Meh. I wouldn’t take any amount of money for 90 months in prison. Not sure if cooperators in financial crimes are considered “snitches” but I’m sure it doesn’t help. No thanks.
The rule against snitches does not apply to a camp-level prison, where he would serve. I am sure many people would trade in 5 years in low-level prison (he will not serve the full 90 months) for tens of millions or more awaiting.
> For persons convicted under civilian federal law after November 1, 1987, federal parole has been abolished, but the parole statutes continue to apply to prisoners who were grandfathered in.
However, there are other options for early release, namely the First Step Act.
> The Act amended 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) so that federal inmates can earn up to 54 days of good time credit for every year of their imposed sentence rather than for every year of their sentenced served. For example, this change means that an offender sentenced to 10 years in prison and who earns the maximum good time credits each year will earn 540 days of credit.
1 year in halfway-home, pre-sentencing, drug program , up to fifteen percent time reduction for good behavior. it works out to only 80 percent of the sentence served.
- Age when sentenced/age when released with expected 'good behavior'
- Amount of money hidden away that the prosecution couldn't find
- Where you are serving your sentence.
7.5 years (~5 after time served/good behavior) when you're 30 years old and >$100MM in hidden assets after serving time at a non-pound-me-in-the-ass-playground might be worth it to some--obviously not you, but maybe some.
The wealthy, when incarcerated (eg Weinstein, Spector or Cosby) are quite safe as they can and will easily afford to pay into to the prison protection rackets.
I was confused, too, but that sum is listed in a different DOJ document.
> The defendant hereby admits the forfeiture allegation with respect to Count Two of the Information and agrees to forfeit to the United States, pursuant to Title 18, United States Code, Section 982(a)(1), a sum of money equal to $1,555,186,143 in United States currency, representing property involved in said offense (the "Money Judgment"
Yes. Even if he loses everything nominally on paper, careers await upon his release. he has the connections still. These people almost always fail-forward.
He'll start his own YouTube channel and do a round of Lex Friedman, My First Million, The Diary of a CEO, Triggernometry, etc. to promote it, his book, and a course on "How Not to Get Scammed".
there are a number of famous criminals back in the game. Being infamous is invaluable on twitter: jordan belfort, Shkreli, billy mcfarland. Just get a twitter account and sell the movie rights
After listening to Shkreli talk for a few hours he seems like the sort of person who thought he was just being clever and it turned out to be technically illegal. As opposed to brazen criminality. I wouldn’t feel bad about hiring him (though would do some more digging first).
I think he paid his previous investors with money his later venture earned. This is illegal because it's stealing money from the latter venture investors. But heart in the right place, good intentions, imo.
Consider the following scenario: you have just been paid $1000 and you go to an ATM. A dude at the atm mugs you. He sees the big deposit that has just hit your account and says "tell you what, I'll only steal $900. Then you'll still be up $100 overall". You should be fine with this right? You still made $100.
It's the same situation here. He took money that was due to one group of people and paid some of it to another group of people. This idea that if people make a net profit then it's basically ok even though he took some of their money is totally unsuported by the law for good reason.
A new drug comes before the FDA for approval, and it is opened up for comment. Shkreli lodges an objection to approval of this drug.
Why? Because it's unsafe? No - trials thus far have shown it to be safer than the existing drug options.
Why? Because it's less effective? No - it's also been shown to be more effective than existing drugs.
Perhaps it's more expensive? No - cost of R&D and production, and estimated retail costs are expected to be lower than existing drugs.
Huh, odd. So why in this case would Shkreli oppose this drug getting to the market?
The only reason he lodged an appeal with the FDA had nothing to do with the drug, but was because he and his company had just bought the patent to one of those 'existing drugs' referenced, and this new drug coming to market would crater the demand for his drug, and torpedo the profitability of his investment in buying the patent.
> He agreed to forfeit over $1.5B in assessts. I doubt he has much if anything left at this point.
Legitimate Source? Your link says that he _could_, multiple times. The article from the Justice Dept in OP says about 11 million.
