Can we discus recovery? The Madoff trustee was able to recover something like 90% of the Madoff Ponzi. Alameda and FTX's real estate purchases have value, as do their VC investments, purchases of bank stock, etc. In other words, it's not all gone. My understanding is that even some of the political contributions can be clawed back.
FTX's purchases of IOU's (i.e., crypto) that declined in value are not likely to be recoverable. But Bitcoin still has substantial value. There's at least a billion in loans to insiders that can be clawed back.
The problem is opportunity cost. People invested in Madoff to grow their money. So if I invest $100 in Madoff and ten years later they say “we recovered $90, congrats,” yeah that’s better than nothing. But if I had put that into a legitimate investment, maybe I’d have $180.
Other folks got money out of Madoff during his scam years, and the trustee says “I’m taking that money back to pay back others.”
So much of crypto went to things that now have little economic value. Burnt out computer hardware, enormous electricity, Tom Brady’s endorsement deal. At least with the housing bubble we got some buildings (I live in a bubble neighborhood.) Crypto is like lighting money on fire. The sooner this scam is over, the better.
On this note I am curious if political organisations will be required to give back the donations he made. It seems the right thing if they were stolen funds. But being politicians I'm curious if it will be rules for thee and not for me.
Wouldn’t you have to take into account due diligence when talking opportunity cost?
As in, someone who did not do their due diligence and had a higher risk tolerance would be expected to have a lower opportunity cost. In simple words, likely to lose money on this deal but willing due to the high return chance.
I'd say there is a good chance they can claw back some of the endorsement money. A celebrity endorser is more than just some vendor, it is someone that is lending credence to the scam either wittingly or unwittingly.
While Tom Brady's endorsement has little economic value, it was money paid to him. I believe a bankruptcy court can undo past transactions, so that cash might be recoverable.
> But if I had put that into a legitimate investment, maybe I’d have $180.
Or maybe zero. Investing is a casino unless you are very closely supervising your investments and have a thorough understanding of the underlying market dynamics. So better do your homework if you want to see some or all of your money back, preferably with a premium.
I’d be absolutely shocked if more than 25% can be recovered. They spent multi-billions on venture investments that were not just high-risk due to their early stage nature but also inextricably linked to ftx by way of the cryptocurrency market as a whole and thus about as undiversified as humanly possible. There’s a few of their investments that have value and value could be recovered through sales but almost all of them are illiquid and have seen valuations collapse.
Also consider that a lot of the players involved are overseas and anonymous* which makes it much more difficult to clawback relative to people onshore (like in the case of madoff).
People have already looked into this, and the claims on FTX' debt were valued at 5c on the dollar. Alameda has burned through billions, and most of what was left were illiquid shitcoins and other worthless junk. Madoff, at least, was dealing with real assets.
If we limit ourselves to depositor funds -- who morally ought to be superior creditors to investors-- I wouldn't be shocked if the recovery percentage was quite a bit larger than that.
One thing that made 90% recoveries of Madoff possible were that they first backed out all the fake gains that the customers thought they had but never actually had. This will be harder to do with FTX, but I expect that once all the bogus margin trading on fake assets is backed out we'll find that the losses were far less substantial than the numbers being thrown around.
I'd imagine there's a huge problem in that FTX did not declare bankruptcy until the vast majority of their liquid assets had been removed by the bank run. If they had declared bankruptcy before the run, most people might have gotten out with a 50% haircut.
Instead, after the run, those left over will get nothing and those who got out will got 100%.
The guy in charge of this for FTX is the same guy in charge of handling getting money back from the Enron collapse. He's currently testifying to congress about the state of things. It doesn't look good.
Well the Madoff trustee's were able to see who received payouts from Madoff due to KYC rules. This allowed the trustee to go to people, most of whom were completely innocent, to ask the to give back some of the money they redeemed from Madoff.
FTX on the other hand has very few KYC docs so the trustees are left with wallet addresses.
Not sure how you contact a wallet address to ask for money back.
If this was purposefully orchestrated as the indictment suggests, it's very likely that 100% of every deposit made to FTX could be lost for good. Minus the real estate purchases of course.
