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Comment by swores | Hacker News Reader

Lots of the world, including professional investors, thought FTX was a successful, big, profitable business.

I've no idea if SBF told his parents what dodgy stuff was going on or not, but if he didn't then is it unreasonable for them to think "our son is rich from being a successful entrepreneur, of course we'll accept gifts from him"?

I feel they should only be in legal trouble if it's proven they knew laws were being broken. I don't run a criminal enterprise, but if I did then I'd sure as hell give my parents a version of the truth that excluded criminality...

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The idea that only a tiny handful of people knew about Bernie Madoff’s fraud was simply a lie to keep a lot of people out of jail. It’s proved very effective. When your relatively removed it’s not that difficult to generate reasonable doubt.

Same exact vibe here. Everyone knew. It’s very easy to be ignorant when ignorance keeps you from a very long prison sentence.

> I feel they should only be in legal trouble if it's proven they knew laws were being broken.

Given they're both law professors, I think they could be expected to have a clearer view of laws and the breaking thereof than your average set of parents.

But also "[Bankman] reportedly also served as the first attorney for FTX" which suggests an even deeper insight into what may have been going on.

This sounds like a hypothetical speculative answer.

In the actual world we live in there are pages of emails and other evidence that they were involved in the commission of felonies.

I've not followed the case closely enough to know the details, but as I said in previous comment - if there's evidence they knew, then sure they should be prosecuted.

The comment you first replied to started with ”from the emails…”. So it’s very odd to speculate on a theoretical defense without knowing the details, in particularly, what the emails said.

The comment I replied to suggested the emails proved they got money from their son, not proved they knew anything illegal was going on.

To quote the comment I replied to: "From the emails that were released in court, it's clear that if they did not enable his crimes, they certainly profited from them and encouraged the continuance of the enterprise"

If they thought "the enterprise" was just a hugely successful startup, then why wouldn't they accept money from their newly rich son?

But it didn’t happen that way.

There are emails where the guy’s mom appears to be instigating brazen violations of various laws, among other things.

There doesn’t really appear to be much question they were active participants in a massive criminal fraud conspiracy.

That’s what the article is about. The only vagueness is if the DOJ feels like it makes sense to prosecute it.

You need mens rea, but that's (more or less) satisfied with "This sounds very shady but we like the money."

It doesn't require explicit and specific knowledge of the laws being broken.

Although given that his mother is considered an expert on ethics, and his father is a Professor of Law and Business at Stanford, I'm finding it hard to imagine they were blindsided by what happened.

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