"I was too ignorant to run a giant investment company/pseudo-bank correctly" shouldn't get you off though. He needs to face the same charges regardless of whether he was malicious or stupid.
> Delinquents and criminals average IQ scores 8 to 10 points lower than noncriminals, which is about one-half a standard deviation. IQ and criminal behavior are negatively correlated at about r = -. 20 (Hirschi and Hindelang; Wilson and Herrnstein).
We call this “financialization”.
That doesn't help with estimating levels of non-detected crimes of course.
There's no way he can plead stupidity.
But it's relevant in discussions when I've seen him called worse than Madoff who engaged in a very overt crime. Again we don't know exactly how much SBF tried to directly profit off the business yet and how much it was a concerted plot to scam people. ...And since the internet requires you to be extremely obvious, that is not saying he's not a bad guy or absolved of responsibility or whatever.
The article has some large numbers. "Bankman-Fried received an incredible $1 billion in personal loans, as well as a $2.3 billion loan to an entity called Paper Bird in which he had 75% control."
We may not like it, but that’s how the system is set up.
I don’t think there’s an unintentional relationships which facilitates and under-punishes fraud, but I don’t think there’s a conspiracy afoot.
All involved knew what they were doing, or took extraordinary measures to blind themselves to knowing.
We're not gonna invalidate a huge amount of legal precedent spanning centuries for one dude. Intent matters.
(That said I think he's lying and knew what was going on the whole time)