About SBF, FTX, and White-Collar Criminals
How should he be punished?
I’ve been following the Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) criminal trial for the last few weeks. After the spectacular collapse of the second largest cryptocurrency exchange FTX last year, he was indicted with several crimes including wire fraud, securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering. His coconspirators Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh plead guilty, cooperated with the prosecution, and testified against Sam. Against his lawyers' advice, Sam took the stand himself and didn’t look good in the cross-examination. On November 2nd, 2023, the jury spoke Sam Bankman-Fried guilty on all charges.
I never had any money on FTX, but I lost some money on BlockFi, which also went bankrupt in the FTX fallout. The story of SBF and FTX, however, is very interesting and I became invested in it after following the news and SBF’s media tour after the collapse. Sam as a character is fascinating and even after the trial, I’m not sure how I feel about him.
Let’s start with the obvious: He is guilty. His defense strategy of claiming that he didn’t know that customer funds were being used and that he doesn’t recall pretty much anything is completely unbelievable. He knew and almost certainly was the driving force behind it. Using customer funds and lying about it to customers and…
