Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison

If someone isn't a violent threat to society, there isn't much social benefit to keeping folks locked up longer then 20-ish years. 20-25 (assuming he gets the 15% off for good behavior the feds allow) is plenty.

Low? That's high! He didn't kill anyone. A sentence of 25 years completely destroys his life. He's been made an example of.

25 years is a damn long time. I don’t know how that can “seem low”.

25 years is a long time. Not saying he doesn't deserve more but his parents will probably be dead by the time he gets out, and he wont have a family.

Also, he was addicted to the internet (supposedly), he wont have access to that either.

Best teacher I had in high school taught economics. First day of class his lesson was "If you're going to become a criminal follow these 10 rules".

I can't remember all the rules but the two I do: 1. Don't do anything for less than $1M. Risk isn't worth the reward. 2. Don't use a weapon. It adds years to your sentence.

It was mostly about how white-collar crime has a much safer risk/reward ratio.

Shocked he’s going at all, was starting to feel like he’d get away with a slap on the wrist considering his contacts.

SBF is 32 years old. If (and it's a big if) he serves the entire 25 years, he will be 57 when he is free again. They are taking the best years of his life, and one day when he dies, having been imprisoned will be the defining event of his life - not being rich or being a CEO.

He may never marry, never have children, and will experience a very different (and far worse) life than most of the population. I have very little sympathy for the man, and I know draconian punishment is fashionable and cathartic, but I personally think this is a very suitable punishment for the very severe crime he committed.

It puts him in between Madoff and Holmes.

Shall I pull up some comps? It’s not going to be pretty

I think intent matters. I don't like what he did but I am convinced he didn't think he was doing something deceitful. Whereas Madoff had a guilty conscience and precisely crafted something intended to deceive.

It seems "the victimless crime" [1] became a normal line of defense when billionaires commit financial fraud. Insanity.

[1] https://youtu.be/EDMinX6t1Zk?t=420

I don't know. The appropriateness of the sentence is not something I feel super strongly about one way or the other, but 25 years is objectively a very long time. Think about what a typical person does in their first 25 years. That's long enough for a person to be born, go through early childhood, go through all of their basic schooling, attend college, get a job and work for 5 years, and have a kid of their own. Or, think about a 25 year old person, and put them next to a 50 year old person. Or a 50 year old person next to a 75 year old person. It's just a very long amount of time, no matter how you slice it.

He was playing fast and loose with clients' money (and ultimately made profitable investments). Elizabeth Holmes played fast and loose with medical testing and people's very lives. She got less than half this sentence.

It's been posted a thousand times already, there is no parole for federal sentences.

Parole is available after 1/3 of term

IIRC it's 85%. Federal prison does not have parole, but they do give some credit for good behavior, up to 15%.

He'll be out around 2040: https://x.com/wagieeacc/status/1768798879959400776?s=46&t=N5...

Shkreli far and away has been providing the most informed analysis of this case. He trashed the letters to the judge from SBF's parents, then Judge Kaplan went on to raise the exact points Shkreli said he would.

IIRC it was federal, where you need to do 2/3, no?

There’s no parole in federal cases

A cushy job as a guest speaker at fancy dinners for finance people perhaps?

25 years isn't a death sentence for him Parole is available after 1/3 of term, realistically he won't serve 100%

Federal prison does not have parole. Only good behavior options. But that could reduce it to 12.5, if he hits all behavior targets.

If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping.

I suspect the resulting number of shortened lives amongst all the people who lost $8 billion worth of their money due to the fraud is more than the number caused by a single murder.

"AUSA Nicolas Roos: Samuel Bankman-Fried stole $8 billion dollars. It was theft, from customers spread all over the world. It was a loss that impacted people significantly and caused damage. I want to address a few of the new victim letters"

"AUSA Roos: They lost their life savings. A man who lives in Portugal - the day before bankruptcy his daughter was born. He was marred by the ominous specter of financial instability and his daughter's future. Then there's the 23 year old from Morocco"

"AUSA Roos: He is the eldest son. He kept money on FTX not to loan it out to the defendant but for family's security. One more - a couple in the later stages of their life, late 60s, they invested with life savings. They were depressed, they had to go back to work"

https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/177336575999912795...

If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping.

The value of a single human life is not infinite. In engineering and public policy, a value like $10 million / life is typically used to make trade-offs. SBF stole funds far in excess of that.

Secondly, when funds of this scale are stolen, inevitably people wind up dying early from things like stress, and suicides.

Yea let’s let fraudsters run amuck, he damaged the lives of millions of people, fuck him

That's only one count of murder. One life destroyed. SBF destroyed numerous lives, so it is a relatively light sentence by that data.

