FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried to be released on $250M bail
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
‘He was released on bail for a $250 million bond — “the largest ever pretrial bond,” apparently — secured only on his parents’ home in Palo Alto, where he will be living.
’SBF will surrender his passport and remain in home confinement with electronic monitoring — he’ll wear a bracelet. He will also be required to undergo regular mental health evaluation and treatment. No financial transactions over $1,000 except legal fees, no new lines of credit, and he can’t start a business. Also, no firearms.
’That is: Sam lost all his money in crypto, and has moved back into his parents’ basement.’
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2022/12/22/ftx-sam-bank...
:-P
Back to the stone age it is!
I'm all for getting to the bottom of what SBF did, but he hasn't been convicted of any crime yet. It's important that we go through the process before applying punishments.
It's pretty easy for people with power and influence to not give a shit about what the rest of us have to deal with, when they never need to experience it.
I must admit: if TSA pre-check is an example of what people with power & influence get away with, then I can simply not be convinced of your case.
Cruel might be a bit of a stretch. He can read and do some sketching. Bit of home maintenance. Have a crafternoon or two.
Why not? He has stated that he intends to earn the money again to pay back the creditors.
Speaking more generically, people released on bond need to be able to have the resources necessary to form a proper defense, and also to try and avoid their entire life being destroyed by an arrest that may or may not lead to a conviction.
There are height and density limits, so among the few options is to go down.
Not a whole lot of coverage that I'm finding, though there's a brief mention in this Palo Alto Weekly article (2018):
<https://paloaltoonline.com/news/2018/01/12/groundwater-spurs...>
If you search "palo alto basement remodel" you'll find a heck of a lot of contractor / services pages (enough to frustrate me looking for actual news coverage or mentions).
And a Crescent Park remodel involving basements across four properties:
<https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2016/05/26/zuckerberg-pl...>
Perhaps such a state does exist? Sibling comment seems to indicate California might not be one of them.
As for crawl spaces, they’re really common on older homes up here (central FL); I have one.
It's definitely possible to have basements, but it's something only the exceptionally wealthy would even bother with.
There's tons of basements in Oklahoma, you're starting to get out of the expansive soil areas I was talking about at that point. You're then also needing to worry about the frost line so your foundations would need to be deeper anyways.
I’ve heard people in Oklahoma say that basements can’t be built because the soil has too much clay, yet I’ve seen them in older homes there.
I’m starting to think that “basements can’t be built in X state” is some kind of pervasive urban myth.
Really wealthy people in Texas might have a basement; its not impossible! Some really old homes before slab-style construction might have basements as well. Or they might be living in the high deserts out in West Texas. But like easily 99.9% of homes built in the majority of Texas do not have basements. If I were to ask everyone I know if they knew anyone who had a basement at any time in any home they ever lived in, the answer would probably be "no" almost every time. Finding a home built since the 1940's in this area that's less than $10M with a basement is practically finding a unicorn. Except its an expensive unicorn needing constant maintenance.
or is it that two secret rich people put up much more and the parent’s house thing is basically a distraction?
No, its up to the court. There is no “bond company” involved here.
Not sure how it works for amounts this large, but the above applies to your everyday DUI/assault/etc (at least here in VA). And even if the house was worth $25 million, they would essentially be giving it to the bondsman, which I doubt it what happened.
The rich truly do play by different rules, even when they’re charged with crimes.
Usually, registered bail agents sign as sureties, they don't actually pay the bail up front and get it back.
Correct.
> Does that mean only a fraction of the bond value needs to be the security?
Correct.
> If so, is that not bullshit?
It seems to mean “lots of people’s mental model of what ‘$X bail’ means is wrong.” But that ignorance doesn’t make the actual system bullshit.
I guess we pay, somehow.
Personally fleeing doesn't really matter, because signing as a bail surety makes the court itself your agent for service of process, and default judgement is automatically available. (They do have to provide a copy of notices at the sureties last known address, but they don't have to actually serve notice on them.)
Now, if all the assets of SBF and his sureties are out of reach of the US government, that would be a problem.
This part is incorrect - his parents and 2 other individuals with ‘significant assets’ signed on his bond.
We probably haven't heard of most of the 99% of billionaires that aren't in the top ten. And if we haven't heard of them, it would not make a lot of sense to be certain that "it is known" of all of them where they got their wealth.
Last year, if you didn't Google them, did you know who Bernard Arnault, Mukesh Ambani, or Gautam Adani were? In the case of Adani, I had never heard even of his company, which apparently is one of the largest in the world.
(The point of this post was mainly to use the phrase "99% of billionaires")
As one example of some discovered - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-08/three-mys...
1. Pledge the full amount of the bail yourself. You get this back if the accused shows up in court, you lose it of they flee.
