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Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

Yes she cooperated and pleaded early, but damn, she got off easy compared to SBF.

It turns out sentencing cares whether you’re cooperative and contrite or you stand by having done nothing wrong.

...the primary effect of which is that fewer than 4% of criminal cases go to trial, and our prison, parole, and probation systems are full of people who pled to crimes they did not commit, and poison trees of evidence are intentionally and ruthlessly planted without challenge or consideration by a jurist.

The majority of cases don’t go to trial because the majority of cases are hopeless for the defendants.

Law-abiding citizens wouldn’t have a 50% recidivism rate.

While it’s admirable to push back against the state, not all defendants earn our sympathy in their plight.

>Law-abiding citizens wouldn’t have a 50% recidivism rate.

What if being incarcerated has an affect on this value?

It unquestionably does - it turns out destroying your job prospects for life, removing a major contributor to a household for years, and destroying family relations in the process lends itself to continuing having strife in your life, or having strife when you previously had none

> The majority of cases don’t go to trial because the majority of cases are hopeless for the defendants.

...but are the lion's share of these hopeless on the basis of the evidence, combined with a fair process and a just, civically-informed legal framework?

A person who is searched pursuant to a prompted canine indication, and found to be in possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine has a "hopeless" case, but they have committed no offense to society that I can recognize, and their inclination to plea to a lesser charge means that the particulars of the search will never be heard by a jurist.

> Law-abiding citizens wouldn’t have a 50% recidivism rate.

This seems like a testable hypothesis, albeit only after a successful completion of the abolitionist movement. I'll bet that, in a society focused on restorative justice and no dependence on a slave economy dressed up as incarceration, that nobody will have a 50% recidivism rate.

> While it’s admirable to push back against the state, not all defendants earn our sympathy in their plight.

Agreed, of course. But there's no justice in taking even the worst in society forcing them to be laborers to make Starbucks packaging. Let's remove the incentive structure first, and decide how to distribute our sympathies second.

I don't think the answer is more lawyers/judges and court rooms to fill that 96%

...of course not. But dramatically less chargeable conduct, dramatically more robust protections against search and seizure, and the complete removal of the slave labor incentive inherent in prisons might just remove it without further ado.

>dramatically less chargeable conduct

This is going to be hard to sell. "dramatically" sounds like >50%, and I assume not just old laws on the books that aren't in-forced. So you want to remove >50% of chargeable offenses? What else besides drugs?

The estimated innocent population is around 9%. A far cry from the majority. This is just populist trash.

Now if you want to make a majority claim about those incarcerated being incarcerated for something which a rich person would go free, that’s something else

9% is huge, that is a complete failure, this isn’t some exam, it is people’s lives.

Well running an investment firm into the ground is more legal than using deposited funds in an exchange to bail out an investment firm that is being run into the ground.

She didn't just run Alameda to the ground. She knew Alameda was using FTX customer funds, which makes her directly complicit. She got off easy because of her cooperation and guilty plea.

No. Alameda and FTX were the same company, in the end. Co-mingled, and no separate governance. Legally speaking, all of the inner circle people ran both companies, and they all knew about the crimes.

The difference is the plea deal.

They were legally the same?

They = the people? Not precisely. Each of the perpetrators did certain things, agreed to certain things, and knew things at certain times. But I was responding to the notion in the parent that CE was just "running an investment firm" whereas SBF was running a company doing different stuff. It turned out to be all one co-mingled entity, contrary to how it was marketed. One company, and all of the main perpetrators knew things about both sides.

> They = the people?

Honestly I wasn't sure what you meant by adding "legally speaking". It seemed to imply there was some legal ruling that both companies were the same. Cause otherwise imho there is no difference "they ran both companies" and "they ran both companies as a matter of law".

she pocketed nothing, lived modestly (her complices earned much more) and was invaluable to the case.

Didnt she live with the rest of those frauds on tropical island in a sex commune?

Really? all the media reports contradict this statement.

Eh, I am pretty sure Trump is gonna end up pardoning SBF. It just seems like the sort of thing that is going to happen.

Does SBF still have money?

probably some secret keys stashed somewhere

Do his parents?

Not sure what he would gain from that. The crypto community largely backed him in the last election, and pardoning SBF would seriously piss them off.

> Not sure what he would gain from that.

What? It's a bribe, he gains money. He doesn't care about pissing anyone off, he's (probably) not running for reelection, he cares about money, it's really that simple.

He also cares about normalizing financial fraud, establishing that it’s no big deal.

Ok, but does SBF still control enough money that Trump would care about it?

Trump already got donor money and he's a lame duck. 'Pissing off crypto community' does not factor highly into his decision making processes. Pardoning him would probably help crypto go up.

Trump could do it... to piss off SBF himself (second biggest donor to Biden/democrats behind Soros)

SBF claims to have spread money equally between the parties, but hid the Republican donations:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sam-bankman-fried-says-donate...