Edit: Patent edited for a source, but still, Salame didn't pay the full $1.5B, as per parent's article:
> Should Salame pay the $6 million and turn over the various properties by the set deadlines – referred to as the substitute assets – he will be off the hook for the full amount, a DOJ filing said. "Upon receipt of the payment ... the [U.S.] shall accept the Payment and Substitute Assets in full satisfaction of the Money Judgement," the filing said.
So, he _didn't _ actually pay $1.5B. He may have agreed to forfeit it, but he still didn't have to pay that much, which was the point of GP's comment.
That judgemental didn't go through as per a quote from the article you posted:
> Should Salame pay the $6 million and turn over the various properties by the set deadlines – referred to as the substitute assets – he will be off the hook for the full amount, a DOJ filing said. "Upon receipt of the payment ... the [U.S.] shall accept the Payment and Substitute Assets in full satisfaction of the Money Judgement," the filing said.
The press release says he's paying $11+ million in fines and restitution
> In addition to the prison term, SALAME, 30, of Potomac, Maryland, was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay more than $6 million in forfeiture and more than $5 million in restitution.
Guy who was obviously part of the fraud and one of the most inner circle guys.
7.5 years doesn't seem bad compared to what SBF got(25 years).
Close to a quarter of the sentence for helping the prosecution and signed a plea deal rather than go to court.
There are a few other former FTX employees who are a probably not very happy today. That's more than what the prosecution asked for in terms of length.
> . As part of his plea deal, he agreed to forfeit over $1.5 billion, which included fines, restitution to FTX debtors, and the surrender of several properties and assets (CoinDesk) (Cointelegraph) .
SO he had to give back almost all his assets as well.
Salame was the only criminally-charged executive [0] to not testify against SBF. Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh all testified in the trial as part of their plea deals and are still awaiting sentencing. Will be interesting to see how their prison time compares with Salame's
Typically when people forfeit assets in a fraud case that results in a bankruptcy those assets go into the bankruptcy and are used by the trustees to try to make the victims whole. For example, there is a detailed coverage here https://assetforfeiturelaw.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Cha...
I do wonder about how he could have hidden assets in advance. Not that you should, but it’s a fun thought experiment.
Almost eight years is a long time to hold onto a phrase in memory. You would want to repeat it to yourself every day, and not aloud. You would probably want to make sure someone who really cared about you had a copy.
On the other side, that is also a long time for crypto. If your chosen currency crashes or evaporates in the meantime, what was the point over stashing it somewhere in cash or some other liquid or easily liquidated collateral?
Perhaps “buying your mom” a load of extremely valuable jewelry that for some reason is still in the box and lives in the basement would be another gamble without as much risk.
If SBF had pleaded out and collaborated with investigators instead of taking the trial option, it's very possible he could have walked away with much less time. An extra 15 years for insisting on his innocence seems reasonable.
They call it the trial tax. Sure you have a constitutional right to it, but they are going to unconstitutionally punish you for exercising it. You should just waive your rights. Funniest part is they actually have to say in court when you take a plea that you weren't coerced into a plea, even though everyone knows and just pretends that the trial tax isnt coercion. The system is based on lieing under oath and the pressuring people to give up their rights.
Can you point to the bit of the US constitution that says it's illegal for sentencing to consider questions of remorse and admission of guilt as factors?
Edit: In a plea, a judge isn't reducing your sentence for contrition. It is the Prosecutor that is lowering the sentence they are asking the court for. The judge reducing your sentence at sentencing happens much later and is seperate from the plea agreement which is the part where the trial tax is introduced because yes, there is a constitutional process for sentencing and the judge definitely would not be allowed as large of variances during sentencing as prosecutors introduce with plea agreements.
So let's take your right to remain silent. You are SPECIFICALLY protected from exercising that right being used against you to assume guilt/impact the process. But with your right to a trial, somehow it is totally OK for the government to punish you for exercising your right. Twist it all you want. We don't punish people for exercising their right to remain silent. You should not be punished for exercising your rights.