2. Pay some percentage (usually X%) to a bail bondsman. You never get that money back, and if the accused flees, the bail bondsman will try to get the money from whomever signed the bond (as the bail bondsman is on the hook). The bail bondsman may also engage a bounty hunter to try to catch the accused.
Obviously, with a bail amount this large, my guess is there is no bail bondsman that has that much to put up. So there should be $250 million that someone pledged for this bail. I'm still confused as to where that amount came from.
My guess is he was not required to post full collateral, i.e. the only collateral here is the home, and then Sam, his parents, and two others posted essentially an unsecured guarantee for the full $250M, such that the government could recover up that amount from any assets held by any of those parties. While unsecured, note that the government probably has priority over any creditors and could and would seize any assets of those parties per the guarantee.
Without a trial and witnesses testifying, most shenanigans will remain unknown. This is why the odds favor he takes a plea or has an unexpected medical issue.
A surety bond is basically a loan, through a bail bondsman. The bail bondsman has insurance in case you don't show up.
A property bond is where the court gets a lien on your property. It sounds like this is what happened.
Sureties don't have to be bail agents / bondsmen.
(Nothing against Stanford or professors, but academia pay peanuts and professors are usually very far from having a net worth of 9-10 figures, faaaaaaaar awaaaaaay)
Obviously not relevant in the context of $250 million.
I would guess that their net worth was north of $10M just based on those earnings, subsequent investment, and their house (which is apparently worth $3M+).
Of course, SBF has had some incredible arbitrage wins over the years, and he presumably offered his parents the opportunity to run a million or two through his money making machine. If they were more conservative with their gains that he was, they could easily have $20 or $50 million. I agree it's unlikely that they have 10 figures, though.
Approximately this, though only SBF and his parents are on the hook for the full amount, the other two for a lesser amount (TBD in the main bail doc.)
Can't wait to read Levine's take on that.
No funnier than money itself really -- both are just bits of paper, backed by some guarantee the government will ensure their value.
LOL, it really is FTX all over again!
The reason FTX was a scam is not because they weren't sending gold bars to investors.
This is one of the rare instances where general population outrage at this deal (read the NYTimes comments) is warranted. There are tons of poor folks who sit around wasting in jail, waiting for their trial, because they can't make bail. But this appears to be the case where the bail is "nominally" $250 million, but nobody had to guarantee that with reasonably equivalent collateral. I could be misunderstanding what collateral was put up, but the only thing that was mentioned was his parents house (which even in Palo Alto isn't $250 million).
FTX said: "Don't worry we have collateral ... lol jk!"
SBF's parents said: "Don't worry we have collateral ... lol jk!(?)"
Your bit about "but fiat isn't real either" is true to some extent, and you could even go deeper and argue that nothing is real because we don't know if the universe is real or whatever. But honestly, in a practical context, there's a huge difference between:
I have 100 million in the bank; source: bank statement.
and
I think I have 100 million in the bank; source: trust me.
If that is what happened then you are right about it being funny money, and hilarious that they duped the court like they did their investors.
Yes, I think that's exactly what happened.
I think we need to look further into FTX's Tokenized Stock Offerings, as that's what the SEC has been honing in upon, among other things.
https://news.bitcoin.com/report-suggests-ftxs-tokenized-stoc...
FTX was selling stock, claiming it to be backed 1:1, which was likely being used as collateral for further speculation, or as locates for short sales, despite never actually holding the shares they claimed to.
Crypto is unregulated and is a whole thing, but claiming to have stocks you don't have is a way to really piss off the ultra-rich.
SBF has been charged with the following crimes in a U.S. federal court.
Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers
Wire fraud on customers
Conspiracy to commit wire fraud on lenders
Wire fraud on lenders
Conspiracy to commit commodities fraud
Conspiracy to commit securities fraud
Conspiracy to commit money laundering
Conspiracy to defraud the United States and violate the campaign finance law.
No one put up collateral beyond his parents home, and only SBF and his parents are on the hookfor the full $250M, the other two sureties are exposed for a smaller amount.
This is all public record in the court documents.
But whether SBF is out on bail doesn't affect what comes out at trial. If you're saying that SBF is effectively extorting those other individuals, on threat of revealing their secrets, then their pretty dumb extortion victims, since nothing stops SBF from continuing to demand massive investments of their money such as this one.
Anyone catch the AMC -> APE reverse
Let’s name the FTX tokenized stocks
I didn't say the government guarantees a particular value. I said it is backed by a government guarantee, and that is what ensures it has value (i.e., it is worth what is written).