Crypto transactions are irreversible.
All of the money that Alameda Research lost (which they borrowed from FTX investors) to bad bets could have easily been won by SBF et al on the other side of the trade... withdrawn to safety and put in a cold wallet for whenever they all see the light of day again.
The majority of the money that Alameda lost to bad bets was propping up shitcoins.
SBF could have created an account on FTX under a pseudonym and taken the short side of all of those shitcoin trades, knowing exactly how much financial support they had and how to break them.
With respect to culpability for the wire fraud charges, arguably it does not matter. The crime is a devising scheme to defraud. The execution of the scheme does not have to be successful.
Even if every FTX customer gets a 100% refund of their deposits, SBF is still going to face prosecution. This is what makes his recent behaviour so childish, immature, juvenile and foolish. The transcript of his proposed testimony before Congress shows that SBF is anything but a "whiz kid". He is clueless. A pawn.1
How much what? Fiat money? According to the self-proclaimed crypto experts, the fiat monetary system is to be avoided.2 Why would crypto believers want fiat money.
According to a Google "engineer", the highly regulated, democratically-elected government that issues and guarantees fiat currency may seize it in the near future, referring the reader to "snopes.com" as an authoritative source. Not only that, according to the Google stooge, using fiat currency poses a risk of "total surveillance" and is undermining peoples' privacy.2 You cannot make this up. Employee of almost totally unregulated "tech" company, hoovering up the personal data and invading the privacy of hundreds of millions of people for profit, a company with nearly 140,000 employees and billions in the bank that does not even have a basic customer service line, is giving unsolicited advice about privacy.
How much was really lost won't matter much in terms of prosecuting those who committed any crimes. And while it looks like a huge crime to me, they are still innocent until proven guilty.
It does matter to those who appear to have been defrauded. They won't be made whole. There will be opportunity costs, and I can't imagine it all being recovered. But if a significant portion is recovered, it would provide some help to the victims.
> FTX's purchases of IOU's (i.e., crypto) that declined in value are not likely to be recoverable. But Bitcoin still has substantial value.
This was kind of what Matt Levine focused on in his coverage of FTX - where did the money go? It wasn't just that they invested in crypto assets, they created their own crypto asset, assigned it a huge value, and put it on the balance sheet at an imaginary price. Used those "assets" as collateral to borrow real money. Then they spent real money on Bahamian property, political contributions, charitable contributions, naming an arena, and the KILLER - bailed out Alameda repeatedly using real money.
Now that SBF is charged on six counts of conspiracy, it's safe to say it's safe to not believe anything that person says. I don't believe the "leveraged trades gone wrong" angle.
I do believe there's a conspiracy. That's what several, including @Bitfinex'ed (a Twitter user exposing the tether fraud) and Marc Cohodes, said years and months before SBF was exposed for the ponzi boy he was.
They don't believe the fraud only stops at SBF / Caroline Ellison.
How much is going to be found depends on how far they investigate on the conspiracy.
A good place to start looking for a conspiracy to defraud is this: FTX's top lawyer, Dan Friedberg, happened to be colleague with Bitfinex's top lawyer. Indeed, they both worked at a company which defrauded online poker players by cheating on them (using a "god mode" on the server software they were offering).
I'd say that's a good start for the "conspiracy" angle: go look at Dan Friedberg's implication in the scheme. And at its relation with his former colleague now at Bitfinex. And seen that the Panamera papers exposed that Bitfinex/iFinex/tether/Deltec were all one and the same gang of criminals, and seen that it's a fact that Moonstone bank, which SBF bought in the US from Deltec's owner (at least partially) maybe, just maybe...
That it's time to look into the tether fraud to find the billions?
“Bankman-Fried's parents were animated during the proceeding, at times laughing or putting their fingers in their ears, according to Coindesk.”
… what in the world.. I guess they really think they are going to somehow get him out of this.. how do they not understand that this type of behavior is not in any way helpful to him?
This is mainstream media being sensationalist per usual. This is what the original Coindesk article wrote.