Again, the court is REQUIRED to ask and you are REQUIRED to attest during a plea that you weren't coerced, even though everyone in the room knows you were threatened with the trial tax (often times in the tens of years of addition time in prison, which also brings your security classification up because classification is partly based on sentence length, meaning you will also then go to much rougher prisons), yet everyone just lets the entire process be one big lie.
So the process you promote 1. Takes away rights (you can't be said to truly have a right if the government can, at their whim, punish you for using it with tens of years in prison and with being sent to a much rougher prison). 2. Subverts the courts mechanisms to ensure fairness in that it turns the entire 'must ensure there wasn't coercion of a plea' into a giant lie by omission with everyone pretending they don't see it.
The original idea of course is that it frees up valuable court time and court resources. A defendant with little chance of success in court is incentivised to avoid a vexatious trial and go straight to sentencing.
How rational are the economics? How much did the trial cost the taxpayer compared to how much is it going to cost to provide food, accommodation, recreation facilities, and round-the-clock security to someone for 25 years?
That feels like an unusually long sentence but it was also an unusually long trial — 23 calendar days by my count, or one day per year of sentence, so maybe the trial costs versus prison cost match up if lesser crimes have shorter trials and shorter sentences.
Ah yes, efficiency is the ultimate goal, right comrade? What is a little state threatened violence (there is no way to say that 10s of years of forcible incarceration is not a threat of violence, there is no way to say that an increased security classification due to sentence length, and therefor incarceration at a much more violent prison, is not a threat of violence) for the waiver of 2 little rights (plea's include a waiver of the right to a trial and the right to an appeal)? Imagine the efficiency if we could allow the state to use violence to get 'citizens' to volunteer to waive their right to remain silent? So much efficiency comrade. It's not like Constitutional rights are important part of this country, we should treat them like China treats the ones enshrined in the Chinese constitution, just look how efficient that makes China, right comrade?
I wonder whatever happened to the people that thought they wouldn't get prosecuted for some reason? Is that still a belief? Because it seems like he's getting sentenced for his political contributions specifically, which people like patio11 said aren't being touched.
They didn't put SBF on trial for campaign finance because they already got him. I don't understand why people are reaching for conspiracy theories here.
Also because the Bahamian government objected. The campaign finance charges were not part of the initial extradition request for SBF, so it was a sovereignty issue. The US prosecutors didn't press the matter, because they had him nailed for so many other charges, just as you say.
Salame was not extradited, so in his case, the US prosecutors could proceed with the campaign finance charges. That process ended with a guilty plea rather than a trial.
People will speculate about a conspiracy to keep the campaign stuff away from trial, but it all seems pretty routine to me.
Also there's a mechanism for taking into account charges like the campaign finance violations during his sentencing. (Which I'm not sure how I feel about)
And in general his sentencing was about whether they were going to put him away for a defacto life sentence or not. And I'm not sure that more charges for the same crime spree would affect that.
I haven't heard anything about Gary Wang and Caroline Ellison's criminal cases in a while. Anyone know the status of cases of these two? What kind of sentences are they expected to receive?
I think four years is the right amount of time, and serve the whole four. I don't see them as blatantly criminal as SBF, and while agreeing to plead guilty and testifying against SBF is good, it doesn't quite mitigate their role for two years. It makes one wonder, though.. If SBF had just a little bit of humility and plead guilty.. I could see him as getting less than 8.
If the trial is federal (and I believe it is) there’s no deal that gets you out of federal prison faster than 90% of time served I believe, and that’s for good behavior. Feds don’t have a parole system otherwise
Edit: it’s 54 days per year, not 90%
> The Act amended 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) so that federal inmates can earn up to 54 days of good time credit for every year of their imposed sentence rather than for every year of their sentenced served. For example, this change means that an offender sentenced to 10 years in prison and who earns the maximum good time credits each year will earn 540 days of credit.
I know the "85%" meme that HN parrots incessantly but that’s not the fully story (not sure why anyone would expect programmers to be experts on federal incarceration nuances… I only am after a friend wound up in federal prison)
I never thought I'd see so many high-level executives facing penalties for their crimes. Excellent. I feel the same about this as a non-doping athlete might feel about their doped competitor being held accountable. It's not a level playing field when some people are allowed to cheat with impunity. Competition requires everyone to play by the same rules, or in this case, laws.