From Bloomber:
>"FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s $250 million bail package is one of the largest in US history, but it doesn’t mean he actually has to put up that kind of money. At Bankman-Fried’s bail hearing on Thursday in federal court in Manhattan, both the prosecution and defense agreed that the former billionaire’s assets have “diminished significantly.” Bankman-Fried has said he may have only $100,000."[1]
>"The $250 million personal recognizance bond approved by the judge was secured by the equity in Bankman-Fried’s parents home in Palo Alto, California, which is almost certainly not worth anywhere near that amount. But outsized bonds are more a means of establishing harsh financial consequences for bail-jumping and are often backed by assets worth only around 10% of the stated amount."[1]
Further:
>"In addition to Bankman-Fried and his parents, the bond must be signed by two other people of “considerable means,” one of whom can’t be a relative, by Jan. 5"[1]
So it sounds like he able to leave today with nothing more than the equity in his parents house pledged and now has until the 5th of the new year to find the other non-family signatory as well as the rest of the funding. I've read in multiple sources that his parents house appraised somewhat recently at $4 million, so that max equity they could have would be that. So if they are required to put down 10% that still means they need to find another 21 million dollars somewhere.
They aren't. The parents as surety for the full amount, the security claim on the home, and the two additional sureties for a smaller amount TBD are the approved requirements for the bond.
His parents signed the $250M bond, two others are to sign lesser bonds in amounts to be agreed.
Yes, they stand surety, but only the home secures the bond. (That is, the court has—or will have, their is time to post it—a recorded legal property interest in the home until the bail is no longer needed.)
Wait what? How does that work? I thought if the bond was $X, that literally means you either (a) give the court $X, cash only or (b) sit in jail until trial.
How can his bond be set at $250 million, yet the court somehow isn't just making him sit in jail until and unless he either goes to trial and is found not guilty, or he coughs up $250 million?
For typical bail amounts i.e., $50k, the intermediary usually demands 10% of the $50k from the defendant (and his friends) as a deposit, but maybe SBF found an intermediary willing to make the pledge to the court for a deposit significantly less than 10% of the 250M.
The amount is large enough that even with 1% or 0.1% they could probably pay a professional bounty hunter to tail him for a week, reducing the odds of him escaping.
What bondsman has $250M? Even if they did, why would they ever agree to this?
Isn't getting $2M from a defendant on a bail bond less than even the interest you could probably get by just putting your $250M in, say, a Treasury bond over the same timeframe?
For that matter, who's willing to bet $250M at 99-to-1 payout odds that a smart guy like SBF won't be able to disappear and pop up in Dubai or somewhere with no extradition to the US? (Remember SBF probably had the means, motive, opportunity and moral character to siphon a couple hundred million worth of BTC into a wallet there are no records of. And he knew for a long time FTX was going to collapse and he was probably being investigated.)
It is exactly a bond for bail, yes.
> sign over the $2M house to get the bondsman to post $250M bond.
No, there is no bondsman, the house is pledged directly to the court as security, his parents are additional surety for the $250M, and two other people are signing lesser bonds.
Why does he get to do this, while someone with a $50,000 bail has to either put up the entire cash amount, or pay 10% in interest to a bondsman?
This is an odd phrase.
So what happens if SBF disappears? Do the parents lose their $2M house? Lose their $2M house and become $248M in debt? Go to jail?
What keeps the whole family from simply going on a sudden vacation to Dubai and letting the court take their house? Losing one's childhood home is sad, but stolen Bitcoins can still buy a very nice replacement.
There is no “bond money”. The $250M he and his parent signed for, including the lesser amount the other sureties are also on the hook for, doesn’t get collected by the court unless their is a failure to appear. The security interest in the home is the only thing actually transferred.
The simple answer is that you are wrong, that's not how bail and bail bonds work, and its much more complicated than that. Essentially, money bail is a pre-declared failure to appear penalty, and bond is whatever the court accepts as a sufficient promise to pay, which can include purchasing a contract from an official bail agent, having other individuals agree to be on the hook for payment, providing somr property to the court, either physically or a legal claim that allows them to seize it for nonpayment, or a combination of these.
If SBF tells the judge "Your Honor, I'll sign a paper that says I'll be $250M in debt if I don't show up, but my family can only come up with $2M right now" why did the judge agree and let him out?
What's the fundamental difference, besides just the number of zeros?
I d be Chalopin back in the Bahamas, I d help my former biggest client too
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/excessive_bail
https://nationalparalegal.edu/ViewNews.aspx?intTakeOnNewsID=...
"meant to" or not, bond is applied punitively against poorer people as a matter of course.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23495436/crypto-coope...
If she can semi-credibly claim to be mostly ignorant, and cooperates energetically with prosecutors, anything can happen.
You say that. And yet.
> because line go up
Mathematics degree. Both parents economists.
