will not face second trial | Hacker News Reader

Sam Bankman-Fried: Convicted 'Crypto King' will not face second trial

bbc.com

55 pointsbelter95 comments

How fortunate for the recipients of circa $100 million political campaign donations SBF made from customer funds that a second trial will not now take place.

The politicians have already been publicly shamed and many gave back the money.

If you've already won the election, who cares about giving back the money?

Speaking of people with no shame, what are his parents up to?

Which ones gave back the money? This is an old source[0], but it repeatedly says "donate or return" and then has a handy filterable table at the bottom where you can discover for yourself that "donate or return" means "donate."

[0]: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/here-are-the-politicians-p...

I'm not sure it is as nefarious as you make it out to be. Had the trial proceeded I'm not sure it would have implicated any politicians (his donations are public knowledge already). This may be a 'slight' leniency given that his guilty verdict will land him in prison for decades. Having another trial on a semi-related charge to run up the 'score' in terms of the number of years in prison is unnecessary. Isn't this also following the terms of extradition from the Bahamas?

Donating isn't a crime. The charges that will never see the light of day in a court are for campaign finance violations and bribery, which are crimes - and not just on behalf of the 'sender.'

https://ia801508.us.archive.org/25/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.5...

Here is the stated reasoning:

"After obtaining the Superseding Indictment, the United States sent a request to The Bahamas for a waiver of the rule of specialty to permit trial on the Additional Counts. However, the defendant moved to intervene in the extradition process in The Bahamas, delaying the process. Accordingly, the Government consented to the Courts severance of the Additional Counts and proceeded to trial on the seven counts for which the defendant was originally extradited. To date, The Bahamas has not agreed to waive the rule of specialty, and the Government does not have a timeline for when The Bahamas may respond to its request. Nonetheless, as described above, the Government proved at trial the conduct underlying the Additional Counts. Indeed, trial on the Additional Counts would feature much of the same evidence that was presented at the initial trial. And, importantly, a second trial would not affect the United States Sentencing Guidelines range for the defendant, because the Court can already consider all of this conduct as relevant conduct when sentencing him for the counts that he was found guilty of at the initial trial."

So they didn't find him guilty of those counts, but they still sentenced him as if he had been convicted? That's quite odd.

Sentencing has not occured yet. Sentencing has now been pushed back to mid-May.

https://ia801508.us.archive.org/25/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.5...

The "public interest" is served by exposing corrupt politicians, not by not prosecuting someone who was allegedly bribing them and/or committing campaign finance violations.

I think it was smart to separate charges. Juries don't like long trials. They don't like complicated charges either. The fraud is a slam dunk and will result in a significant sentence. It's also largley unrelated to bribery.

Anyone who gets charged (let alone convicted) on campaign finance in the US is an absolute buffoon. Why? Because bribery is legal in the US. It's called "lobbying". You can also hire politicians for "speaking engagements". Lastly, you can contribute pretty much as much money as you want through PACs and super-PACs.

The fact that anyone gets charged with this at all is a testament to human stupidity, greed and hubris.

>The "public interest" is served by exposing corrupt politicians

What is the corruption here?

> Three of his former close friends and colleagues, including his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against him in hopes of reducing their own sentences.

This kind of deal feels a bit like torture, or duress at least.

Cooperating with the prosecution is torture and duress? I'd be ok giving them maximum sentences either way, but they have the opportunity to cooperate to reduce the charges or sentences

I was unclear.

My point was that since they are encouraged to cooperate with a stick and a carrot, they might be less impartial and offer more hearsay in the hopes of getting less of the stick.

Pure speculation on my part; I wonder if there was any research into that.

I think in general you’ll find there’s very little science to the justice system. Many people have been and continue to be been convicted - and in some cases executed - on pseudoscience and unproven methodologies.

Don’t worry, it isn’t.

Aw, poor things.

SBF has asked for an extension of time to pull together material for the Presentencing Investigation Report. His sentencing date is coming up in March.

It's not clear from the letter why he needs more time. Maybe SBF believes he can get some prominent people to make statements on his behalf, like people did for Elisabeth Holmes. Then she tried to flee to Mexico. For a friend's wedding. SBF will need a better plan. Martin Shkreli, super genius, offered to be his penpal in prison so maybe a source for brilliant ideas.