"They appeared to oscillate between dejection and defiance, at times holding their heads in their hands and clasping their hands. Bankman-Fried’s mother audibly laughed several times when her son was referred to as a “fugitive” and his father occasionally put his fingers in his ears as if to drown out the sound of the proceedings."
What a laughable game of telephone. A writes “holding their heads in their hands”. And B, presumably to add their own twist to the story, perhaps to avoid quoting A verbatim, turns it into “put their fingers in their ears”.
Edit: Just realized that A actually did speak of the father putting his fingers in his ears.
They watched their own flesh and blood son transition with breakneck speed from a high rolling billionaire who hobnobbed with society's elites to facing spending the best years of his life in prison, a disgrace to his family and their legacy. How do you think you'd cope with that psychological ordeal?
And quite probably are near the top of the clawback list if it turns out that any of the funds ended up with them. They have very good reasons to be distressed, their sons future behind bars is only one of the things they need to be worried about. Their whole world is crashing down around them, besides of course becoming persona non-grata to pretty much all of their friends and quite possibly family in case others got sucked in as well. I don't envy them.
Sure as hell wouldn’t laugh and put my fingers in my ears during a hearing. They are professional lawyers. Time to man up and not put your son at even more risk. Who knows how involved they’ve been in his shenanigans up til now, but it’s time to stop the madness..
The act never ends. Surely, in a decade or two or three, SBF will be looking all innocent from behind bars and still unable to open his mouth without incriminating himself.
I wonder how many others will be charged. This will be more difficult than walking all over this guy, and I seriously doubt he is alone in all of this.
I think being faced with this or having your kids faced with this probably elicits all kinds of stress responses and coping mechanisms.
I could totally see myself engaging in nervous laughter if one of my kids fucks up this badly. I could also see twisting my worldview to make my kids innocent in my own mind, as a form of denial, unconditional love for the kids, etc.
From press reports it seems possible those parents did a poor job raising him, that the apple didn't fall far from the tree, but I think also we shouldn't rush to judgement or draw conclusions where another explanation might suffice.
Does this strike anyone else as way too dramatic a narrative for a court document? Like it's written with a deep personal beef rather than sticking to the facts. Is that normal for civil complaints of this type?
To be clear I'm not defending the guy, I just feel after reading the first few pages like I'm flipping through a cheap tabloid.
I noticed that too, and interpreted it as a sign of confidence. I can't imagine a regulatory group writing something so dramatic without them being sure it's a home-run case.
> Let’s see if his ‘I’m baby’ defense works in court.
It was a foolish move to open his mouth at all on the matter, let alone go on every podcast that invited him and took every interview to spout his self-incriminating non-sense and riling up the Media and the public's ire in the process.
If that was his goal, he has terribly failed to establish anything that suggests it will work
Worst yet... is his choice for chief counsel:
In the U.S., Bankman-Fried has hired defense lawyer Mark Cohen, who is best known for representing Ghislaine Maxwell during her sex trafficking trial, as well as Mexican cartel boss Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.
This string of fails along with his lawyers high profile cases (that ended unfavourable for his clients) makes it seem like he is screwed. He will remain in prison until February at Fox Hill [0].
Personally speaking, he and everyone affiliated with FTX and Alameda have face severe, costly and lengthy sentences; if they're going to go after influencers who lend their name and reputation to these scams then scrutiny has to be made for those politicians, media and VC insiders who also participated in this scam. This has to be the only inevitable outcome in this because without any oversight on that side of things this vanity given to businesses that operate with the false legitimacy of being licensed or regulation will never be addressed if it doesn't expose how those things are granted when you have resources to spend to buy your way into compliance.
Speaking of which, I sincerely hope (though not holding my breath) that they take a good, hard look at the Sequoia partners who enabled this. Diligence is theoretically part of their job and they either committed an act of gross negligence by not doing any, or they committed an act of conspiracy by seeing what the game was and blessing it.
One thing to note about the charges: a number of these charges are "conspiracy" charges, meaning that there will be more people indicted. Most likely, his ex, who has probably already been talking to the feds in exchange for leniency, and possibly also including his one or both of his parents (see Count 7).