For reasons-- 1) It proves he has more funds. 99% odds he will declare bankruptcy once the civil judgements come, so this refutes SBF claims that he only has a few hundred dollars in a bank account somewhere.
2) Making him collect funds from more than one source so they can flush out some of his hidden buckets. Who knows how many wallets, cash and favors he's hiding, but the Feds and Internet investigators will be watching. Especially for movements on the blockchain.
Doesn't look like that's what's happening. It's not clear how much money's changing hands, but it's definitely nowhere near the full $250m.
What would the prosecutors cared if he made bail? What is their interest there?
Per "tech" nonsense, SBF is continually portrayed as some sort of genius "executive", but he had no clue how to run a business, he's now broke, getting arraigned in federal court and his parents are bailing him out. If his parents' house has a basement, he will now be in it playing video games.
Will the judge call him "brilliant" as in the Holmes sentencing.
Judge will order a standing ovation to start with.
When push comes to shove, morals aren't easy to come by. Especially not when put up against some downtime with the family.
If you use a bondsman, you lose the 10% no matter what. If you use a bondsman and skip town, you're out 10%, and they're out the other 90%. Hence why bondsmen employ bounty hunters.
You can think of bondsmen as essentially very specialized financial institutions. They provide loans to people. If you have a $5000 bond, you can pay a bondsman $500 to front the other $4500 for you. If you make it to court, they get their $4500 back and it's all good. If you don't make it to court, they are incentivized to find you to make sure you make it to court. They are usually not pleased to do this.
You are not required to use a bail bondsman to post bail.
There is no $250M loan. Should he fail to appear, he and each of his sureties (his parents) can be pursued by the court for whatever remains of the balance of the $250M bail amount.
There is no actual $250M that changes hands until then (or, realistically, after.)
The actual order: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66631291/14/united-stat...
There’s no way his parents are forking over their home to a bails bondsmen. There’s also no bail bond man who has $250m.
In most states, 10% is closer the legal maximum than the minimum premium for a bail bond (it is often exactly the the legal maximum, but in NY the maximum for large bail amounts is much lower, asymptotically approaching 6%.)
edit: i.e., it is far more likely to be a 25M home than a 250M home, because I've never heard of a 250M home.
Bond is actually whatever arrangement you make that the court accepts as surety in place of depositing the full bail amount as cash. Most commonly, this is paying a premium to a registered bond agent (who usually also does not pay the full bail up front), sometimes, its having other persons aa sureties who are liable for the bail if you don’t appear, or pledging other property as a guarantee, or, as in SBF's case, both, where his parents home is pledged and his parents are liable sureties.
“Put up” is not “give up”; it is to offer as collateral, that is, they got a loan secured by a lien on the home.
A loan was taken out for 250M with 4M collateral.
Once he makes it to court, that $250 million is paid back. The only thing the parents lose would be the interest payments on the loan from now until the court date.
Probably a judge doesn't care where it comes from and the bail bond people see the risk the way you do but it is a bit weird how a person suspected of crime at this level is allowed to await their day in court in freedom while others are immediately jailed because they didn't steal enough...
Next, they aren't using a bondsman. I doubt any bondsman has $250 million to dedicate to this for any length of time.
And they are allowed to wait "in freedom" because bail was posted on their behalf. Those are the rules of the system.
The only asset pledged is their Palo Alto house, their ownership of which I believe predates any alleged fraud of SBFs.
It doesn't cone from anywhere, its a promise to pay (with a very streamlined enforcement process), not a transfer of funds.
> and the bail bond people see the risk the way you do but it is
There are no “bail bonds people” here, unless you mean his parents and the other two sureties.
> it is a bit weird how a person suspected of crime at this level is allowed to await their day in court in freedom while others are immediately jailed because they didn't steal enough...
Money bail is a problematic system, sure, but it also doesn't work the way you seem to think it does.
- Pledge $250M in exchange for $4M collateral and $X in interest (?) - Near certain outcome of SBF showing up into court, unless some 4-D chess plan has already been contrived to have him and parents flee (what career do they flee to? Each of them?) - Collect risk-free interest
In the case that this trade blows up, you then call Talib Nassem and tell him you have another anecdote of underpricing tail risk and he'll write about it in his next book on the folly of underestimating black swan events.
Nice. Reminds me of how some folks recently borrowed $1B with crappy illiquid collateral. Round and round we go!
Have you ever met a law professor?
It’s not a question of corruptability, it’s a question of competence
No, he (or one or more other people on his behalf) secured a $250m bond. Bail bonds generally cost significantly less than the amount of bail; in many states with a maximum or exact amount set by law. In New York, the maximum is 10% up to $3000, 8% for $3000-$10000, 6% for the amount over $10000. At $250M bail, the bond is a hair over $15M.