"Prosecutors said the "strong public interest" in a resolution of their case against the former billionaire outweighed benefits of a second trial."

How can they say that until sentencing has been completed? What if he's to serve everything concurrently with bail allowed after 10 years? How can the public interest be weighed against an unknown quantity?

This is a hint to the judge to give SBF a lot of years.

I'm not sure that's how sentencing works.

I bet the recipients of his campaign donations are disappointed at this released-right-before-a-holiday news.

Yeah, I wouldn't consider myself much of a conspiracy person but this does not sit right. Even if there wasn't overt pressure to drop the cases the folks involved probably realized that in the course of litigating the case they would make a lot of important people angry (or at least irritable over being painted in a likely less than flattering light).

They will be positively distraught that the charges for campaign finance violations and conspiracy to commit bribery won't come to trial. Sadly that trial just wasn't in the public interest.

I do find it odd that almost all of the negative coverage of crypto, SBF, FTX, etc. has avoided his political donations. Unless I'm misunderstanding what happened here (and please correct me if I'm wrong), but it very much seems like FTX stole money from regular people to use for lobbying and influencing elections. I can't think of anything more anti-democratic than that.

Yeah it's just reliably the top 1 or 2 comments on anything related to SBF as well as being discussed in no fewer than 10 articles in a small publication called the New York Times.

It's not so much that it's avoided entirely, just that the narrative has been about the corruption of the crypto industry and SBF himself and not what the money was used for and what that indicates about the political system as a whole.

Campaign finance reform is a popular issue with voters, not so much policymakers. Same as voting and election reform.

What it says is that industries can perform regulatory capture by funding the right people in office. Crypto just doesn’t have the same clout at oil and gas and other groups.

Yeah, I get that it can feel "off," but practically I'd actually much prefer that we focus the money theft conversation on money theft and the campaign reform conversation on campaign reform.

I.e. the fraud isn't made worse by the fact it was turned into donations and, likewise, campaign donations of that sort aren't less troublesome when they're made with legitimately-earned money.

I.e. the fraud isn't made worse by the fact it was turned into donations

Not sure how that's true. If he scammed a bunch of people to buy a boat, that's one thing. If he scammed people and then directly influenced a very close election, that seems a little worse?

I don't think it makes the scam worse.

For example, imagine this was the test case that people wanted to push on campaign finance reform. Politicians finally give in and say "yeah you know you're right, this was really wrong. From now on, funding campaigns via dark money channels with stolen money is punishable by death."

Is campaign finance fixed? Did we make any meaningful progress on any actually meaningful problem?

Fixing campaign finance is a separate issue from the particular scenario that played out. I don't see how that's controversial or confusing.

As I said, this seems like a particularly relevant and influential example, considering that it affected a close election.

What would "good" look like for you?

Good what?

An adequate handling of the campaign finance component. You're expressing that the handling/reaction/attention toward this facet of the SBF case is inadequate. What would've been adequate to you?

Who did FTX/SBF fund, how close were these elections, what other political consequences were downwind of this? Who would have potentially won without the funding?

From a Time article:

Bankman-Fried contributed more than $70 million to election campaigns in less than 18 months, placing him among the nation’s top political donors. He personally gave at least $40 million to politicians and political action committees ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, mostly to Democrats and liberal-leaning groups, making him the second overall top donor to Democrats, only behind George Soros, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Bankman-Fried also donated a significant amount to fundraising committees and super PACs affiliated with both parties. The biggest single recipient was Protect Our Future, a Democratic-aligned super PAC that claims it was “designed to help elect candidates who will be champions for pandemic prevention.” The group received $27 million from Bankman-Fried, and supports effective altruism, a philanthropic movement premised on the use of reason and data to allocate money, which Bankman-Fried also supports. Beneficiaries of Protect Our Future include Carrick Flynn, who lost a Democratic primary in Oregon’s 6th District, George Rep. Lucy McBath and Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett.

The former crypto king made one of the largest donations to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020, contributing $5.2 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...

So again, you're telling me that this guy stole money from regular people and then used it to support a candidate that ultimately won the election? How is that not the single biggest aspect of this story and a daily headline for the last two years?

>>So again, you're telling me that this guy stole money from regular people and then used it to support a candidate that ultimately won the election? How is that not the single biggest aspect of this story and a daily headline for the last two years?