Also interesting to note that Count 8 relates to campaign finance violations (for exceeding contribution thresholds and fraud related to making or reporting contributions). PACs don't have donation thresholds, so this appears to be related to the alleged "dark money" contributions he claimed to make in the summer (rather than the donations to the Democratic PACs in the primaries). It's not clear if this charge is based solely on his claims or if there is actual evidence of improper contributions.
Interesting wording. I am not a Lawyer but have had a lot of interest in this case and others like it.
"SAMUEL BANKMAN-FRIED" a/k/a "SBF," the defendant, and others known and unknown did combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to commit wire fraud".
Does this indicate that they intend to charge more people in the organization under RICO laws? Or is that just standard legalese for any wire fraud case.
RICO is for charging the boss if you don't have direct evidence against them. In this case they do, so they don't need it.
Also the phrasing here is just wire fraud (18 USC 1343) and conspiracy (18 ISC 371). If they were going towards RICO, you'd expect to see them talking about "patterns of activity", "operating a criminal enterprise" or other phrasing from RICO statues (18 USC 1962).
There may already be sealed charges against others but yes, there will likely be charges against others. Some conspirators may receive or may have already received immunity in exchange for testimony, though. It will take time to determine who else was involved and to what extent, though my guess is the focus will be on SBF.
This is also great language for encouraging other conspirators to make a deal to testify even if the JD has little evidence against them. It's almost like the police lying and saying, "We have a video of you doing xyz."
The line after that contains "conspirators known and unknown". So, the US SDNY has already decided to charge some people. And the US SDNY is going to charge some other people, but they are not aware of their identity.
RICO is for using underlings to charge the boss. In this case, the boss is being charged. Conspiracy charges here imply co-conspirators.
Pretty standard legalese from where I'm sitting but I'd expect more people to be charged. He didn't do this all by himself. RICO wouldn't really apply here, they've already got the top guy, and usually RICO is about charging the top guy with the little guys' crimes.
Not really. He's a pathological liar. There's probably great incriminating evidence there (as in lies that can be exposed as lies for not a word of that person can be trusted) and it's good to see him whine that his accounts got blocked but it's not a good read.
The six counts of conspiracy are a great read though. I wonder who his co-conspirators are but in case they're in the Bahamas those implicated may not be sleeping that well: now they just saw that even the bahamian authorities bow to Uncle Sam.
The aggressively useless chin mask in the lead photo sends a certain message.
I wonder what he means by saying that "the password to my LinkedIn account still hasn't been returned". Is he claiming that the "Chapter 11 team" has taken over his account and changed his password? Is that... normal?
They probably changed his keepass or bitwarden main password, which effectively locks anyone using those products with generated passwords from entering into anything.
To my knowledge, he has yet to give a reasonable answer why Alameda was using FTX customer funds. He can't, because that should never have happened, and is considered fraud anywhere.
Various legal systems have standards for the form for which documents should be submitted to them which are surprisingly nitpicky in terms of items like fonts and spacing. Of course, these standards were created when typewriters were the dominant use case, so had deference to what typewriters could actually do. Even though most of the typewriter use has fallen out of fashion, the standards remain, with the results that the documents look like they came out of a typewriter even if (as I suspect in this case) it's just been printed then faxed.
At this point it also probably makes it easier for law-specific OCR software to round up the standard metadata. With the sheer volume of paperwork in that industry, nobody is interested in reinventing the regex wheel for every document.
Also it makes things more equal. Like appellant courts can tell only x number of pages. And for that sort of limit to make sense the line spacing, font size and margins need to be consistent. With only set of fonts allowed.
Courts really don't want to argue about how any submission is laid out and in best case they get to just throw out something looking wrong saving their time.
Consistency also means that rules that state “pages” are meaningful limits, not something subject to unresitricted gaming, and that they retain that over time.