I highly doubt anyone paid $25 million that they aren't expecting to get back.
The point is to show you, your family, and associates have skin in the game and think you will show up at court
NYTimes: <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/business/sam-bankman-frie...>
BBC: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64068810>
NBC News: <https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ftx-co-founder-sam-bank...>
WSJ: <https://www.wsj.com/articles/sam-bankman-fried-to-make-first...> (Paywall: <https://archive.ph/eMrPC>)
Bloomberg: <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-22/prosecuto...> (Paywall: <https://archive.vn/5zOnu>)
Related:
- Caroline Ellison (Alameda Research) plea agreement: <https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/12/22/caroline-elliso...> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34096548>
- "The SEC’s Crypto Crackdown Is Just Getting Started" <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-22/sec-s-cry...> (Paywall: <https://archive.vn/jrt8I>) <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34098054>
"His parents, Stanford Law professors Barbara and Alan Bankman-Fried, have agreed to put up the equity they own in their $4million California home, where he will live during his house arrest, as part of the bail requirement.
Two other people - one relative and one non-relative - will fulfil the rest of the bond. It remains unclear if he is required to pay the full $250million or a portion of it."
I've described my understanding of the general case, however.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.44... (granted)
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.45... (denied)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/19/dominique-stra... (granted)
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.72... (denied)
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-colombo-mo... (granted)
(I've yet to dive into the PDFs.)
Informative though, thanks.
<https://www.reuters.com/business/how-did-bankman-fried-secur...>
Paywall: <https://archive.vn/bvFbS>
Parents are on the hook for $250M if he dips. Judge had to have looked at their financials and had some assurances that they'd be able to pay this right?
This makes me all the more curious.
Who are these unnamed individuals, and what is their interest in this?
<https://www.allcitybailbonds.com/2015/10/what-makes-someone-...>
A 2007 NYT article describes particulars within the context of one case. In part:
To hear Ms. Weinstock tell it, Ms. Chanla was the ultimate flight risk. She was foreign born, and lacked ties to New York. She swapped identities like a chameleon, using at least two different names, the prosecutor said.
A week ago, detectives with a New York arrest warrant knocked on the door of “her Los Angeles home,” the prosecutor said, and found her parents, who “claimed they had no way of getting in touch with her.”
<https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/04/nyregion/04bail.html>
SBF is an American citizen with two parents in high-reputation, reasonably high-profile professional positions (at Stanford University), by contrast.
(I've no opinion one way or the other whether or not he should be free on bail.)
I wonder how he will pay for lawyers, my understanding is that law firms are incredibly meticulous about wanting proof that their fees aren’t being paid using spoils of crime.
Alameda Research loaned $1 billion directly to Bankman-Fried: https://cointelegraph.com/news/sbf-received-1-billion-in-per...
Why hasn’t Sam Bankman-Fried been arrested yet? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33835212
(Edited for clarity.)
I was writing in the sense of "a guarantee based upon", though the wording I used ("against appearance") is ... confusing.
Parent comment edited for clarity.
Just seems like there's so much bloodlust here against someone who -- under the United States Constitution -- is still presumed innocent until found to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law by a jury of his peers. Sorry.
I cannot even mentally process an individual having that much "cash on hand" (money in checking account, etc.)
> The bond was secured by equity in his family home, and by the signatures of his parents and two other individuals with "considerable" assets
House can't be more than million or two. So Billionaires bailed him out? Wow. That's useful friends.
It strikes me that the only people who could afford such a bond would be those actually guilty of a multi billion dollar fraud. If you're innocent, you'd be stuck in jail...
i would not expect that to be the case in this context. you would also probably never mix roman numerals and arabic numerals like that.
It a strange world.
Its less common now, but historically the latin-derived “M” for 1000s and “MM” for millions was dominant in finance and accounting; metric-style “k” for 1000s and “M” for millions has become more popular, but you’ll occasionally still encounter the other style.
https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/fixed-income...
k, M, B, T, Q seem like easier to read suffixes as opposed to having to count the number of “M”s.
You are correct the others are easier, clearer, etc. But banking goes back centuries, millennia even. When an entire industry uses a certain nomenclature, no individual participant wants to go through the hassle of trying to change everything.
There is a way to express one million as M̅ (horizontal bar above M for M * 1,000), but I think this was a later addon that was not used by the Romans. They probably rarely had to deal with numbers in the millions and if they did, they could just express them as a product like M * M
This is not the case in the United States.
Also any informed opinion regarding her plea deal: Generous, not-generous, unusual, routine? ianal but 110 years to 0 years seems pretty sweet. Also didn't note any agreement to forever stay away from other people's money (since she agreed that she "is in fact guilty" [of conspiracy to defraud, wire-fraud, ..]