So it should be really hard to argue that this is a "light" sentence.

The well-considered federal sentencing guidelines put the sentence for this crime at over 100 years. That is, for an anonymous defendant at remove, our legal system believes that 100+ years is a fair sentence for this set of offenses.

So another way of looking at this is because of who the specific defendant is here, the court shaved 80 years off the "fair" sentence. I would consider that a light sentence.

FTX was one of the biggest frauds in history.. and you're showing us averages. Madoff received a 150 year sentence, and that was with leniency for pleading guilty.

You're comparing to medians; is this a median crime?

Ghislane Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years.

I found the variance in sentencing data on the last couple of pages interesting. Notably there’s no variances in murder sentencing listed there. Does anyone know why that is? Are judges/juries not allowed to set sentences outside the guidelines for murder trials?

There is nothing "median" or "average" about this crime. This is one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history.

I'm not convinced by that; I think theft in many ways deserves a greater penalty.

Imagine if I rob 10,000 people of $2,000. Some people won't feel it. Others will be suicidal and may even commit suicide partially from hopelessness. There also could have ramifications that last years into the future, and cascade. (Can't buy new car to replace old car, don't have enough money now. Old car broke, missed work, got fired, found new job elsewhere that pays less...)

All this proves is that murderers get off way too easy.

Statistical value of a human life in the US is around $7.5 million. Stealing $10 billion is therefore statistically equivalent to killing 1300 people, or pretty close to half of 9/11. That seems like a pretty light sentence to me.

If anything, it's excessive if you consider the nature of the crime relative to the nature of murder or kidnapping.

It also affected tens of thousands of people more than a murder or kidnapping.

Wasn't perjury and witness tampering significant here though? Messing with the actual justice system should end with heavy punishment I guess.

Yeah, I agree. This should fall under “caveat emptor”. Everyone using unregulated exchanges (which IMO should be an option for everyone) should recognize that they are subject to additional risks (and benefits).

The government shouldn’t outlaw free climbing either.

It’s your own fault if you treat a bunch of foolish kids with millions of dollars the same way you would an onshore FDIC-insured regulated bank.

Canada Bill Jones would like a word.

If you conduct criminal activity while employed, you conducted criminal activity. You can't just walk into work at 8am, kill someone at 9am, and go home at 5. You still did the crime, and can be prosecuted for it.

So let me rephrase your question: can a US citizen file some papers internationally that would permit them to conduct criminal activities in the US against other US citizens.

The answer should not be surprising.

Can you elaborate on how FTX's losses were socialized here?

Those people are mostly hypocrites.

Your complaint would be solved with less gray area.

Businesses outside of the US should be able to do business with US citizens _without_ the consent of the US government. This comes with the caveat that if you, the customer, reject the "protection" of the US government, you are completely and totally SOL if things go south.

Let me just provide a counter-point. As an early crypto advocate, and someone who has lost thousands of USD to hackers and scammers, I did not ever expect the government to bail me out. As you said, the whole point of crypto was to free ourselves from these regulations, which means high risk high reward investments, and the opportunity to create truly innovative products. High risk means sometimes you lose your money, even to illegal and unethical actions.

The real tragedy is that NFTs turned into digital trading cards and DAOs turned into pump and dump scams. The really interesting use cases will appear once the USDT Tether books are exposed and Bitcoin price plummets. Imagine NFTs attached to shipping containers tracking custody throughout a series of mutually distrusting last mile carriers. Or DAOs that allow people to organize for collective action with radically transparent finances to prevent corruption and grift.

Of course I'm sure this will not go over well here on HN, where everyone reflexively hates crypto and loves government regulation. It's a bit ironic for a forum where the majority of members are engaged in the business of "disrupting" one or another traditional industry. Of course the industry of finance is too sacrosanct to risk such disruption. Why should Uber have to pay for taxi medallions though?

people still expect the government to come in and enforce a tiny subset of the financial laws they've otherwise been operating outside of.

I don't see how people ever expected the government not to enforce these financial laws on electronic currencies.

I'm not aware if any cryptobros advocating to decriminalize fraud. Fraud is always going to be illegal. This isn't some regulatory compliance thing.

Using crypto with or as a custodian never had that standard you are referring to.

Fascinating level of cognitive dissonance that is prevalant in this thread. It’s a mixture of conflating competing ideas, and strawman arguments to discredit crypto users.

Custodians are subject to liability based on their own citizenship, the citizenship of their clients, and the location of the infrastructure being used, it doesn't matter what type of asset is involved.

