Sam Bankman-Fried has been convicted on all counts
And the jury didn’t deliberate very long to return the verdicts:
Bankman-Fried was charged with seven counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering in what federal prosecutors have described as “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.”
He was accused of using customer deposits on the crypto trading platform FTX to cover losses at his hedge fund, pay off loans and buy lavish real estate, among other personal expenses. …
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said the verdict sends a message “to every single fraudster out there who thinks that they’re untouchable.”
He could be sentenced to up to 110 years, and he faces additional charges in another trial. His defense in this one amounted to claiming he didn’t know the significance of what he was doing. However, others testified against him in order to get plea deals:
Caroline Ellison, the former co-chief executive of Alameda and Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend, previously pleaded guilty to criminal charges and testified under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors. She has testified that she committed fraud with Bankman-Fried and at his direction.
Ellison additionally testified that Bankman-Fried believed in utilitarianism and thought rules against lying or stealing inhibited his ability to maximize the greatest benefit for the most people.
I have to say first that although I followed Bankman-Fried’s original arrest, I haven’t followed his trial. But I’ll add that in general I don’t like it when the entirety of the evidence against a defendant is the result of confederates trading testimony for plea deals. I know it’s done all the time as a very basic prosecutorial tool – and I think it’s highly likely that in this case the ex is telling the truth, because Bankman-Fried’s claim of ignorance just doesn’t seem plausible. And perhaps there’s plenty of other evidence to corroborate what the ex and the other plea-dealers are saying.
Assuming Ellison’s story is the truth, it’s a fascinating glimpse into the way Bankman-Fried reasoned and rationalized his behavior: utilitarianism. That’s a topic I’ve discussed in before, this post (first in a series of three) from 2015.
I’m curious why SBF didn’t plead guilty.
Had he rationalized his innocence? Did he believe he had a successful defense?
Both his parents are professors at Stanford Law. One presumes SBF has had top-notch legal advice and representation.
Has he lived in a special bubble for so long that he can’t believe his life could be nosediving into disaster?
Well, as far as I can tell he’s actions did far, far more harm than good in terms of wealth. Was he really trying to rationalize a Ponzi scheme? You’d have to be a fool to believe that a Ponzi scheme can somehow be ethical or beneficial to humanity, unless perhaps you were perpetrating it upon actually evil people. And donating massive sums of money to Democrat political campaigns seems deeply feckless at best, and certainly not any kind of real benefit to most people, and likley just the opposite given what has occurred over the past few years alone. But that’s just my opinion. I can’t tell if Bankman-Fried is just a garden variety idiot or a wicked person or some combination of both.
At any rate, I’m uncertain if SBF’s actions serve as some sort of refutation of Utilitarianism, or his particular version of Utilitarianism called Effective Altruism.
Biden will pardon him. I’m sure of it.
Biden was bribed long ago with crypto from SBF.
An analyst on Fox Business this morning who had watched the whole trial shared your reservations, Neo, until Bankman-Fried took the stand and basically convicted himself with his own testimony.
I do think it’s possible for people to think that because their intentions are good, and because they donate to the right causes, what they’re doing can’t be bad.
Cornhead @ 3 PM: “Biden will pardon him. I’m sure of it.
Biden was bribed long ago with crypto from SBF.”
That would assume that Biden is an “honest politician” the kind that “stays” bought. Nothing I can see in his record would support that.
Kate:
He thought he was Robin Hood, I imagine.
I think it was a massive money laundering scheme to primarily democrats.
SBF is the epitome of elitism, that ‘smart’ people know what’s best for us.
Effective Altruism – an idea only an intellectual would fall for (thank you, Dr. Sowell).
From the ecologists who know how best to save the earth to the sociologists who know how best how to mold behavior to economists who know how much money people need to … you name it.
This stupidity – and it betrays an astounding lack of awareness – frustrates and sickens me.