At the end of the day the FTX crew were still outsiders. They tried to buy political influence, but the type of regulatory capture that F500 companies enjoy takes decades to cultivate.
Well for starters, outside of the US financial regulatory system.
They were operating a shadow bank and unregulated securities exchange in the Bahamas and Hong Kong.
The media and regulators were willing to take a sympathetic view to all of the openly illegal banking and securities violations while times were good, but they were performing a highline act with no safety net the whole time.
Plenty of high level executives get punished, iff they hurt other rich people. FTX took from investors. You can steal from poor people all you want, but if you steal from the rich you go to jail.
I thought the main problem was that FTX commingled regular deposits (i.e. normal people's funds) with at-risk investments. I.e. they're mostly guilty because there wasn't a wall protecting the deposits.
Not quite true a lot of people seem to think that if you won the roulette spin that you committed no foul. At least in terms of how they argued SBF should be sentenced.
So as you said the commingling was a large part of their crime.
But they did commit a bunch of straight up theft of customer funds to pay for marketing, political donations or stuff like houses for the employees.
Yeah though people tend to argue semantics in this hypothetical. Especially if you win the bet.
I definitely consider it akin to theft even if people don't quite want to use the word.
And importantly even if you ignore the fact that people aren't being made whole by the bankruptcy's 100% claim, people still won't have gotten their money back for years. So people are still significantly harmed despite the criminal winning some illicit bets.
The money in your checking account or savings account isn't sitting in a vault, it's being loaned out to other customers of the bank immediately. But when you put money in an FDIC-insured bank account, you have the US Government guaranteeing that you'll get your money back even if the bank's investments of your money go bankrupt. Also, there's a complex set of regulated and audited independent counterparties with transparency and collateral agreements to separate custody, trade settlement, etc.
When you put money into a Bahamas based entity that is simultaneously the bank, exchange, broker, and hedgefund, you get none of these things, and so you just have to wait until it collapses and then hope to get your money back after bankruptcy court in a few years.
At the most it will dissuade would-be scammers in the US. Anyone operating from outside US jurisdiction will just laugh at the arrogance from thinking they could get away with it. It's not like international scammers are smarter about getting caught, they just know there's nothing anyone can do to them if they do get exposed.
The sentencing guidelines + enhancements are all in months - so the eventual sentence is reported in months as well. Months are granular enough to discern between 7 months and 17 months which would both be "1 year" but are much different sentences.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] thread> For persons convicted under civilian federal law after November 1, 1987, federal parole has been abolished, but the parole statutes continue to apply to prisoners who were grandfathered in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_parole_in_the_United_S...
However, there are other options for early release, namely the First Step Act.
> The Act amended 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) so that federal inmates can earn up to 54 days of good time credit for every year of their imposed sentence rather than for every year of their sentenced served. For example, this change means that an offender sentenced to 10 years in prison and who earns the maximum good time credits each year will earn 540 days of credit.
https://www.bop.gov/inmates/fsa/overview.jsp
1 year in halfway-home, pre-sentencing, drug program , up to fifteen percent time reduction for good behavior. it works out to only 80 percent of the sentence served.
- Age when sentenced/age when released with expected 'good behavior'
- Amount of money hidden away that the prosecution couldn't find
- Where you are serving your sentence.
7.5 years (~5 after time served/good behavior) when you're 30 years old and >$100MM in hidden assets after serving time at a non-pound-me-in-the-ass-playground might be worth it to some--obviously not you, but maybe some.
This is false. He agreed to forfeit over $1.5B in assessts. I doubt he has much if anything left at this point.
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/09/07/ex-ftx-executive-...
EDIT
:) Fine
https://downloads.coindesk.com/legal/2023.09.07%20Signed%20M...
Page 2 second paragraph....
It says "Could " Do people even read the headlines they link to? The DOJ link did not mention giving up everything. It said restitution of millions.