That doesn't make his claim any less factual, and we have no idea if he gave money to Trump.

The claim that it would piss off SBF is not a factual claim.

> "Not sure what he would gain from that."

Besides the ~$1 million a head he's openly selling[0] pardons for?

Why wouldn't he pardon a white-collar felon fraudster? This president has pardoned dozens of those[1]—frauds who had no reason at all to be deserving of clemency, other than being incredibly rich. He's pardoned fraudsters who defrauded thousands of victims[2]. He's pardoned a fraudster convicted of fraud, who committed fraud again, and he pardoned them a second time[3]. There are no limits.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-presidential-pardo... ("Inside the New Fast Track to a Presidential Pardon / Lobbyists close to Trump say their going rate to advocate for a pardon is $1 million")

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_granted_executi... ("List of recipients of executive clemency from Trump")

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/us/politics/trump-david-g... ("Trump Frees Fraudster Just Days Into Seven-Year Prison Sentence / David Gentile had been found guilty for his role in what prosecutors described as a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of investors.")

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/us/politics/trump-fraudst... ("Trump Sets Fraudster Free From Prison for a Second Time")

> "The crypto community largely backed him in the last election"

Gee golly; I wonder why.

From Trump's POV, $1 million is probably not worth the ensuing backlash.

FWIW, prediction markets don't seem to believe he will be pardoned either[0].

[0] https://polymarket.com/event/who-will-trump-pardon-before-20...

Wha backlash? Trump pardoned a Honduran ex-president convicted of smuggling tons of drugs, right in the midst of using the military to bomb boats for unproven drug smuggling, and kidnapped Maduro presumably because of drugs too (or was it oil?). Zero repercussions except for futile anger from internet weirdos like me.

This administration seems to relish getting away with things that would destroy any other presidency.

By the way, have any more boats been bombed since the US ousted Maduro?

Yes.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-35th-strike-alleged-drug-boa...

The backlash was relatively mild because few of his supporters personally see themselves as victims of the Honduran ex-president. That's very different from SBF—almost everyone who invested in crypto at the time hates him, not to mention the actual FTX customers.

Everybody hates Trump, he's the least popular president ever.

Unless these crypto folks have massive money and are using it right now to pay Trump tk not pardon SBF, what would they do? What backlash could crypto do? It's not like he can unpardon Trump. Crypto just joins the long line of people who fell for it again and nothing happens.

What, is a Republican going to vote against Trump? Hah! Impeachment? What trouble could crypto cause for Trump? Even if they could cause trouble, Trump would just make up charges and send the DOJ after crypto.

I mean, even his own son would probably be pissed at him. Not to mention pretty much everyone in his crypto entourage, which is a lot of people.

You are avoiding my questions. What does their anger matter? Concretely, how could that impact Trump?

Like most people, he probably understands the value of keeping a few friends and allies close, even if it's purely self-interest. At Trump's scale, some relationships are worth billions, so a bribe of a few million can be a poor trade-off if it risks burning a high-value relationship.

Trump is not a normal person with normal friends.

Sure some relationships might be worth it, but whose? Trump already got the votes, which is what let him avoid prosecution for insurrection, mishandling of classified documents, etc. etc.

What friend or relationship would he lose for pardoning SBF? It has to be a billionaire, because he respects billionaires, or it has to be somebody paying home more than SBF to keep SBF in jail. What billionaire would risk their relationship with Trump in order to express displeasure about pardoning SBF? Wha person would pay more than SBF to keep SBF imprisoned?

Again and again Trump burns people that supported him. There is zero loyalty, everything is purely transactional.

I'll give a concrete example. Suppose he were to pardon SBF. That would likely anger figures like CZ (Binance) and Brian Armstrong (Coinbase). In response, they could choose to delist Trump's shitcoin, which alone could wipe out hundreds of millions in market cap. Anyways, I guess we'll see who’s right in about three years.

Thanks for that concrete example! It's far more convincing. However I'm still not fully convinced, as Trump has greater leverage due to the ability to change tax and other crypto policy. He already gets what he needs by allowing bribes through Trump's coins, listing is not the primary purpose.

I appreciate you exchanging this information and your opinion.

It is disappointing to me that people can look at the list of infamous people he has already pardoned, who have paid him, and then expect that he won't continue acting on trend, just because some shallow-book manipulable prediction market, which is primarily a money laundering tool for event fixers, tells us that it's "not likely".

I think that because of my own judgment, not because the market told me. Also, it seems unlikely that someone would burn money to manipulate this market as there's nothing to gain from it.

By the way, Trump literally said he won't pardon SBF[0]. It seems money is not the only factor he considers when handing out pardons.

[0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-not-pardon-sam-bankman-...

> By the way, Trump literally said he won't pardon SBF[0].

So Trump will pardon SBF?

> Not sure what he would gain from that.

A convenient distraction, perhaps.

> Not sure what he would gain from that.

Might be more like "what the people advising Trump would gain".

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