It has not yet emerged through the trial. But I have long expected that his mother’s legal ethics teachings at Stanford, which rationalise and excuse all sorts of behaviour except for the perpetrator if motivated by utilitarian Effective Altruism.
And SBFs primary beneficiary was politicians and political causes.
The absence of this line of inquiry about the trial leaves me flummoxed: I believe that SBF believed his political donations would protect him from the danger of prosecution.
If not, then the obvious lack of adult accounting by his companies enabled this fiduciary abuse, which would have resulted in his colleagues seeing a variety of red flag warnings.
I am yet to see these two duelling narratives developed in SBF news coverage.
Biden will pardon him. I’m sure of it.
Cornhead:
I’m not so sure, but it will be an interesting test for calibrating one’s cynicism about Democrats and America.
I suspect he wasn’t offered a plea deal. Everyone else had already agreed to one and the paper trail was clear. They wanted a trial scalp. For a trial of this magnitude it was quite brief.
The other angle here is ineffective assistance of counsel. His media tour was idiotic. He’ll say it was his law prof parents’ idea. Just watch.
Gordon Scott:
I believe you are correct, and that the others got plea deals in order for the prosecution to focus on him and to use their testimony against him. The prosecution had nothing to gain from making a deal with him. However, had he pled guilty and acted contrite, he still might have gotten less of a sentence than he will now get.
I confess to having a modest interest in Effective Altruism, though I was never a believe per se. But I was involved in nonprofit and charity work as a grunt (and oh the war stories I can tell), and some ways to do more with less and be more effective is something those of us honestly interested in doing good are always asking ourselves, and I can think of plenty of cases of Ineffective Altruism or even Counterproductive Altruism (such as Band Aid and Hoover’s attempt to feed Russia by going through the Bolsheviks).
A few things that strike me reading up is this but from Pete Singer on Wiki. Singer’s one of my old bugaboos, so that is one issue. But there is also this excerpt from Wiki (and sure, it is Wiki…).
A few things that stand out:
Firstly: Even if we presume that it makes no moral difference whether we help a Bengali we never know or a neighbor’s child (which is itself fraught with assumptions), we are in a much better position to research our neighbor’s kid and evaluate the effectiveness and desirability of aid to them..
Simply put, if we don’t even know the name of the Bengali, we also probably won’t know if some middle management asshole stole the funds em route.
As well as the moral good of actually helping one or the other. What if the Bengali is an Islamist nut case? Or conversely, if our neighbor’s kid is a literal psycho?
This ties in to the diffusion of information mentioned by many others like the Chicago School, and how it is important to limit one’s actions to their knowledge.
Secondly: What if one assumes that their own society is a moral good and that propagating its interests is important?
Thirdly: One thing that stood out is that the essay’s context speaks of the 1971 crisis in East Bengal, but never mentioned the fact that it was overwhelmingly caused by Pakistani Militarists genociding Bengali culture. Would it not be safe to conclude that one very effective case of altruism would be using military force to break the Pakistanis, as the Indians did?
This stands out to me. While at least Theoretically I can understand the logic as something of a Machiavellian, it is still a rare case that is utterly manipulative. It also ignores that it will in most cases not inhibit that ability to maximize benefit.
And it also runs afoul of their moral and legal rights as well as the fact that you are not God and thus cannot know everything, meaning you can’t assume you intuitively know how to better maximize the good for those people or others than they will, because again information is diffused.
It really does seem like so much of it is a Central Planner’s wet dream and reminds me of the old CS Lewis quote on the tyranny of moral busybodies.
this guy couldn’t order pizza, the ones who flipped against him, ran the whole show, that would be his parents, the quant guy from goldman, et al
Apparently, “maximizing benefit” involves non-stop lying, stealing scads of money from investors and bribing politicians to the hilt.
(Gosh, who could possibly have foreseen that….??)
It’s for the good of all.
With 10% for The Big Guy.