> The defendant hereby admits the forfeiture allegation with respect to Count Two of the Information and agrees to forfeit to the United States, pursuant to Title 18, United States Code, Section 982(a)(1), a sum of money equal to $1,555,186,143 in United States currency, representing property involved in said offense (the "Money Judgment"
https://downloads.coindesk.com/legal/2023.09.07%20Signed%20M...
I don't think it's possible for a billionaire to cease being rich.
It's the same situation here. He took money that was due to one group of people and paid some of it to another group of people. This idea that if people make a net profit then it's basically ok even though he took some of their money is totally unsuported by the law for good reason.
This is an example of his character:
A new drug comes before the FDA for approval, and it is opened up for comment. Shkreli lodges an objection to approval of this drug.
Why? Because it's unsafe? No - trials thus far have shown it to be safer than the existing drug options.
Why? Because it's less effective? No - it's also been shown to be more effective than existing drugs.
Perhaps it's more expensive? No - cost of R&D and production, and estimated retail costs are expected to be lower than existing drugs.
Huh, odd. So why in this case would Shkreli oppose this drug getting to the market?
The only reason he lodged an appeal with the FDA had nothing to do with the drug, but was because he and his company had just bought the patent to one of those 'existing drugs' referenced, and this new drug coming to market would crater the demand for his drug, and torpedo the profitability of his investment in buying the patent.
Fuck Martin Shkreli.
Legitimate Source? Your link says that he _could_, multiple times. The article from the Justice Dept in OP says about 11 million.
Edit: Patent edited for a source, but still, Salame didn't pay the full $1.5B, as per parent's article:
> Should Salame pay the $6 million and turn over the various properties by the set deadlines – referred to as the substitute assets – he will be off the hook for the full amount, a DOJ filing said. "Upon receipt of the payment ... the [U.S.] shall accept the Payment and Substitute Assets in full satisfaction of the Money Judgement," the filing said.
So, he _didn't _ actually pay $1.5B. He may have agreed to forfeit it, but he still didn't have to pay that much, which was the point of GP's comment.
> Should Salame pay the $6 million and turn over the various properties by the set deadlines – referred to as the substitute assets – he will be off the hook for the full amount, a DOJ filing said. "Upon receipt of the payment ... the [U.S.] shall accept the Payment and Substitute Assets in full satisfaction of the Money Judgement," the filing said.
> In addition to the prison term, SALAME, 30, of Potomac, Maryland, was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay more than $6 million in forfeiture and more than $5 million in restitution.
7.5 years doesn't seem bad compared to what SBF got(25 years).
Close to a quarter of the sentence for helping the prosecution and signed a plea deal rather than go to court.
There are a few other former FTX employees who are a probably not very happy today. That's more than what the prosecution asked for in terms of length.
> . As part of his plea deal, he agreed to forfeit over $1.5 billion, which included fines, restitution to FTX debtors, and the surrender of several properties and assets (CoinDesk) (Cointelegraph) .
SO he had to give back almost all his assets as well.
[0] https://apnews.com/article/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-ryan-salame...
I couldn't remember the list of testifiers.
If they were earned through fraud then they were never really his in the first place.
But they also did some really dumb delusional things, at least SBF seemed to actually get high on his own supply
I’m sure there was a smartest man or person in the room like with Enron and we’ll find out in a movie half a decade later
Almost eight years is a long time to hold onto a phrase in memory. You would want to repeat it to yourself every day, and not aloud. You would probably want to make sure someone who really cared about you had a copy.
On the other side, that is also a long time for crypto. If your chosen currency crashes or evaporates in the meantime, what was the point over stashing it somewhere in cash or some other liquid or easily liquidated collateral?
Perhaps “buying your mom” a load of extremely valuable jewelry that for some reason is still in the box and lives in the basement would be another gamble without as much risk.
So let's take your right to remain silent. You are SPECIFICALLY protected from exercising that right being used against you to assume guilt/impact the process. But with your right to a trial, somehow it is totally OK for the government to punish you for exercising your right. Twist it all you want. We don't punish people for exercising their right to remain silent. You should not be punished for exercising your rights.