Dang, we should really flag these non sequitur posts on every crypto thread that appears on HN, we’re almost 20 years in and the discussion level is a large aberration lower compared to other tech topics on HN and other dev and enthusiast crypto forums still, when it should be the opposite. flagging practically everything would promote more substantive discussions by making that point to otherwise well adjusted people, and surfacing the things that work well within crypto to people that otherwise aren’t exposed to that.

Murder is still murder even if it’s a dispute between two criminals. I suppose the same is true of fraud. Law enforcement is always a socialized cost.

Though, there are fines. Apparently, FTX might owe $9 billion in fines and penalties and $10 billion other government litigation [1]? The creditors might not get much at all.

I don’t know what the users of a cryptocurrency exchange expect. I think there’s always some chance of a “rug-pull?”

[1] https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/US-v-...

This is a weird form of "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" but with the benefactors being the people intentionally avoiding all the financial laws.

No, it's, as usual, the government choosing to do the wrong thing with your tax money, because it will be bad publicity not to, because votes, because power.

I'm sure the people running the Bahamas-based exchanges (such as Sam) wouldn't like this law to be enforced.

The government must preserve the population even against themselfes.

Depending how south things go, you can get assasinated inside an embassy or killed in plain day light with the whole world knowing who did it.

That ship sailed years and years ago. You can buy Bitcoin ETFs from traditional investment companies (like Fidelity and BlackRock), and those companies aren't in it for the freedom.

More to the point, the IRS has been collecting taxes on Bitcoin earnings since around 2014[1]. Since the government is taxing you, it's fair to ask the government to protect you.

---

[1] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/freq...

> This is a weird form of "privatize the profits, socialize the losses" but with the benefactors being the people intentionally avoiding all the financial laws.

It was SBF who put it in the hands of the US by declaring bankruptcy in essentially 3 days instead of playing the long wait game

Also SBF who put it in the hands of the US by staying in the Bahamas and essentially waiting to be arrested (and immediately extradicted to the US) instead of fleeing to Cuba or Colombia or South America. 25ft Inflatable ribs can make that route.

During the first day of crisis he could have gone to Russia too by private plane and pull a Snowden

I agree 100%. You want to operate outside the law? That's fine with me, but you gotta accept the risks. However, that means you have to be extra-judicious about who you operate with. I've found it funny to hear crypto proponents scream about how the government needs to prosecute him yet they'll turn right back around and demand that the government needs to have less regulation and taxation of crypto.

You think so? 25 years seems quite reasonable to me. He stole billions of dollars.

Insanely low? Insanely high?

SBF hasn’t really accepted responsibility or apologized through the trial, and didn’t at sentencing either.

Judge Kaplan seems to have taken a balanced view — far from the statutory maximum, less than the U.S. wanted, more than the defense wanted.

There will of course be appeals — SBF has already indicated he will file one.

There’s good coverage of what took place at sentencing today here — https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/177334004374401064...

Also of note is since this is a federal conviction there is no parole in that system, and so unless SBF is successful in his appeal, he will spend at least 255 months in prison, that’s a 15% reduction versus the total sentence in return for good behavior while serving his sentence.

Three suicides related to the theft.

How so. Do you think it's too long, too short, too ...?

They've never made any sense to me, but neither do my country's sentence lengths. Ours seem too light, whereas the US's seem extreme.

I guess I'm really not sure what value there is to locking up someone like this for 25 years when in a sane system/society there should be far better options.

It is long enough to destroy his life. What matters if he gets out at 70 or 80 if he gets out at 60?

What is the goal of the punishment?

If it is to harm him and make the rest of the world satisfied with it 25 years behind bars seems enough to me, I don’t care if it is 25, 35 or 155. In five years I will have forgotten about this.

If it is stopping others, same thing, I don’t think that if someone is determined to do something similar would care about 25 or more years.

prison should fundamentally be abt rehabilitation, not whatever retribution random ppl think is “proportional”

They could just fit him with a GPS bracelet and ban him from any banking other than a basic cash card.

If I broke into a person's house and stole $1000, even if I didn't directly hurt that person, I could expect to get several years in prison, basically regardless of the state. Lets say three years to be conservative on this?

Sam Bankman Fried stole billions of dollars [1], probably often around $1000 at a time from tens of thousands of people. If going with my logic, he should be getting a lot longer than 25 years, upwards of hundreds or thousands of years. Obviously, it's not a linear relationship, the crime was non-violent, first-time-offender, etc. I'm just saying that 25 years seems pretty fair to me considering the magnitude of the crime.