Because there's no reason to believe that money particularly did anything to sway the election or to buy him influence afterwards.

The only reason anyone cares is because a bunch of jackasses were like "he donated to the DEMS! he'll NEVER see the INSIDE OF A COURT ROOM!" and then when he absolutely did in fact get charged those same jackasses started trying to save face by just repeating the first sentence even louder.

> Because there's no reason to believe that money did anything to sway the election or to buy him influence afterwards.

What proof do you have of this statement? If donating so much money that it places you "among the nation’s top political donors," yet it has no effect on the election, why does anyone donate money at all?

Money isn’t just more dollars equals more votes or more dollars equals this person does what I say. If that was true, Hillary would have won in 2016 and SBF wouldn’t be getting ready for a long time in Federal prison.

Presumably he donated to democrats because he prefers the political platform of that party and wished to signal that support to others (including non-politicians). That he’s one of the good billionaire. Obviously that isn’t the case.

NYT ran stories making him out to being a victim, how his family was "caught on the middle," how FTX was simply a success story turned to bad luck. NYT effectively lead blocking PR

Can you produce links to and specific passages from the NYT articles that make him out to be a victim?

Here's a breakdown of one of them: https://gizmodo.com/nytimes-bizarre-softball-article-ftx-sam...

It would be more accurate to say that the NYT has been far too eager to positively misrepresent and run interference for crypto in general, so of course the face of crypto got his fair share of that for a couple of years.

This reads to me like run of the mill softball reporting on white collar crime. I don't get the impression that's what GP was alleging, but if it is, then yep, agreed.

If Madoff were stupid enough to take a NYTimes interview shortly after implosion, I don't think it'd look much different. (Edit: Actually, quite a bit more glowing, and not even an interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/nyregion/13madoff.html)

Yeah, and it's not like his crimes were stealing money, with where the money went being largely incidental to the theft.

Don't worry, some of the politicians who received money stolen from regular people have verbally committed to donating the same amount of money to their own nonprofits.

He donated to both sides, the objective seems to have been to influence crypto policy and regulation.

Technically true, but effectively irrelevant

How is that irrelevant? Usually when someone is caught bribing politicians with billions of dollars of stolen money, it's considered kind of relevant where that money went?

Bribes to Democratic Party and related entities vastly outweighed those to republican.

https://x.com/unusual_whales/status/1741188908694864126?s=46...

Can you specify what exactly it is that you think is "irrelevant"? Because it sounds to me like you are contradicting yourself. First you say it's irrelevant where the money went, now you sound like it's relevant after all?

I'm fairly confident all of Bankman-Fraud's donations went to the wealthy and well-connected.

The majority of his publicly known 'donations' went to the 'Protect Our Future PAC' [1] which is about "pandemic preparedness and planning."

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_Our_Future

Not really. He gave $40M to democrats and $200k to republicans. [0]

If his aim was to influence crypto policy then he would have donated very differently. It appears he was lobbying for his own political ideology and not just to benefit his crappy company.

[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/here-are-the-politicians-w...

We don't really know what the split was. SBF has claimed he donated significantly more to the republicans. From your link above:

The GOP donations were "dark-money" contributions, making his claim difficult to verify. Such secret contributions, allowed by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, wouldn’t show up in the FEC disclosures used to compile MarketWatch’s list

> SBF has claimed

I put little weight on the words of a convicted fraudster who is in jail awaiting sentencing.

What would he have to gain by lying about spending even more customer money? I see it as a boast of how well he was playing the game; and also an admission that he was trying to buy influence.

If he primarily donated to one party, the donations advance Sam's political views.

If he equally donated to both parties, the donations advance FTX's interests.

I believe that Sam would advance his own interests then lie to make himself appear neutral.

Yes I concede this is possible too.

His partner took care of the Republicans. They split their responsibility to fairness.

Would be tough to ask donors to give an extra 100mm back, or ask politicians to sell assets during a recession-recovery, during election season for a president (who may have also been a recipient?).

Biggest losers here are the creditors of FTX, BlockFi, and other US persons who need the estate to get back as much money as they can.

Seems like donations are still a lite-immunity pass (he’s still going to jail, but not longer). Also might protect the parents from criminal liability (not civil), which gives credence to a number of ‘political immunity’ conspiracies

Why were the campaign finance violations and conspiracy to commit bribery charges separated from the first trial?