(Note that it's a description of the agreement, rather than the full text of it directly.)
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23495436-crypto-coop...
This promise to sing for prosecution is presumably not good news for SFB, that is understood. But SEC official names were being dragged into this when it broke via guilt by association. And that connection was via Caroline and her family. Maybe a nothing burger, but maybe there is actually some beef involved. How does this plea agreement affect that potential and alleged connection, in legal theory?
- was this too generous?
- who else besides Caroline Ellison would benefit here now that she has her deal? (Related to first q ..)
She's pleading to what, seven major felonies as I recall? And there is no agreement on a reduced sentence aside from "the prosecution will ask for lesser sentences" which doesn't mean the judge is going to agree. She didn't get some kind of a sweet deal, she got the "we have enough to put you in jail until you're elderly, but if you make it easy we'll ask the judge to reduce it so middle age" agreement. They clearly have the upper hand.
"The agreement states that if Ellison fully cooperates with the SDNY's investigation, as well as any other law enforcement agency designated by the office, she won't be further prosecuted criminally except for possible criminal tax violations with regard to the wire and commodity fraud charges that resulted from commingling funds between FTX and Alameda accounts. The deal does not guarantee that other agencies will not pursue prosecution at a later date."
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/12/22/caroline-elliso...
Different potential charges relating to taxes are on the table but that guilty plea to seven counts of felony carry no prison time. So it is "110 to 0 years" modulo potential tax related charges, if any.
He resigned as CEO this July, well after supposedly they tapped into customers funds.
I'm sure we'll hear about him too, one way or the other.
Not so fast. The plea agreement does not include immunity:
> According to their plea agreements, Ms. Ellison and Mr. Wang are expected to truthfully disclose information to investigators, provide requested evidence and appear in front of a grand jury or court proceeding if asked. In exchange, the government will inform the judge of the defendants’ assistance and request lesser sentences.
[1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-associates-of-ftx-founder-s...
But bondsmen don't have to just cut you loose with zero oversight. For a small slice of the $25m they can hire a team to follow him around 24/7. I assume they also put him in a ankle tracker and have him checking in on a strict schedule. All of this cuts into their profit so it's only as risky as they are cheap about monitoring him.
Can they physically detain him? Or just report to the authorities?
> If the defendant fails to appear in court, the bond agent is allowed by law or contractual arrangement to bring the defendant to the jurisdiction of the court in order to recover the money paid out under the bond, usually through the use of a bounty hunter.
Over $100M you can game the justice system at the highest levels in most cases. Ask HSBC or Hunter Biden.
YMMV. I wish you luck!
IMHO, I think that he doesn't have enough incriminating information about political figures to be "hit-able". He must have some information about the Democrats' shady financials, likely going way up, but let's face it, we all know that already. This contrasts H Epstein, who likely knew which political figures were pedophiles, sexual predators, and all that horrific business, which is far worse and likely led to the "anomalous events" that occurred during H Epstien's arrest.
There is zero chance he has inside insight into anything. D.C. is filled with new money throwing around millions. The point isn’t to get access. It’s to convince the politically unconnected that they have access. They get a photo, the candidate gets cash.
the fact that the richest country on earth cannot prevent the suicide of one of the highest-profile criminals (and a high profile witness to lots of things) in a completely isolated controlled environment seems extremely bizarre to me. Like, when I've read that people are overdosing in solitary on San Quentin death row bizzare.
Generally for first time offenders that are not a threat to society and unlikely to skip court, bail is waived altogether.
I think society struggles with knowing who is a threat and who isn't. The consequences of being wrong is rape, death, and arson.
> released without bail and was arrested 10 hours later for arson
https://westseattleblog.com/2022/10/crime-watch-followup-ars...
> A judge released him [..] one week before this Monday’s murder.
https://westseattleblog.com/2022/06/crime-watch-followup-arr...
> Fulk is a convicted felon and was arrested just eight days earlier in neighboring Pierce County for threatening to kill a Pierce Transit public safety officer.
https://komonews.com/news/local/witness-describes-vicious-vi...
I’m pretty sure the rest of us think it should be 0… but maybe that is just me. 3 notable examples in the last 6 months in one area… not zero… not anywhere close.
edit: I think your edit made things a little clearer. I doubt we agree, but we've talked past each other here. The relevant statistic is [number of people who commit crimes on bail]/[number of people released on bail]. If we had Minority-Report-style precogs, we could have had 0 such cases in the last 6 months while denying only 3 more people bail. But we don't have that option- there's not much to be done about the sensitivity, so all we can do is crank the cutoff of doubt higher or lower.