I am one of the victims (well, of Gemini Earn anyway), and I think if I were given the choice, I'd probably sentence him to 20-25 years.

[1] Or at least so grossly mismanaged that there's no real purpose in drawing a distinction.

Tbh, a bunch of American (high profile) lawyers had estimated that he'd only get a couple of years, max, as he had no prior convictions - and the nature of the case.

It is funny - especially when you consider a mugger on the street would need your money much more than SBF ever would.

I didn't lose a penny and I'm giddy about it. Justice has been done.

Are you expecting to recover any money from this? I understood everyone would be made whole at some point.

Perhaps previous exit scams in the crypto space dulled your senses?

If anything, I feel like you should share your story to protect others, especially during times when crypto is peaking (like now) and others are tempted to jump in: use exchanges to buy/sell and get out, store your keys on a cold storage device, and transfer out fiat ASAP.

I'm an indirect victim via BlockFi (headed by Zach Prince), which did business with FTX and lost my money as a result. I held 33 ETH in a BlockFi BIA account, and only recently got 4 ETH back. I don't know if I will ever recover the rest of my funds.

I don't know what your financial situation is but I'm not rich, and it is extremely painful to look at ETH trading at above $3000 and realizing my rainy day fund has been stolen by criminal nincompoops.

My personal values dictate that I be significantly more careful with money when it is someone else's money. Even if you gave me $20 to get you a Burrito, I'll get you the best deal, tip the minimum, and give you your exact change. I'd even give you a few cents more just in case because I don't want to be owing you anything.

So when a group of people behaves irresponsibly with people's money it boils my blood. He deserves every jail year he got, just on the hubris alone.

Mugging is more traumatic short term? In total, white collar wage-theft dwarfs property theft but you may not feel its effects immediately.

Mugging is much more violent and personal. SBF didn't see you and think "that's the person I'm going to get" he essentially created a fraud machine that you and hundreds of others got caught up in. Very impersonal.

Maybe had already internalized the idea that money "invested" in crypto is doomed to theft, or collapse. Slot machine players have a similar vibe -- the money is already gone, even before it enters the machine.

Purely speculation on my part, but I tend to feel similarly, and I think the reason is that the mugger includes a physical threat of violence.

Evolutionarily, the emergence of an economy with capital at modern-day scales are so new that we haven't had time to really adjust emotionally. It kind of reminds me of the various birds on previously untouched-by-humanity islands that had no fear of humans and would just sit there and allow a human to club them to death, until their species went extinct. They had no time evolutionarily to develop an innate (emotional) fear of humans.

Physical violence/robbery on the other hand is a long-standing human tradition, and something we are hardwired to react to emotionally (Amygdala vs. PFC, etc). We can of course override our Amygdalas with our PFCs to some extent (in the medium to long-term), but the "gut reaction" core is still there.

Another possible reason (for me at least) is that ethically I have a lot of inner turmoil over violent punishments (which physical incarceration absolutely is IMHO) for nonviolent crimes. Of course reality is much more grayscale than that given that crimes like SBFs could leave a family destitute and starving, which is violence-adjacent if not outrightly violent. A violent sentence for a violent crime intuitively feels a lot more "let the punishment fit the crime" than a violent sentence for a nonviolent crime.

Anyway, I don't have answers, but throwing some speculation onto the pile.

It's good to process the emotions associated, if truly is none, then great! Still suggest meditating if something didn't get pushed under the mind's rug with the financial loss.

Definitely move on, this case had some external closure where most hurts in life don't.

It is _obviously_ healthy to forget about it and move on. Having said that, any anger at the guy is going to be not because he effected any one person, but because he effected so many - and because he embodied a particular attitude in the cryptocurrency world that lives on in so many others who haven't yet had their luck run out.

A mugger is less likely to be deterred by fear of punishments. It usually comes from desperation and impulsiveness, it's not like they've carefully weighed their chances of being caught. SBF probably thought "If I get away with this I get a billion dollars and if I don't I just get a slap on the wrist and go back to normal life".

I think not letting anger factor into it is good, but we also have to make sure the deterrence is there to prevent the inevitable future SBF.

FWIW, I didn't find Lewis's book as bad (or amoral) as it's often made out to be. Yes, he didn't put his judgement in every paragraph, but his description of SBF was:

a) absolutely damning! SBF's lack of empathy, his notion that (given that everyone else is stupid) he knew best and should basically ignore the advice of everyone else (particularly his elders), his naive utilitarianism without any deontological/virtue temperance, his reckless "many-worlds" risk-neutrality in gambling - that was all described in detail in the book, even if it was not explicitly condemned. Lewis didn't bother to show why these traits are bad. (I don't know what Lewis himself thought about them, but who cares? Show, don't tell.)

b) empathetic, eliciting compassion. Sure, the kid was screwed up, but here's why. And, btw, you might well have turned out the same way under similar circumstances, but for the grace of god.

