He will get away clean.
"The Department of Justice recommendation, made in a court filing, came as Holmes prepares to be sentenced next week."
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-seeks-15-years-elizabeth...
https://fortune.com/2022/11/10/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-joe-bid...
As far as I'm concerned they've got what they deserved. Hopefully Binance'll show them the empty bag as well and finnally the myth of centralised crypto is busted.
Basically as long as you haven't broken the law or the contracts, you're ok. It's no different from "I bought some stuff that lost money".
That's the defense. I don't know anything about that rather large caveat in this case, but for that old boss it was clear since everything was exchange listed and there were never any movements of money other than to the clearing houses.
Losing money is not SBF’s problem.
Stealing customer assets to cover for it, and then losing those, too, is.
And tweeting through it, providing confessions to that that will greatly complicate any defense.
Investments come with inherent and stated risks and if you lose money, well, you knew the risks.
(Just to be clear, I am not on his side. I'm just pedantic.)
If his Twitter deception is anything to go by, he liked lied to investors about pilfering customer funds to bail out failed Alameda Research. Forget about lying, it's illegal to even withhold pertinent information when pitching to US investors.
The Bahamas is no safe haven. They will extradite. After all, his investors are in the US and those transactions are covered by SEC rules. Given the scale of the fraud here, this is serious jail time.
He could be saved by his political bribes, though, considering he's greased the palms of the current administration (#2 Democrat donator in the recent cycle) ;)
But what we do know is that they had no Board of Directors and the level of independent oversight was completely inadequate given the sums of money involved.
If I was the SEC I would do nothing and simply remind investors like Sequoia of their responsibility to do basic due diligence. Because I really don't know how you can class them as professional investors given the level of incompetence.
Best case scenario he was working with the cia and was helping them finance some of these donations or other stuff. Then they’ll arrange his disappearance in another country or the afterlife.
Do you come up with an escape plan when you start doing the thing you know is probably illegal and will definitely get you in serious trouble if it doesn't work?
Or do you just convince yourself it's gonna work, because it worked for long enough to convince you that you're too smart to fail?
I think I'd get me an extradition-proof mountaintop lair if I had even tens of millions and they were squeaky clean. Because you never know, right?
(Or, maybe I watch too many movies.)
There's tweets that say that CZ wasn't trying to tank FTX with his "I'm selling FTT" announcement but rather just wanted to fire a shot across the bow. And we should believe him when he says that this isn't good for him or the industry - because it really isn't.
And so in this case you have a few days to make a simple binary decision. Do you steal a few hundred million, bail to some country and hope you can live the next 50+ years without being extradited or risk staying in the US, being poor and spending the next 20+ years in jail.
Many people would happily roll the dice and pick the former option.
It’s the altruistic choice.
Getting away is easy if he walks of the usa. If you keep a low profile in south america, pretty much no one will recognize him.