With tens of thousands of people released on bail, and assuming that identifying the nth potential murderer roughly follows a power law distribution (a fairly reasonable assumption in a sensitivity/specificity situation like this) we're talking about jailing thousands of innocents to prevent one guilty man from going free. If look at violent crime in general the numbers are less skewed (around 2%), but I'd hope that most people balk at the idea of preemptively jailing ten people without trial to prevent just one from committing a crime. I mean, recidivism rates after prison are way higher than that- perhaps "the rest of us" would favor life sentences for every crime, but I doubt it.
People that are not functioning on any level (just because they're low-income doesn't mean they don't have friends or family to help) should be treated with caution, because they have nothing to lose.
They already are facing jail, so why should they try to function?
What level of rape/murder is acceptable from criminals who have not yet been charged with a crime?
The answer is the same as for your question, so unless we are going to preemptively detain everyone not yet charged with a crime, I don't see how the answer to your question can imply we should lock up people who are charged but not convicted.
Huh? What are you talking about? You don’t even get a bail hearing unless you've already been charged with a crime.
1. https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/clea...
More simply put: much more than 50% of people that have stolen 1 car will get caught before they have stolen their tenth car, and if someone has stolen a hundred cars then their chances of getting caught before stealing 110 are much less than 50%. Edit: note that my figures don’t match your numbers - they are only examples.
This is not likely true, and it is definitely not necessarily true.
There are quite likely people out on bail who have (1) committed at least one crime, (2) never been identified and arrested or charged for any crime that they have committed.
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109558870665603162
It notes that a Judge can still say that an offender should be remanded to pre-trial custody because they're a threat to the community.
Yes, and that happens with people released on cash bail as well as no-cash-bail; there's no evidence, despite the fact that large no-cash-bail jurisdictions have existed in the US for quite some time (D.C. has been essentially no-cash-bail for three decades, for instance) that having money in the mix for pretrial release protects against that.
It’s a tough situation because optimally no one who’s not a flight risk or dangerous should be in jail. They’re all innocent, after all, until they have trial. A financial hostage is just the easiest to implement.
Whether or not someone is held in jail before trial is determined by whether there is a risk that they might flee, destroy evidence or influence witnesses and that judgement has to be taken in a proportional manner (so e.g. if jailing someone before trial would likely put them in jail longer than their potential punishment then you can’t do it).
It actually doesn’t happen that often.
As is often the case with criminal justice one of the biggest issues is actually that it just takes too long until there is a trial and this often also leads to problems with the duration someone sits in jail before trial. Six months are supposed to be the usual upper limit, in practice, however, that line is frequently crossed. So the thing I would want to improve in Germany is time until trial. (And: this is also not to say that this system is perfect. For example, people without a home are empirically much more likely to be jailed, even though the Constitutional Court determined that just the mere fact that someone doesn’t have a home isn’t a valid reason to consider someone a flight risk. Every individual case is supposed to be considered on its own terms. In practice that obviously doesn’t work perfectly.)
As for the US, you need judges to decide whether and how to set bail anyway, just get them to decide on flight risk and risk of tampering with evidence or witnesses instead.
Currently there are around 12,000 people in jail awaiting trial in Germany. In the US there are around half a million people in jail awaiting trial. Normalizing for population that’s around 150 per million in Germany and 1,500 per million in the US. There also seems to be about a five time difference in the crime rate (if we are focussing on violent crime) with, for example, five times more murders per capita in the US. So, even taking that difference into account the US still seems to be jailing about double the people Germany does pre-trial. Doesn’t seem like a great system …
(Obviously all back of the napkin calculations. Please check my numbers if you think there’s anything wrong with those.)
When I was briefly in jail I met several people without a home who had commited petty crimes with the explicit intent of being able to spend a couple days in jail. One fellow I saw return three times with less than 24 hours between each visit.
Bail is usually proportional to your crime and there are businesses that will pay your bail if you give them 10%. They take the risk and will send a bounty hunter after you if you skip bail.
Some states like California are testing out non-cash bails which is probably similar to what Germany does. If you do something evil like murder, you stay in jail until your trial. If you're harmless and not looking to escape the country, they let you go.
I think it is supposed to be tied to how likely you might be to flee. So a rich person accused of a crime that could lead to the death penalty would have huge bail. (Or likely not be given bail at all.). A poor person accused of a minor crime would likely have a very low bail.
Which is not to say if you commit murder, you go to jail without bail.
It's if you're accused of murder and made to stand trial, then you go to jail without bail, regardless of if you're guilty or not.
Really messes with poor people because if they don't have bail money, they either:
1. Sit in jail for a few months, unable to work, while their bills pile up, kids go uncared for, and rent is due.
2. Pay 10% of bail to a bail bondsman, who keeps the money regardless of if the accused is innocent or guilty, just so they have the privilege of walking free while awaiting trial for a crime they may or may not have committed.
