> several other huge fraudsters here (eg Caroline Ellison) get to walk
Caroline Ellison pleaded to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Looking at the Federal Sentencing Guidelines[1], even accepting for her being a cooperating witness, she's very likely going to prison too for a fair amount of time. Just for (probably much) less time than SBF.
"Ellison, Wang and Singh will likely get no or very little prison time for their testimony, several criminal defense lawyers who’ve followed the case said."
All the concrete examples in that article are of cooperating witnesses who “only” got five years when they were facing life. Gary wang might not get any time but Caroline Ellison pled to charges carrying 110 years. Leniency for her means 3-5 years incarcerated.
You mean the one concrete example of the mob boss who got 5 years for 19 murders because he cooperated, right? In your mind, are 19 murders equivalent to 7 counts of fraud?
Do you realize that those 19 murders likely carried 19 consecutive life sentences as a maximum sentence?
That's not how sentencing guidelines work. The judge won't look at what was handed out to a murderer to decide how to handle a fraud case. They'll look at fraud cases to decide that.
The parent commenter had decided that "life for 19 murders = 110 years for fraud," so she would get 3-5 years. I agree with you that they are not analogous.
However, all of the expert opinion I have seen on this suggests that there will be no jail time.
Well, you see, when presidents come out of office, a bunch of things start happening which the general public is pretty ignorant of:
- they go visit the Saudi rulers. Yes, the most powerful political leader goes TO SAUDI ARABIA to kiss ass. Why?
- they begin planning/fundraising for a "presidential library"
- they plan their "offices", often with donations
- they have the power to pardon people with no restriction
- ye old speech circuit
- in a similar vein, the Trump inauguration exposed the various inauguration slush funds used by presidents over the years when they get elected.
In case you don't get it, all of this involves slush money and backchannels and the like. Granted the pardon power is more visible than most since Clinton pardoned a lot of white collar stuff: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-wil... particularly Marc Rich.
And the old game of announced sentences vs the actual amounts served is often hilarious.
Between "good behavior", connections to get in lower security facilities, reduction on appeal, and of course there are tricks like only having to show up to actual prison months after sentencing (Elizabeth Holmes took 5 months before actually having to report to prison).
Yeah the feds don't do as lenient good behavior, but you can still get 54 days credit per year served.
There's other tricks. SBF might be able to help recover funds if he cooperates after conviction, and that can lead to prison being delayed further.
So sure it seems like SBF is getting his comeuppance, and he's way too famous for reductions, but the news cycle is remarkably fast, and the public will forget about him in a year or two.
Kenneth Lay allegedly died of a heart attack before going to prison. Now, I would like to assume that was above board, but based on a couple of my relatives dying, death is a bunch of forms and a cremation of ... some body.
> In your mind, are 19 murders equivalent to 7 counts of fraud?
Well, it was a very big fraud.
If the median prison sentence for nonviolent theft of a $30,000 car is 2 years, why shouldn't the prison sentence for stealing $3 billion be 200,000 years?
That "good" reason sounds pretty sexist to me, when she was also a Stanford-educated Jane Streeter before their polycule ran off to do the kimchi arbitrage and later found FTX.
I would agree with you that it's a good reason if there were evidence of the coercion. I don't think we can assume it outright.
* She and a few other people were in relationships with SBF and/or each other at the time. A polycule is generally a connected graph of n > 2 people (the nodes) in romantic/sexual relationships (the edges).
* The kimchi arbitrage was a trade where you bought BTC for USD somewhere other than Korea, transferred them from the non-Korean exchange to a private wallet, then sold those BTC for Won in Korea, and then sold those Won for USD (and repeat the cycle). It worked because Korea had strict capital controls for its citizens that meant that the price of bitcoins on native exchanges was substantially higher than outside. It also carried tremendous risk because you had to wait for those bitcoins to settle in your private wallet at each cycle, effectively exposing you to risk associated with fluctuations in the bitcoin price.
Physical movement in and out of South Korea is part of the Kimchi arbitrage, so you have to "run off" to do it.
There was potentially a lot of profit as Bitcoin traded for 10-20% more in S Korea and the liquidity in the market was in the billions. The tricky bit would be once you've sold your Bitcoins for Korean Won, how easy would it have been to change the Won back to USD given S Korea had capital controls at the time. I'm not sure how many you could get away with changing by going there as a tourist. Probably a limited amount. Not sure if anyone knows how much?
My understanding of this trade is that you can trade unlimited amounts of Won for USD as a person outside of Korea (beyond the jurisdiction of the Korean government), and as a non-Korean you can bring out an unlimited number of Won as long as you don't carry it as cash. However, this is all a set of "loopholes" that aren't exactly illegal but aren't explicitly legal, which is why no reputable bank or trading firm could do this trade.
The risk that you end up getting banned from entering Korea for doing this trade too much was real, but I don't think anyone who tried this trade faced any of the possible consequences.
Right! Justice dept doesn’t handout plea deals where you don’t plead guilty to the most serious of the crime - even when you’re a cooperator. The sentencing might be lighter for cooperation.
Caroline Ellison pleaded to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Looking at the Federal Sentencing Guidelines[1], even accepting for her being a cooperating witness, she's very likely going to prison too for a fair amount of time. Just for (probably much) less time than SBF.
[1] Run your own calculations: https://www.sentencing.us