Again, the court is REQUIRED to ask and you are REQUIRED to attest during a plea that you weren't coerced, even though everyone in the room knows you were threatened with the trial tax (often times in the tens of years of addition time in prison, which also brings your security classification up because classification is partly based on sentence length, meaning you will also then go to much rougher prisons), yet everyone just lets the entire process be one big lie.
So the process you promote 1. Takes away rights (you can't be said to truly have a right if the government can, at their whim, punish you for using it with tens of years in prison and with being sent to a much rougher prison). 2. Subverts the courts mechanisms to ensure fairness in that it turns the entire 'must ensure there wasn't coercion of a plea' into a giant lie by omission with everyone pretending they don't see it.
How rational are the economics? How much did the trial cost the taxpayer compared to how much is it going to cost to provide food, accommodation, recreation facilities, and round-the-clock security to someone for 25 years?
Bureau of Prisons suggests the incarceration will cost $1m ($40k * 25y): https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-03/bop_se_fy_2024_pb_narrati...
That feels like an unusually long sentence but it was also an unusually long trial — 23 calendar days by my count, or one day per year of sentence, so maybe the trial costs versus prison cost match up if lesser crimes have shorter trials and shorter sentences.
Salame was not extradited, so in his case, the US prosecutors could proceed with the campaign finance charges. That process ended with a guilty plea rather than a trial.
People will speculate about a conspiracy to keep the campaign stuff away from trial, but it all seems pretty routine to me.
And in general his sentencing was about whether they were going to put him away for a defacto life sentence or not. And I'm not sure that more charges for the same crime spree would affect that.
SBF put a ceiling on the sentencing because he was very guilty, fully in charge, and showed no remorse.
Edit: it’s 54 days per year, not 90%
> The Act amended 18 U.S.C. § 3624(b) so that federal inmates can earn up to 54 days of good time credit for every year of their imposed sentence rather than for every year of their sentenced served. For example, this change means that an offender sentenced to 10 years in prison and who earns the maximum good time credits each year will earn 540 days of credit.
Here’s a 45 minute video if you really want to know more
https://youtu.be/Uv2FqM0Eaug
I know the "85%" meme that HN parrots incessantly but that’s not the fully story (not sure why anyone would expect programmers to be experts on federal incarceration nuances… I only am after a friend wound up in federal prison)
They don’t just steal the customer money and buy themselves luxury real estate.
The fix guys are in trouble because they were both very corrupt and very bad at creating even the thinnest veneer of plausible deniability.
They were operating a shadow bank and unregulated securities exchange in the Bahamas and Hong Kong.
The media and regulators were willing to take a sympathetic view to all of the openly illegal banking and securities violations while times were good, but they were performing a highline act with no safety net the whole time.
I'm guessing you're not very familiar with games of chance.
So as you said the commingling was a large part of their crime.
But they did commit a bunch of straight up theft of customer funds to pay for marketing, political donations or stuff like houses for the employees.
The game you’re thinking of is roulette. Blackjack doesn’t have colors to bet on.
Putting it all on black is only theft if you lose. FedEx’s founder famously bet half his employee payroll on black and won.
FTX eventually lost.
I definitely consider it akin to theft even if people don't quite want to use the word.
And importantly even if you ignore the fact that people aren't being made whole by the bankruptcy's 100% claim, people still won't have gotten their money back for years. So people are still significantly harmed despite the criminal winning some illicit bets.
The money in your checking account or savings account isn't sitting in a vault, it's being loaned out to other customers of the bank immediately. But when you put money in an FDIC-insured bank account, you have the US Government guaranteeing that you'll get your money back even if the bank's investments of your money go bankrupt. Also, there's a complex set of regulated and audited independent counterparties with transparency and collateral agreements to separate custody, trade settlement, etc.
When you put money into a Bahamas based entity that is simultaneously the bank, exchange, broker, and hedgefund, you get none of these things, and so you just have to wait until it collapses and then hope to get your money back after bankruptcy court in a few years.
But yes, it's frequent enough that I hope it dissuades at least some would-be scammers not to risk it.
https://www.thehardylawfirm.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018...
So if the gummint's legal eagles say that the past tense of "plead" is "pled", I guess that settles it ?