It seems like in online discussions, and especially in the recent US midterm cycle where crime was said to be an issue, and hell, I've even seen this when I've been called for jury duty ... Many people seemingly do not understand that police or a district attorney accusing someone of a crime is not the same as guilt.
I would say even that many times a conviction doesn't really mean that. We as a country accuse and convict a lot of innocent people, have an unfair punishment mentality, often charge in excess of a person's actual misdeed, etc.
And all of these problems and more are amplified when the accused doesn't have resources to fight it.
There are certainly motivated, intelligent poor people. But if you don't think lazy & dumb isn't over-represented amongst poor people, then you've been leading an insular life.
He hasn't been convicted of a crime. What's wrong is for people who haven't been convicted of a crime to spend time in jail, especially in situations like this where he isn't posing a physical danger to the community (and indeed won't even be leaving the house anyway).
Maybe Harari doesn’t realize that the true arbiters of right and wrong—no matter what people might think—are people with power. And often is people who are rich, although they might have no formal power.
In that light it is not strange.
But bail bonds companies typically only post 10% of the amount.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ftx-debtors-announc...
My understanding is that SBF also made similar contributions to Republicans and conservative PACs etc, but generally hid them (e.g. by giving in other people's names), so those may be harder to track down & return.
The indictment (which required providing evidence to a grand jury for each count to establish probable cause) includes charges of illegal concealed-identity political donations. While it doesn't specify the recipients, this is consistent with his description of how he donated to Republicans to avoid criticism for such donations.
I'd rather stick to my mediocre returns of my money market accounts than this crypto forex NFT nonsense.
Did people actually listen to him whenever he spoke - whenever did any of his BS make any financial sense ???.
You can make money just buy buying money.
There are billionaires in currency arbitrage.
Is the implication that technology (like blockchain and digital currencies) and financial operations (like brokerages and exchanges) can create no legitimate wealth? Because I might humbly suggest this forum, which is run by a venture capital firm specializing in technology, might not rush to agree with you.
Less humbly, if you're suggesting labor is what makes things valuable, that's possibly one of the worst ideas in the history of economic thought. SBF might be a fraud, but it doesn't implicate cryptocurrencies, much less capitalism.
They know he knowingly defrauded millions of people out of billions of dollars. If I did that, my mom would let me go to prison for the rest of my life because she knows she taught me morals and that human beings are more important than money and if I decide to ignore that moral framework as an adult then that's on me. Dude is an adult with a fully formed brain. Stopping a twelve year old from burning themselves on a hot stove is one thing, but if your fully adult son still needs to told not to touch the hot stove, it's time to let them fuck around and find out themselves.
That all assumes they had no idea what was going on, which I don't know is believable.
I can totally understand how parents wouldn’t give two shits about “teaching their child a lesson” in this scenario.
- You can balance their welfare vs. other goods, e.g. justice, well-functioning society, etc.
- Your view of their welfare can include their character, maturity, empathy, and taking responsibility for their actions. It sucks if that requires 20 years in prison, but that may be preferable to helping them be a free but terrible person for the rest of their life.
Losing your money sucks but it's preferable to losing your freedom. It is very likely the parents are guilty of abetting or enabling the fraud in some way.
SBF "agreed" to be extradited, that implies some negotiation. The only possible incentive I can think of him agreeing to what is shaping up to be a slam-dunk case of a very long prison term, is immunity for the parents.
Notably, he is going to make a plea deal:
“Mr. Bankman-Fried at a later date will enter a plea on charges that he engaged in fraud and other offenses, the judge said.”
If he is doing a deal with prosecutors, you have to wonder what he is getting in return?
CZ is competent at running an exchange and SBF is a bitter con man.
That’s not what the article says. It says he will enter a plea later.
To enter a plea means to plead guilty or not guilty. All they are saying is that he hasn’t said either way yet.
Quote:
> In 2018, during a meeting at the Delphi Economic Forum, I asked the MEP how we could explain the complex blockchain technology and explain its potential, so that the ordinary citizen and small and medium-sized enterprises - as she claimed - can benefit from decentralised financing.
> "People don't necessarily need to understand them", Eva Kaili had replied with a smile, after a sharp pause and a brief elaboration. "Cryptocurrencies are a bit like weather - you can enjoy their benefits without knowing in detail the process behind them."
Well. I feel that we are barely scratching the surface with "Qatargate". I'm so glad to have exited crypto years ago. The space is filled with get-rich-quick people, apparently they don't even understand how blockchain works.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...
[2] https://www.lifo.gr/stiles/optiki-gonia/i-kaili-kai-lompi-to...
This would be worth a submission, however.