Yes! Also, why do they feel the need to do the "a/k/a SBF" after every mention of the guy's name? Say it the first time then just call him SBF thereafter. I think Typewriter Guy must be paid by the character. Another petty thing: I've never seek "a/k/a" with slashes like that before -- "aka" is sanctioned by Merriam-Webster, and "a.k.a." is also acceptable for constipated purists and The New Yorker.
This was my exact thoughts too! surely human beings from the 21st century could have improved on this.
However I'm also pretty sure that lawyers have found a loophole to prevent their jobs from being automated, if you just make using technology illegal/"not to standard" then they can keep billing $500 per hour to use a typewriter
It’s not typed up on a typewriter, although it may appear that way. Back when I worked in a federal district court, we used WordPerfect on Windows to draft judicial documents using a standard template that looked much like this; I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re still using it today.
Readit News
FTX's purchases of IOU's (i.e., crypto) that declined in value are not likely to be recoverable. But Bitcoin still has substantial value. There's at least a billion in loans to insiders that can be clawed back.
How much really was lost?
Other folks got money out of Madoff during his scam years, and the trustee says “I’m taking that money back to pay back others.”
So much of crypto went to things that now have little economic value. Burnt out computer hardware, enormous electricity, Tom Brady’s endorsement deal. At least with the housing bubble we got some buildings (I live in a bubble neighborhood.) Crypto is like lighting money on fire. The sooner this scam is over, the better.
There isn't a performance threshold beyond which fraud ceases to be criminal.
Wouldn’t you have to take into account due diligence when talking opportunity cost?
As in, someone who did not do their due diligence and had a higher risk tolerance would be expected to have a lower opportunity cost. In simple words, likely to lose money on this deal but willing due to the high return chance.
What’s the limit on that? Dollars or time? I would be beyond furious if I was expected to help make someone else whole.
I wonder if things like the political donations could be clawed back.
It's almost as if money is just paper and has little economic value. The same criticism you made of crypto.
Or maybe zero. Investing is a casino unless you are very closely supervising your investments and have a thorough understanding of the underlying market dynamics. So better do your homework if you want to see some or all of your money back, preferably with a premium.
Also consider that a lot of the players involved are overseas and anonymous* which makes it much more difficult to clawback relative to people onshore (like in the case of madoff).
One thing that made 90% recoveries of Madoff possible were that they first backed out all the fake gains that the customers thought they had but never actually had. This will be harder to do with FTX, but I expect that once all the bogus margin trading on fake assets is backed out we'll find that the losses were far less substantial than the numbers being thrown around.
Instead, after the run, those left over will get nothing and those who got out will got 100%.
Deleted Comment
FTX on the other hand has very few KYC docs so the trustees are left with wallet addresses.
Not sure how you contact a wallet address to ask for money back.
(edit links) https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360027668192-Individu...
https://help.ftx.us/hc/en-us/articles/360048666713-Account-T...
FTX (US? International? Both?) required KYC during sign-up. Or what do you mean?
kyc is from 02002
Crypto is mostly not IOUs since it doesn’t tie to an obligation by anyone to do anything. (Explicitly redeemable tokens are IOUs, though.)
Crypto transactions are irreversible.
All of the money that Alameda Research lost (which they borrowed from FTX investors) to bad bets could have easily been won by SBF et al on the other side of the trade... withdrawn to safety and put in a cold wallet for whenever they all see the light of day again.
The majority of the money that Alameda lost to bad bets was propping up shitcoins.
SBF could have created an account on FTX under a pseudonym and taken the short side of all of those shitcoin trades, knowing exactly how much financial support they had and how to break them.
With respect to culpability for the wire fraud charges, arguably it does not matter. The crime is a devising scheme to defraud. The execution of the scheme does not have to be successful.
Even if every FTX customer gets a 100% refund of their deposits, SBF is still going to face prosecution. This is what makes his recent behaviour so childish, immature, juvenile and foolish. The transcript of his proposed testimony before Congress shows that SBF is anything but a "whiz kid". He is clueless. A pawn.1
1. https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rbgv1U_v...
"How much was really lost?"
How much what? Fiat money? According to the self-proclaimed crypto experts, the fiat monetary system is to be avoided.2 Why would crypto believers want fiat money.
