I have read more SEC complaints this year than in all of my previous years combined.
—- Edit 1
Caroline’s guilty plea: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23495436-crypto-coop...
She won't be further prosecuted (i. e., beyond the charges she is pleading guilty to) for conduct related to the acts specified, if she cooperates fully as agreed. In other words, supposing there are other charges related to that cobduct which could be filed, DoJ is bound not to pursue them if she upholds her end of the agreement. If she does not, DoJ can add those additional charges on top of the existing charges (or, replacing the existing charges with more serious ones related to the same conduct.)
I hope (and assume) these details will have no practical value to my life! But it's good to know how the world works.
My guess would be that it refers to a conspiracy (or other “group” offense, like RICO [0]) for which she was not charged, and which no one else had been publicly charged yet, such that not redacting it would reveal otherwise nonpublic information about how DoJ expects that it might charge other people.
[0] RICO is cited simply as an example of a group offense that is distinct from conspiracy; I am not predicting RICO charges, to be clear.
Based on what we know so far about Caroline’s misuse (abuse) of funds and possible mass market manipulation all of which has resulted in billions of dollars in investor losses. 10 years in this case seems light, no?
Sunny Balwani, otoh, didn't benefit, wasn't the CEO, didn't make most of the false statements and got a heavier sentence.
These numbers exist solely for the audiences at home.
Depends on which federal drug crimes. The drug kingpin law is based on $, not weight.
Yes, it is.
> it's just what happens if you take the statutory limit on what could be sentenced in the worst possible combination of circumstances, and it assumes that charges don't group or get served concurrently.
Which is, in fact, the theoretical maximum, because while the Sentencing Guidelines call for grouping and concurrent sentences in certain circumstances, the Supreme Court has ruled that the Guidelines are, as the name suggests, more what you'd call “guidelines” than actual rules, and judges are free to depart from them, in either direction, within the mininimum and maximum sentences, if any [0], prescribed for each crime in its own statute.
It’s true that most sentences will conform to the Guidelines, but the Guidelines rules do not set outer boundaries on what is possible.
[0] some crimes have statutory minimums, most have statutory maximums, but some federal crimes specify only imprisonment for “any term of years”.
I look forward to a blog on "The Pirates Code as applied to criminal prosecution in the US." I mean, it is already clear that you can avoid punishment by producing enough pieces of eight, so I wonder what other similarities there are.
[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/02/11/2022-02...
Right, to the extent a federal convict has supervised release time, its not “I got out early from my prison sentence” but “I was sentenced to supervised release on top of my prison sentence.”
(for non-native English speakers, giving information to the police is called "singing" in early/mid-20th century slang)
His sentence was reduced to 36 months in a court action that was publicly reported, and there were several subsequent sealed actions between then and the release.
> but it's just not true that the Feds won't let you out early if they feel like it.
A reduction in sentence is a very different thing than early release.
I expect between 0 and 3 years.
Also, I like how the they're very clear that restitution must be made as "a sum of money in United States currency", as opposed to, say, FTT tokens or Bored Ape NFTs. However, the section on forfeiting the proceeds of the crime does explicitly include "property including but not limited to" USD, meaning the Feds may end up with a pile of shitcoins and monkey JPGs after all!
Also, reading what SBF says about his lawyer, he seems a bit sketchy as well (but obviously that is a one-sided account).