And What About Ryan Salame, Gary Wang, Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh & Gabe Bankman Fried?
Just over a week ago (March 5th), Sam Bankman Fried celebrated his 32nd birthday in a jail cell at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for 11 days from now. On Friday, federal prosecutors asked Judge Lewis Kaplan to give him between 40 and 50 years (less than the 110 years he could have gotten)— which would mean he’s get out in his 70s or 80s. They also recommended an $11 billion in fines and forfeitures. I’m assuming they want to use a sentence like that to get him to tell them where he stashed the billions of stolen dollars still unaccounted for. (Personally, I’d toss the brother and both crooked parents into prison as well.)
From the 113 page sentencing memorandum: “His life in recent years has been one of unmatched greed and hubris; of ambition and rationalization; and courting risk and gambling repeatedly with other people’s money. And even now Bankman-Fried refuses to admit what he did was wrong... Bankman-Fried is deserving of a severe sanction, proportionate to his role in this historic fraud. The government urges the court to impose a sentence that underscores the remarkably serious nature of the harm to thousands of victims; prevents the defendant from ever again committing fraud; and sends a powerful signal to others who might be tempted to engage in financial misconduct that the consequences will be severe.”
Gizmodo listed half a dozen reasons from the sentencing memorandum why prosecutors are asking for the decades-long sentence, which seems harsh— to many people (though not me)— for a white collar crime:
“He aggregate losses to tens of thousands of victims worldwide were over $10 billion, with each of the defendant’s frauds—on customers, investors, and lenders—alone involving losses that exceeded the top of the loss table in the [sentencing] Guidelines.”
“The crimes were ongoing, complex, and involved systematic deception over a period of years.”
“The losses suffered by victims were severe and life changing, and had significant collateral consequences to them.”
“The defendant’s criminality was pervasive, as evidenced not just by his crimes of conviction, but by the fact that he committed several other significant crimes while running FTX.”
“As evidenced by his witness tampering and perjury, the defendant did not cease his criminal conduct after being arrested.”
“At no point has the defendant accepted responsibility for his crimes. Each of these elements of the defendant’s criminal conduct bear on the seriousness of the offense and warrant the imposition of a very severe sentence.”
Bankman-Fried will appeal the guilty verdict but, in the meantime, his lawyers asked for a lighter sentence, more like 6 and a half years tops. Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York said “The crypto industry might be new but this kind of fraud, this kind of corruption, is as old as time.” And it’s hardly over. Among the other efforts to claw back some of the stolen money, the government has targeted the political contributions he and other FTX executives—Ryan Salame, Gary Wang, Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh plus his brother Gabe Bankman Fried— made in the 2022 election cycle... which prosecutors called “the largest-ever campaign finance offense.”
“[O]ne factor that may work against Bankman-Fried,” wrote Matthew Goldstein and David Yaffe-Bellany, “is that he chose to testify at his trial and seemed evasive at times during cross-examination. If Judge Kaplan concludes that Bankman-Fried testified falsely, he could take that into account in deciding the sentence.”
The sentencing memorandum noted 251 candidates had so far returned more than $3 million. But most of the money has not been returned and two new crypto-SuperPACs, Protect Progress and Fairshake, have already put together a war-chest of around $100 million to influence easily corruptible candidates and members of Congress to move away from SEC oversight for the industry. Many of the same crooked members of Congress who Bankman Fried had in his pocket— Tom Emmer (R-MN), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Zach Nunn (R-IA), Young Kim (R-CA), Greg Meeks (D-NY) and Patrick McHenry (R-NC)— have been the recipients of crypto-bribes again this cycle. Why do they take them? Because they saw not one congressmember was charged in the Bankman-Fried scandal— not one. How do you have a briber with no bribees? Thanks for Bankman-Fried generosity, Tom Emmer (R-MN), one of Congress' most corrupt members, is now the House Majority Whip. Here's an example of what he did for teh money:
After the bankruptcy but before his arrest, Bankman-Fried came up with lots of bad ideas for rehabilitating his image. My favorite was going on Fox News with Tucker Carlson and "coming out" as a Republican and against the woke agenda. He also tallied up legislators and journalists he might turn to for help, including Cory Booker (D-NJ).