My conclusion: 1) Lewis's book was good and insightful, and it's unfair to describe it as an apologia. 2) SBF has severe moral deficiencies and belongs in prison for a long time, but not because he is "evil". 3) Let's have some damn humility.

No dog in this race either way, but what is Michael Lewis meant to have done? Is it just that people feel hist treatment of SBF in Going Infinite was too lenient?

Not true for the people in his orbit

You mean the other people at FTX or Alameda who knew it was a scam?

An uncle once commented about a cousin of ours that he demonstrated how it's possible to screw things up so badly that you can't possibly recover.

Enough SBF talk. Let’s hear some cousin stories!

What’s with the sudden turn to “haha everyone was wrong in the past” on here?

There’s nothing wrong with being wrong. What’s the point?

He’s ‘new money’. Useful to ‘old money’; nothing more.

People say things all the time. That's not relevant to this story, and is kind of flamebaity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33908850

They dropped the campaign finance violations case with zero reasoning

Is he going to keep donating? Very likely not, so no reason to keep him out...

Yes, I was one of those doubters.

Yeah, it's been a bit funny to watch the goalposts move. He won't be arrested, he won't be charged, he won't go to trial, he won't be convicted, he'll get a light sentence, his political donations will get him off, etc.

Honestly, downvoted.

The top voted comment in that topic is saying he's going to jail. Just because in a forum with a gazillion people some people have a different one doesn't make it representative of the median/mean/etc.

Also, it's not bad to have a counter-opinion to a group; it is bad to claim a singular opinion is that of the group without any actual justification.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33908577

One person was cynical. Everyone else chimed in to correct that person: SBF was "new money" which carries no social status to protect against jail time.

Plenty of us did think he'd go to jail. There are even examples in the linked thread.

Your argument that HN didn’t think he was going to jail is a heavily downvoted post whose top reply says he’s going to jail?

Stole 1% from the pension fund for Ontario's teachers.

Stole unknown amounts of peoples retirement.

Ruined many peoples lives.

How is 50 years too long? The literal largest fraud case in history doesn't even have a life sentence...

We are sending a clear message, grift and steal your way to the top and then get out just in time to retire with all your stolen goods.

You know when he gets out he is gonna go unlock a dead wallet with 100BTC (or some other coin) in it and become an expat.

Well, 27.5 would be right down the middle.

As others have suggested, likely he won't even serve the 25 though.

the bullet points at the top of the article say they asked for 40-50 years and that his defense said 6.5 years.

Or he could end up like Michael Milken, who went to jail for securities fraud but became known as a philanthropist. As Gandalf once said to Frodo,

   Pity? It's a pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some 
   that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to 
   deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. [0] 

I do enjoy the idea that he'll create a prison super economy based on promissory notes for ramen packets and cigarettes that are tracked in some sort of hand-written block chain kept under their bunk bed and shared between toilet water pipes.

Or maybe he'll just start making yogurt.

https://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/magazine/yoghurt-mafia-unexp...

I think there's a good chance his tendencies to arrogance and mendacity will get him killed in prison.

He'll do about 30% or less. Maybe they'll say jails are full again and release most the inmates like they did during covid.

It also means his co-conspirators will get a much lesser sentence (if any). Kind of disappointing that nobody else will see the inside of a prison cell. Ellison, Wang, Singh and SBF's parents all deserve lengthy sentences.

Intent has a lot to do with it.

SBF operated with forethought and malice. He intended to deceive people. He was trying to commit fraud.

Hometown guy did not intend to crash or kill anybody.

Now the results of hometown guy's actions were more direct and severe, but had he had the choice, he would not have crashed and killed anybody. He's not a criminal, just a fucking idiot.

Not that this holds up to scrutiny, and there are certainly issues with fungibility of lives and money, but let's say the value of a life in the US is $10 million. $10 billion in fraud is 1,000 lives claimed. The sentence could have been worse.

The money he stole and defrauded is lifetimes worth. Lifetimes of economics stolen from people. Lifetimes of stresses caused on people because of what he stole. How many people may have ended their lives because they lost everything? How many silenced voices are there in pain because of his fraud?