Seems like someone is protecting the other parties involved in those crimes.

I think this was actually more of a risk mitigation measure from the prosecution's side if memory serves -- this way if one case fell flat or something happened (you never know, maybe the judge rules some evidence can't be included or some weird technicality happens that skews the case towards the defendant) they would still have other charges to file to get a second attempt at prosecuting SBF.

From https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-30/ftx-founder-sam-bankm...

"He had been extradited in December 2022 from the Bahamas, where FTX was based, to face the seven earlier charges. The Bahamas has yet to grant its consent for a trial on the remaining charges, however, leaving the timetable uncertain, prosecutors said."

Sorry to burst the bubble of the conspiracy theorists.

Huh! Interesting that the extraditing country has that sort of right. Curious if that's a right or more of a courtesy/norm?

It makes perfect sense if you think about the opposite scenario.

US: We want you to extradite this guy for fraud.

Bahamas: No problem, he's all yours.

US: You are under arrest for murder; enjoy the electric chair.

Bahamas: Wait a minute!

Well the norm definitely makes sense, mostly because if you do that then other countries won't want to extradite folks to you. But I'm curious if that's actually a right. For example, you could imagine that you extradite the guy for fraud then find evidence that he also committed murder.

If you want to add charges you just have to re-extradite which should be no harder than the original extradition. It's not some kind of get out of jail free loophole.

Don't worry, I wasn't thinking it's some get out of jail free loophole :)

I'm not sure if the American prosecutors are legally bound to the agreed terms, but pragmatically, you want to respect the agreement for the sake of potential future extraditions. If you break the terms today, the Bahamas aren't going to go to war over that with you, but they may deny future extradition requests.

Yeah it totally makes sense. I'm wondering about the "I'm not sure if..." part of your comment though.

That in no way negates the possible existence of a conspiracy. Officials in the Bahamas may have received bribes and want to cover that up.

So the logical question now is: why did the Bahamas refuse to grant consent for a trial on those charges?

The campaign finance charge from the indictment is for directing donations through a third party to hide the source of the contributions. The evidence (Singh's testimony) was already presented in court.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/united-states-attorney-...

He's already got a ~life sentence, prosecutors don't need to waste their time and the judiciary's time giving him life + cancer. This isn't a tin foil hat conspiracy.

Can you provide a source about his sentencing?

It's a figure of speech. We don't know the exact sentence but we know it will be a very long time. You didn't think "life + cancer" was literal, did you?

It’s not about punishing him. It’s about bringing to light the names of the corrupt politicians.

It's quite specifically about whether to put Sam Bankman-Fried on trial when he's already going to jail for the rest of his life.

The reason to seek additional convictions is to prevent some future reversal of a single charge letting the convict free to damage the public even more.

The reason to try him is to punish him.

From the article:

"His sentencing has been set for 28 March."

Yes, we don't know the exact number yet, but he's 31 and it'll be at least 50 years.

He's probably just as smart as he is greedy. Hopefully we can find a way to put is brain to use in prison. It would be fun to give him the resource he needs to work on hard problems.

He comes off as really dumb and avoidant to me.

He will be highly unlikely to have access to any material outside resources. He’s not going to get special treatment.

Leaving aside whether he would actually be capable of much more than additional grift with those resources.

I haven't seen substantial evidence that he is exceptionally "smart" to the point that we need to utilize his brain in particular while he's in prison.

I agree. I also really wonder if the donations really did much, or (if like everything else) he just budgeted X dollars for politicians thinking it would magically help him.

You want him to play League of Legends from prison?

Cruel and unusual punishment: play LoL with a special matchmaking algorithm that always teams you with griefing trolls.

Easy. Just login.

Dunno when was the last time you played but right now this is basically like playing with furious toxic bots

How about we give everyone in prison the opportunity to do good things, use their brains, and better themselves? Why limit it to just this one asshole? Because he's a tech nerd?

I wonder what's gonna happen to the cooperating witnesses. Their CTO has been pretty active on GitHub!

https://github.com/garywang

you underestimate timing / luck, and the overwhelming draw of a ponzi scheme.

the main thing he needed was the audacity.. chutzpah... effrontery to ignore the consequences and commit whole heartedly.

He was always going to get caught, and he ignored that.

This is a fun comment because you make him sound like Lex Luther.

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