Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/28/sam-bankman-fried-jailed-for-25-years-and-ordered-to-pay-11-2bn.html
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Not to mention all the people who were wowed by the fact that he played video games during important conference calls as if that were evidence of a genius mind instead of a dope who wasn’t taking anything seriously.
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He sucked at doing both of them too
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I’ve always considered him a prime Republican candidate for future Presidency.
Oh, it’s just me, then…
Here it is —> /s
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Now that is what I call “Facing the music.” 
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Dumb ass; never rob the rich 
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He must also pay up $11.2bn, not that it exists.
This Forbes article from three years ago (which has aged really well, like milk) puts his net worth at the time to be around $22B. So at some point he had enough money to pay that fine, but he certainly doesn’t anymore. In a way I suppose he never truly did, since it was nothing but smoke and mirrors all the way down.
Best part of the article:
Steve Jobs obsessed over his sleek and simple products. Elon Musk claims he’s in business to save humanity. Not Bankman-Fried, whose philosophy of “earning to give” drove him into the crypto gold rush, first as a trader, then as the creator of an exchange, simply because he knew he could get rich.
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Good Wired article on SBF and Effective Altruism generally.
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Hans Gruber’s quote from Die Hard is always relevant in the world of high finance:
Well, when you steal 600 dollars, you can just disappear. When you steal 600 million, they will find you, unless they think you’re already dead.
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Dang. Color me shocked - SHOCKED! - that a white collar criminal got that much time. We need to do it more often and he probably shouldn’t be the only one getting jail time.
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What kind of wages are they paying in the prison laundry these days?
Because I don’t think 25 years is going to be enough.
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Pretty sure they can garnish wages until he’s dead, not just imprisoned.
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Who would’ve guessed that “fucking over people in the short term to amass enough wealth to help more people in the long term” would turn out to be a morally bankrupt philosophy?
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As far as I can see, most of the other big players in the crypto space are engaged in similar shenanigans, enjoying a life of luxury at the expense of people foolish enough to believe in their promises. Bankman-Fried was just dumb enough to get caught doing it so flagrantly that it couldn’t be ignored.
Unless they jail at least 80% of the others, the whole sector is going to remain ripe for transferring money from the credulous to the crooked indefinitely. I’m not confident that will happen at the necessary scale.
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Judge Lewis Kaplan also set the fine for the orange turd in the Jean E Carroll defamation case(s).
I’m beginning to like this guy.
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Seems like a reasonable outcome. He might never get out of prison, and he’ll definitely never get out of debt.
I also hope his parents - who, aside from raising such a terrible person, were actually part of the grift - at least have to disgorge any benefits they received.
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White collar criminals can get sentenced to a while in prison … if their crimes affected a sufficient number of sufficiently rich people. See Bernie Madoff and Elizabeth Holmes.
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Let’s be real.The harsh sentence is not because he was an unrepentant asshole (he was), but because he stole from rich people.
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I’m also glad the judge didn’t buy the last-ditch defence that his malfeasance was due in part to his (supposedly) being on the autism spectrum. As we’ve seen on this BBS, too many arseholes try to use that to excuse their crappy behaviour, insulting other members of the neuroatypical community.
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