White collar criminals can and should be likened to serial killers in the severity of their crimes. They spread invisible miseries indiscriminately, near entirely without justice or recognition. I am glad one of them is finally being properly punished.

a guy in my hometown hit and killed 2 people, while DUI and ran over 100mph on a local street with 35mph limit

What was his plan? What did he expect to earn from this action? And now, who would plan to DUI because they believe it's worth a 26-month sentence?

SBF knew what we was doing and did it knowingly. He thought he wouldn't be caught and earn a few extra billions. Unless we was drunk all along…

It's about the long-term planning and the clear intent to choose a path with such a risk/reward ratio.

Motor crimes are punished leniently because almost everyone drives, and every driver can imagine themselves making a mistake behind the wheel and they don't want that mistake to ruin their life or the lives of their loved ones.

I'm not saying it's right. But it's the tacit consensus we maintain to make ourselves comfortable with the risks of piloting deadly machines every day.

Vehicular deaths are almost always under prosecuted in the US.

This does not mean that it should be legal to defraud people of billions of dollars, ruin countless lives, and harm many more.

This is a rare case where a white collar crime was appropriately punished. Sam showed no remorse, and no evidence that he would not engage in similar crimes in the future. He earned this time.

Hopefully he’ll reform and be worthy of early release; but candidly I doubt it. I think he’s irredeemable.

This was intriguing to me, so I want to share how I did some light investigation of the question.

https://chat.openai.com/share/2dc83d60-d14b-4438-8226-ac59de...

I don't know if it can summarize books correctly always, it almost always does; and I also don't know if there's just a bias in publishing about race relations because that sells.

But it seems right to me that the most orthodox opinion is that racial bias, drug policy and socioeconomic status are the biggest factors in the severity of sentencing in general.

So you are referencing two acutely exceptional cases - a white collar crime by a rich person that only somewhat interacts with drug abuse of Aderrall that is acutely severely punished, and a drug-related crime that is acutely poorly punished.

White-collar criminals doing fed time are serving "easier" time than those in state prisons.

That said, I've personally known of two people who were convicted of DWI vehicular manslaughter, and they both received 15-year sentences, so 26 months seems to be an aberration.

It’s simple really. Money is considered more important than human lives.

...and enough people pointing that out, and making it clear that they are outraged by the possibility of that happening, makes it harder to get away with him avoiding prosecution because of his political ties.

This is likely an example of free speech and free press working to overcome corruption to achieve justice.

People say things all the time. That's not relevant to this story, and is kind of flamebaity.

The regime occasionally must sacrifice one of its own to grant the appearance of fairness to its politically-motivated prosecutions of its opponents.

You ain’t seen nothing yet. Those ties are what’s going to get his sentence commuted by Biden.

Those people have pivoted to claiming either that a pardon is imminent or that 25 years is a weak penalty.

Those same people have effortlessly pivoted to saying that 25 years is a slap on the wrist (I'd like to see them stay locked in a prison for 25 years to demonstrate they actually believe this).

Is this fedral? I thought it was Manhattan DA?

I don't get it, what's the difference between parole and early release? Also how do you get to 21 and 17 from 25 and 20?

The article says different. Tell me why it's wrong.

No, it was 20 years + 5 years, to be served consecutively, so the total term is 25 years.

One life sentence and that was based largely on him paying to have five people murdered.

$20 of theft? 5 years away

Who in this day and age is going to jail for half a decade because they snuck a 20 dollar bill out of the cash register when no one was looking?

There are almost always violent actions involved that are conveniently glossed over whenever someone bemoans “life in prison for stealing a loaf of bread!”

I've noticed the same trend. HN (as a collective) doesn't believe in punishing white-collar crimes with incarceration. I guess it hits too close to home.

It’s simple - everyone here arguing the merits of a lower sentence identifies with Sam.

Violent crime is ultimately more than just monetary damages.

Like realistically, sbf can just be kept in a fenced compound. He's shown no great violent urge. House arrest would probably serve the same purpose of removing him from the population for X years.

Someone breaking into a building is a lot different. They need more security and cause more chaos.

What do you think about it being a preventative measure against future SBFs?

If you think it’s “revenge” then yeah, you can say it doesn’t work. In reality it is a punishment and deterrent to future victimizers.

He was judged before a jury of his peers and found wanting. It's not revenge, it's being held accountable for his actions. Some crimes, like murder, can't just be "corrected". The solution we've landed on as a society is for there to be a punitive cost to be paid by the responsible individual. In this case, it's jail time.

SBF caused an incredible amount of irreparable harm with his actions, which almost certainly has resulted in suicides. He deserves this punishment.

The sentence is neither revenge nor correction. It's simply punishment for having broken the rules.

Society is not necessary interested in helping him. Ultimately he's not that important.