According to a Google "engineer", the highly regulated, democratically-elected government that issues and guarantees fiat currency may seize it in the near future, referring the reader to "snopes.com" as an authoritative source. Not only that, according to the Google stooge, using fiat currency poses a risk of "total surveillance" and is undermining peoples' privacy.2 You cannot make this up. Employee of almost totally unregulated "tech" company, hoovering up the personal data and invading the privacy of hundreds of millions of people for profit, a company with nearly 140,000 employees and billions in the bank that does not even have a basic customer service line, is giving unsolicited advice about privacy.
2. https://apxhard.substack.com/p/why-bitcoin-is-different-from...
It does matter to those who appear to have been defrauded. They won't be made whole. There will be opportunity costs, and I can't imagine it all being recovered. But if a significant portion is recovered, it would provide some help to the victims.
This was kind of what Matt Levine focused on in his coverage of FTX - where did the money go? It wasn't just that they invested in crypto assets, they created their own crypto asset, assigned it a huge value, and put it on the balance sheet at an imaginary price. Used those "assets" as collateral to borrow real money. Then they spent real money on Bahamian property, political contributions, charitable contributions, naming an arena, and the KILLER - bailed out Alameda repeatedly using real money.
How much was really "lost"?
Now that SBF is charged on six counts of conspiracy, it's safe to say it's safe to not believe anything that person says. I don't believe the "leveraged trades gone wrong" angle.
I do believe there's a conspiracy. That's what several, including @Bitfinex'ed (a Twitter user exposing the tether fraud) and Marc Cohodes, said years and months before SBF was exposed for the ponzi boy he was.
They don't believe the fraud only stops at SBF / Caroline Ellison.
How much is going to be found depends on how far they investigate on the conspiracy.
A good place to start looking for a conspiracy to defraud is this: FTX's top lawyer, Dan Friedberg, happened to be colleague with Bitfinex's top lawyer. Indeed, they both worked at a company which defrauded online poker players by cheating on them (using a "god mode" on the server software they were offering).
I'd say that's a good start for the "conspiracy" angle: go look at Dan Friedberg's implication in the scheme. And at its relation with his former colleague now at Bitfinex. And seen that the Panamera papers exposed that Bitfinex/iFinex/tether/Deltec were all one and the same gang of criminals, and seen that it's a fact that Moonstone bank, which SBF bought in the US from Deltec's owner (at least partially) maybe, just maybe...
That it's time to look into the tether fraud to find the billions?
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
“Bankman-Fried's parents were animated during the proceeding, at times laughing or putting their fingers in their ears, according to Coindesk.”
… what in the world.. I guess they really think they are going to somehow get him out of this.. how do they not understand that this type of behavior is not in any way helpful to him?
"They appeared to oscillate between dejection and defiance, at times holding their heads in their hands and clasping their hands. Bankman-Fried’s mother audibly laughed several times when her son was referred to as a “fugitive” and his father occasionally put his fingers in his ears as if to drown out the sound of the proceedings."
It definitely sounds more like a stress response.
Edit: Just realized that A actually did speak of the father putting his fingers in his ears.
Count 8 of the indictment: "Conspiracy to defraud and violate the campaign finance law".
Who was running the fundraiser? SBF's mom.
Who was helping SBF trying to obtain regulatory capture of the crypto currency exchange market in DC? SBF's father.
I'm not sure SBF is the only one to bring disgrace to that name, that'll from now on always be associated with fraud indeed.
I wonder how many others will be charged. This will be more difficult than walking all over this guy, and I seriously doubt he is alone in all of this.
I could totally see myself engaging in nervous laughter if one of my kids fucks up this badly. I could also see twisting my worldview to make my kids innocent in my own mind, as a form of denial, unconditional love for the kids, etc.
From press reports it seems possible those parents did a poor job raising him, that the apple didn't fall far from the tree, but I think also we shouldn't rush to judgement or draw conclusions where another explanation might suffice.
"My son is going to prison but I have secured my millions so it's fine" is generally not a thing.
To be clear I'm not defending the guy, I just feel after reading the first few pages like I'm flipping through a cheap tabloid.
