SEC forgives three scammers who bilked Americans out of millions | Hacker News Reader

SEC forgives three scammers who bilked Americans out of millions

msn.com

160 pointspetethomas32 comments

At this point, the only way republicans will hear about this (other than republican engineers reading HN) is if a reporter gets on Joe Rogan and talks about it there.

Not even that. The link doesn't work anymore...

Worked fine for me just a minute ago

"Among the swindlers are Devon Archer, Trevor Milton and Carlos Watson, a trio of scammers who bilked Americans out of more than three quarters of a billion dollars."

"Archer was Hunter Biden's business partner. After he was caught in his investment scam, he helped prosecutors and congressional Republicans go after President Joe Biden's son."

"Milton is a multimillion-dollar donor to the 2024 Trump presidential campaign and had the wisdom to hire Brad Bondi, the brother of previous Trump lawyer, now-Attorney General Pam Bondi."

"Watson has ties to Trump pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson, recipient of a previous Trump pardon."

Feels like now more than ever, scammers should be made an example of?

They kind of are.

Well, not the kind of example you would want.

Coffeezilla on YouTube has been covering actions of SEC and other agencies in this administration. Lot of crypto and other scams are being forgiven especially if they have contributed to or somehow related to POTUS. In that small corner of the Internet there is a running meme - Crime is legal under this administration.

I mean, with all the TikTok ban extensions that are in no way supported by the ban bill, crime is literally legal now. The law is literally in a state of suspension.

Is the article taken down? Clicking the link just goes to a generic list of articles on MSN for me (redirects to msn.com).

Perhaps the link should be changed to the source referred to by a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45368383

Works for me (iPhone, UK)

Here's an archived link for those who can't get the article working. It's through MSN, which aggregates other site's pages, so the layout is kind of goofy & you have to click "continue reading" or "skip to content" which might be hidden behind weird ads/JS if you're not using an ad blocker.

https://archive.ph/kovD3

You haven't committed a crime if you've paid homage (bribe) to the orange Emperor, either via campaign donations, bitcoins, or stock purchase, or donation to his presidential library, or even booked a room in one of his hotels for $199. That's how much he has dragged the American Justice System for Sale; F'king Pathetic.

His enablers (Senate/House lawmakers, along with conservative judges) are equal partners in his shredding of values, ethics, and standards of this country.

This is text book fascism.

Woah now, Just because it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, doesn't mean you can you the "D" word. Some ducks might get offended! They might accuse you of fomenting violence like a duck might do!

You've left out the option of a golden trophy

Hope this doesn't set any kind of legal precedent.

I'm not sure legal precedent is much of a concern for this administration.

Do you really think laws still matter? Thats an honest question, not rhetorical.

We've seen over and over that laws are applied selectively to reward the in group and punish the out group.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/us/politics/sec-trump-cle...

Previous thread on the Nikola guy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45302220

Pay to play

The lesson here: steal as big as you can.

Link redirects me to the MSN homepage.

Non-MSN version:

https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/david-m...

Committed fraud? If you paid homage to the dictator, no you didn't...

Someones gotta power the emergent grift growth market

Disgusting.

The market should fix this, but it doesn't appear to be holding these folks to account.

Markets are very bad at holding people to account for anything

So is this administration. But markets are also bad at it

The market? Historically this would be more of a mob justice situation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_justice

The market only cares about what makes number go up, or what stops number from go up

Reply on news.ycombinator.com