What is important is maintaining the rule of law and preserving faith in the justice system.

The next potential SBF will look at this sentencing and realize "oh stealing money isn't worth the risk of spending my entire life in prison".

SBF probably assumed that if he got caught nothing would happen because he's witnessed that historically.

True. But americans love to waste their tax money and put harmless (in a physical violence sense) people like him behind bars instead of doing something useful for society. In 10 years he'll be free and start the next scam with the couple of millions he's probably hiding somewhere.

He's well-connected within the easiest industry ever to launder money in. Realistically, after the 5 years he'd get a job consulting for a buddy at the heart of some other cryptocurrency exchange, and from that position he would find a lot of scummy ways to make sidemoney under the table, none of which would go to his victims, since it would all be hidden. He doesn't need to have his own direct reports if he has the ear of someone else who does.

Even if he does everything above-board, the absolute most he could expect to make legally from a job that's not a grift and has no direct reports would be ~500K/yr. Over 60 years, that would mean his victims get back $30,000,000, or about 0.3% of what he stole.

Sending this guy to prison for 25 years is a waste for everyone involved.

Agreed. 10 years is pretty much a life sentence already; who is the same person that they were a decade ago? Sentences beyond 10 years are not instructive but punitive and sadistic: if you're putting people in cages for that long then justice would be better served to banish. International waters? Make an interior Australia on federal lands over a few States: walled off with full security entry/exit points?

Not only is taking so many years equivalent to partial death, without the normalcies prison strips from its victims (yes America's prisoners are victims like the Brit's victims of hang-em for everything were still victims) it effectively kills off the family lines of these people because only a few states have conjugal visits. Most prisoners in the US are in enforced inceldom. If you argue crime is genetic and it's a good thing they are prevented from reproducing, then you just contravened civils rights arguments against that.

As bad as the American ones are, Japan treats you worse. I got to hear my internet friend and troll JS on voice chat after Japan let him out of jail, what he said completely disabused me of any interest in visiting that place. It's soft torture not by exposure to appaling conditions (US), but by excruciating and consistent techniques of 'light' torture employed, such as only being able to sit/kneal and lay in two positions almost every bit of all 24-hour periods and being unable to communicate with anybody. It is a mental solitary confinement, and if I witnessed some parent treat even an "unruly child" the way the Japanese system treats those in their custody, I would see pink mist/red cave and be sent off to prison for a long time myself.

Zimbardo's prison experiment decades ago should have indicated to us that we are experiencing dozens of holocaust-tier human rights crises (sans the mass deaths) every year these things continue to operate in current form.

If you can't treat them as human in prison (partial autonomy, dignity), then you are saying they are criminally insane. If they are insane, they need to be in an assylum and not a dungeon (assylums had {and may still have [idk]} their own serious issues too). Prison should never be punitive, that is partially killing someone to punish them. Deterrence Theory is century old bunk we tell ourselves so we don't feel bad for Uncle Ned possibly being equivalent to a camp guard in a massive human rights quagmire made trying to address a millennia-old problem.

Wow, this turned into a rant! Time to smack submit, push the hemorrhoid back up, flush, and be done! :^)

He will serve 12.5 unless he is truly a dumbass though good behavior for nonviolent crime.

Don't forget he has ruined many peoples lives, and probably driven quite a few to kill themselves.

still allows him to make a life, but severely limits the similar path he used to defraud people

Do you remember the trial? The man can’t follow rules. You would be wasting the court every microsecond because Sam decides he doesn’t understand what two properties or renting technically means.

If steal $1000 from you, how much time should I serve? A year?

If I steal $1000 each from thousands of people, how much time should I serve then?

small

in what world is stealing ~$8bn a "small" crime?

As the article says, it sends important message. And he does not serve 25 years.

I don't know how it is the US, but in Finland people get relatively longer sentences for financial crimes because long sentences have inhibitory effect for money crimes.

Most violent crimes happen without premeditation by people without impulse control and longer sentences don't actually reduce crime. White collar criminals weigh the costs and benefits and do their crimes in cold blood after long time of planning.

"Stole" is the word you're looking for. He stole their money. Lots of it.

It is not like he was robbing poor people

A crime is not less of a crime based on the economic status of the victims. And raising rent or utilities is not a crime.

Crypto doesn’t need quotes

Tether.

Sourced from https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/united-s....

This is a federal sentence, so there is no parole. The most time off you can get in the federal system for good behavior is 54 days per year of sentence, so less than 4 years off for SBF's 25-year sentence.

No parole in the Federal system. There's (some) time off for good behavior.

