It's worth noting that a huge amount of the government's case involved evidence that SBF and team were buying lavish oceanfront condos, paying superstar athletes for weird TV commercials, etc.

This was actually a tiny slice of the overall financial mischief at FTX. But it told well in front of a jury. And it reinforced a big point that prosecutors keep wanting to make, as publicly as possible. "Don't take the customers' money to live large on your thefts!" That's a message that they want countless bookkeepers, financial planners, etc. to hear, again and again.

So, yes, they wanted to make an example out of SBF. The intricacies of FTX's full financial gyrations were sometimes too complicated to put in front of a jury. But the clueless or duped crypto-trading clients got a free bailout anyway. It came on the back of a prosecution that was largely intended to be a public slapdown of a guy committing lifestyle offenses with other people's money.