Legal process is driven as much by narrative as it is by facts and allegations.
It was a foolish move to open his mouth at all on the matter, let alone go on every podcast that invited him and took every interview to spout his self-incriminating non-sense and riling up the Media and the public's ire in the process.
If that was his goal, he has terribly failed to establish anything that suggests it will work
Worst yet... is his choice for chief counsel:
In the U.S., Bankman-Fried has hired defense lawyer Mark Cohen, who is best known for representing Ghislaine Maxwell during her sex trafficking trial, as well as Mexican cartel boss Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.
This string of fails along with his lawyers high profile cases (that ended unfavourable for his clients) makes it seem like he is screwed. He will remain in prison until February at Fox Hill [0].
Personally speaking, he and everyone affiliated with FTX and Alameda have face severe, costly and lengthy sentences; if they're going to go after influencers who lend their name and reputation to these scams then scrutiny has to be made for those politicians, media and VC insiders who also participated in this scam. This has to be the only inevitable outcome in this because without any oversight on that side of things this vanity given to businesses that operate with the false legitimacy of being licensed or regulation will never be addressed if it doesn't expose how those things are granted when you have resources to spend to buy your way into compliance.
0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2022/12/13/sam-bankm...
Can I truly be charged for a crime if I pretend to be dumb after I get caught?
Also interesting to note that Count 8 relates to campaign finance violations (for exceeding contribution thresholds and fraud related to making or reporting contributions). PACs don't have donation thresholds, so this appears to be related to the alleged "dark money" contributions he claimed to make in the summer (rather than the donations to the Democratic PACs in the primaries). It's not clear if this charge is based solely on his claims or if there is actual evidence of improper contributions.
"SAMUEL BANKMAN-FRIED" a/k/a "SBF," the defendant, and others known and unknown did combine, conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to commit wire fraud".
Does this indicate that they intend to charge more people in the organization under RICO laws? Or is that just standard legalese for any wire fraud case.
RICO is for charging the boss if you don't have direct evidence against them. In this case they do, so they don't need it.
Also the phrasing here is just wire fraud (18 USC 1343) and conspiracy (18 ISC 371). If they were going towards RICO, you'd expect to see them talking about "patterns of activity", "operating a criminal enterprise" or other phrasing from RICO statues (18 USC 1962).
[0] https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/14/lawsplainer-its-not-rico-...
This is also great language for encouraging other conspirators to make a deal to testify even if the JD has little evidence against them. It's almost like the police lying and saying, "We have a video of you doing xyz."
No, there are no RICO charges here, and if SBF isn’t getting RICO, I doubt underlings are.
These are just regular conspiracy charges. It is possible sonenir all of the other alleged conspirators will be charged with conspitacy, though.
A nessasary component of that charge is the participation of others.
In count two, "wire fraud on customers" there is no mention of consipiretors.
I expect that we will see more charges, but this wording doesn't particularly indicated it.
Deleted Comment
RICO is for using underlings to charge the boss. In this case, the boss is being charged. Conspiracy charges here imply co-conspirators.
Worth a read
Dead Comment
The six counts of conspiracy are a great read though. I wonder who his co-conspirators are but in case they're in the Bahamas those implicated may not be sleeping that well: now they just saw that even the bahamian authorities bow to Uncle Sam.
Dead Comment
I wonder what he means by saying that "the password to my LinkedIn account still hasn't been returned". Is he claiming that the "Chapter 11 team" has taken over his account and changed his password? Is that... normal?
Sorry I don't understand. Can you elaborate?
Courts really don't want to argue about how any submission is laid out and in best case they get to just throw out something looking wrong saving their time.
F/k/a is also common. I only see it in legal and compliance contexts.
However I'm also pretty sure that lawyers have found a loophole to prevent their jobs from being automated, if you just make using technology illegal/"not to standard" then they can keep billing $500 per hour to use a typewriter
https://www.insd.uscourts.gov/sites/insd/files/local_rules/L...
There is a method to the madness. Double spacing allows for manual markup and edits, for example.