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Comment by soneca | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think the intriguing part of SBF is the crime he committed, which is a pretty common one. For me, it is how he, after getting caught, hurts his own case being proactive in doing and saying stuff publicly.

The common type of white collar criminal remains in silence and follow orientations from their very well paid lawyers. And it is a pretty proven strategy that leads to minimal or no relevant punishment. If SBF was a common criminal in this sense, he possibly could leave all of this judged not guilty by the justice.

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I think this underestimated the abilities of the “common white collar criminal” — there are lots of chat logs of SBF and his coconspirators saying essentially “we’re doing fraud.”

Common white collar criminals say “let’s take this offline” in their chat transcripts.

Well there’s another high-profile case in the works where there are lots of transcripts of the coconspirators saying (occasionally explicitly), “we’re doing fraud.”

He reminds me of a few people Ive known who have a kind of "it'll all work out in the end" syndrome.

All very privileged and sheltered.

Even in jail, he'll be 'a rich guy in jail', able to buy all the favours and protection that can be bought in such a place.

I probably won't attract many friends by separately pointing out that "it'll all work out in the end" was also the primary investment strategy of virtually every crypto "investor" who lost money, but that's another matter...

IANAL but it seems all this stupidity may cost him what really matters: he may lose any chance of minimum security prison. That’s the real prize if prison time is all but guaranteed.

He could still get a decade in ClubFed with work release which… while obviously not great, is a hell of a lot better than living under guard in a low or medium security prison.

> Even in jail, he'll be 'a rich guy in jail'

Doesn't that require him to still have money?

It requires his friends, family and other connections to have money. Which for people like him seems to be basically a given.

I think it's a case of "I'm smarter than everybody else so I can talk my way out of these charges"

Like Hans Reiser trying to beat the murder charges, representing himself in court.

This is a trap very smart successful people fall into. They think they can figure out anything better than somebody who spent years learning the trade and acquiring the experience, just because they are so smart. Sometimes it's true, but often it's an illusion which can have life changing and sometimes deadly consequences.

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