If he’s eligible for parole at 1/3 of a 25 year sentence

He is not; there is no federal parole (for people sentenced ib the last ~37 years.) There is “good conduct time” that can reduce time served to not less than ~85% of the time sentenced, so around 21 years minimum.

Scam. Bankrupt. Fraud.

Because we all know who SBF is by now

If I could edit it, I would fix it.

Hacker handles for hacker fraudsters.

Maybe the submitter was typing it out?

We've fixed it now.

Yes, it is extremely backwards. The prison system in the US (like vehicle and environmental regulations in the US) exemplifies how little the culture there values human lives and lifespan.

Brian Peck was unfortunately allowed to plead "No Contest" rather then being brought to trial or pleading guilty.

I can't find the case but he was also probably charged by the state rather than the Feds.

Legally, Brian Peck injured two victims. SBF arguably injured far more than that (especially if you assign even partial responsibility for the suicides of people he victimized).

I don't know if your questions are rhetorical, but they are easy to answer so I looked them up for you. These are only the prison sentences and do not include court-mandated restitution.

Jordan Belfort: 4 years (served 22 months)

Elizabeth Holmes: 11 years

Mt. Gox guy: I do not know which guy you refer to. Two Russian men were indicted for the actual Mt Gox hack. Separately Mark Karpeles was sentenced to 2 1/2 years, suspended sentence, in Japan - but only for record tampering. He was found not guilty of embezzlement. This entire saga seems very very far removed from what SBF did.

Bernie Madoff: 150 years

"Never any criminal intent"

Sounds like someone didn't follow this case closely enough

Belfort cooperated with the FBI and got 4 years.

Holmes got 11 years.

The Mt. Gox guy was prosecuted in Japan.

Hopefully it will scare / prevent others.

The crypto space is rife with scams, so it's good to finally see some real sentencing.

Actions have consequences.

Billions of dollars of fraud that took years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees to prove should have a sentence that is a strong deterrent to future crime probabilities.

10 years is a life sentence, anything more is satisfying bloodlust

Retribution is a valid component of justice. But I’d argue, in the case of a fraudster, incapacitation is of equal concern.

Federal prisoners serve an average of 85% of their sentence. One year gets you 54 days "good conduct time" and that's about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_conduct_time

Fraud affects huge amounts of people, and is always premeditated. Murdering one person is much more excusable than defrauding hundreds of thousands.

Three suicides make this crime a bit more violent than you give it credit for. Not to mention absolute destruction of 00s if not 000s of lives.

You could also think of it as 11 minutes each for defrauding each of 1.2MM people. I don't know whether either of those sentences are good ones, but there does come a point at which a narrow violent crime should be punished less than a huge non-violent one. FEMA uses about 7.5MM for a human life for certain cost-benefit analyses (much lower values are used in many of the countries where most FTX customers lived): is there a sense in which doing a billion dollars of damage is in certain ways comparable to 130 killings? Surely some people who lost money would have used that money in part to save someone's life.

It's an election year for a first term incumbent, there is no chance of a pardon.

he _was_ a donor. he's not likely to be a donor in the future. so why bother?

I think that would be a hugely unpopular move, for essentially no benefit (he doesn't have any more money to donate), and would be one hell of an unforced error on the part of the democratic campaign.

I propose the Bankman-Fried number: how many people you personally know who got rekt in the crypto crash of November 2022.

This was directly addressed by the judge during the sentencing, so you might be interested in finding a recording or transcript.

Prison is a way to get cheap labor, and some prisons are run by publicly traded companies.

Not the best sources but you get the point.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat... 2. https://www.dailyo.in/wallet/heard-of-prison-stocks-here-are...

No chance, it would be a very politically expensive pardon for no real benefit

No.

That would be nice, but what are the other on-ramps from fiat that are usable for mainstream folks? (Genuinely asking)

Without centralized exchanges, do you think crypto would ever really have become a thing? I like to think it would, and that we don't need exchanges, because I too have a strong dislike for exchanges (if not a hatred), but I'm a fairly technical user and even for me it's not exactly easy to be deep into crypto without exchanges. Particularly when it comes to exchanging dollars for coins.

If you deceive people that that demands truth, do you become rich and become enemies?

Either the justice system is at least a little vindictive, or the survivors of the crime will become so much more vindictive

Seems kind of unlikely that he has much dirt on anyone with power...?

I think the moral of the story is to keep your fraud below the billions

Please don't do this here.

Given that all the crimes originated from pretty much the same offense, it would be highly surprising if the sentences weren't served simultaneously.

Dang. He certainly called it.