You've repeatedly been deleting and reposting this flagged comment. That's not a legit way to get around the moderation system here (which includes user flags). We ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it any more.
It seems flawed to assume that he was the mastermind, especially given the actual outcome.
There is a lot of room for manipulation in the justice system in determining the hierarchy and who gets to be offered a sweet deal. Had Caroline been labeled by the media as 'the mastermind' and Sam as 'the help' by the media, the outcomes may have flipped.
The media could totally construct a story where Sam was just the helpless front guy who knew nothing, misled as to the source of the money which Alameda Research was providing.
I think that would be an uphill battle. The money that flowed to Caroline looked like: a base salary of $200,000 a year, semiannual bonuses of up to $20 million, a de minimis equity stake in FTX, and no equity in Alameda. I don’t know what SBF’s salary or bonuses (if any) looked like, but he had a controlling stake in FTX, 90% of Alameda, and borrowed from his companies several times for hundreds of millions at a time. Caroline was nominally the CEO of Alameda but she clearly was not the one in charge of the corporate empire, and if she was masterminding the fraud she did a very poor job of monetizing it.
It’s also not strictly he-said/she-said; there were at least two other executives who knew what was going on, both of whom implicated Sam as the mastermind.
It's called a plea deal. She helped out the investigation and got other people convicted. She probably would have gotten no sentence at all if the crime hadn't been so bad.
The Judge "believed Ms. Ellison was genuinely remorseful and that her cooperation had been substantial."
The remorseful bit is a very important component here. She didn't commit the crime with the intention of gaming the system later to get away with it.
Personally, I'm okay with this. It's a huge incentive for others involved in a criminal enterprise to do the same thing in the future. It's worth letting one person off lightly to guarantee you get everyone else.
Not necessarily illegal from what I understand; but it easily could contribute to a lawsuit for a hostile work environment, could anger investors, and could maybe cause a lawsuit for allowing the executives to be irresponsibly vulnerable to blackmail or rape allegations.
Besides professionalism, it's just plain stupid. What happens if a participant claims they were pressured into it for the sake of a promotion, or for the sake of not being fired, or for the sake of not losing their visa? The result would be a disaster. This is also so predictable, that maybe an investor could claim legal negligence.
Is there any evidence to say that they happened? The only thing I have seen is extrapolation from comments made online about polyamory. Is there a source citing specific events at specific locations?
I'm fairly confident that she would have been required to surrender all of her crypto as part of the plea deal. If she didn't, it's perjury and she gets to go back to jail.
Proof once again that justice at its highest levels in the US is to punish the poor and middle class and slap the rich on their wrists. There are people who have stolen food to eat who have gotten harsher punishments.
> He and a friend, prosecutors would contend, somewhat intoxicated and possibly playing a game of “truth or dare,” approached four youngsters dining on an extra-large pepperoni pizza.
Not defending three strikes laws from thirty years ago which have since been repealed anyway, but this was not someone "stealing to eat."
(Also not defending these laws/the decision there, but) I'm not sure why this is phrased as merely an allegation by the prosecution, since this is what transpired even by his own account.
"One Friday he and some friends were hanging out on the pier on Redondo Beach. He claims he was "playing a stupid game of truth-or-dare with a friend" when he approached a group of kids whose parents had left them eating pizza at an outdoor table and asked them for a slice."
Yes, but you have to keep in mind that she made a deal to get this lighter sentence, she was a star witness and testified against Sam Bankman-Fried. Deals aren't necessarily for rich or poor, it's just a way for prosecution to accomplish their mission. She didn't get away scot-free, two years isn't the lightest sentence possible. Though she probably did have a good lawyer poor people could never afford...
And keep in mind that she wasn't the mastermind, she was just dumb and easily manipulated...
Dumb? All these people, ONCE THEY'RE CAUGHT, want us to believe that they're dumb.
Her parents are both MIT Professors. She was on the US team(!) for the International Linguistic Olympiad. She won all sorts of academic contests before getting a Math degree from Stanford.
She was CEO of Alameda Research.
And now we're supposed to believe she was a "dumb" naive waif, manipulated and preyed upon by SBF, that evil manipulative shark?!
I have no skin in the game, and can't judge the sincerity of her remorse, but 2 years seems astonishingly low, given she was a senior executive of a multi-billion dollar fraud.
It does indeed, if you could squirrel away a few million from nosey prosecutors, do your two years and come out "clean" the other side (assuming it's a federal rap with no possibility of remission for his behavior).
I believe at one point Jimmy Zhong mentioned something about how living like a billionaire for nine years was worth the one year prison sentence he received. I guess the key is to stay away from violence, and then once it's up admit you were wrong and state that you are committed to reform (or whatever your lawyers tell you to say).
>living like a billionaire for nine years was worth the one year prison sentence he received
He's only been out for a little bit. Give it 10 years and ask him how being a broke felon is. Especially with a fraud conviction which will preclude him from employment even more.
The Bitcoin was only worth $620,000 at the time though, and he only was able to do so because he stumbled upon a bug in the Silk Road, so it wasn't premeditated. That's very different from intentionally gambling with billions of dollars from your customer's money like Ellison or SBF.
Yeah, if you can find one where there’s a more senior exec with more culpability who you can flip on. And once you’ve found that, you might as well become a whistleblower instead, which has considerable upside and much lower downside.
> I never understand people who seem to think any amount of jail time is trivial.
There's "jail" (colloquial for generic/television "prison" and all the real and fictional horrors that evokes), and then there's "minimum security womens' prison". These are qualitatively different things, and Ms Ellison is headed for the latter.
> I wouldn’t serve 30 days in jail for a billion dollars.
Interesting. I suspect that for a lot less than that, most people would even consider serving 30 days in a supermax. Or solitary confinement.
We have a few regular posters here on HN who have spent much more than 30 days in some version of "prison". I am not one of them, so my thoughts are of little value, but I would be very curious to hear theirs.
Nobody said that jail time is trivial. I take it very seriously, but you're going way overboard in saying you would refuse $1 billion to spend 30 days in jail. That is such a large amount of money that you are set for the rest of your life, never have to worry about any needs again. 30 days of pure concentrated misery is something a lot of people would be willing to pay for that kind of reward.
A lot depends on the individual and the likelihood of something terrible happening to you in jail. Assault and sexual assault are common, and some people are more vulnerable to that than others. You may not be willing to endure PTSD for any sum of money, for example.
Let’s also consider the fact that in terms of day-to-day experience, a billion dollars is not worth much more than a few million. I have floated in an infinity pool at a five star resort and I’ve also floated in a temporary aboveground pool in my backyard and the experience is 95% the exact same. A billion dollars sounds like a lot but what exactly is it good for? SBF had billions and also said he derived no pleasure from anything. I’d rather have my unjailed normal experience.
But everyone is different. I have a probably uneducated belief that I am charming enough and resilient enough to get through a month in jail without too much harm coming to me.
Interesting point - I assume this would be helpful given I could reasonably promise them huge rewards for protecting me. Is that what you meant, or do you think this would actually increase the danger level?
In the context of GP's quoting, you'd be a convicted felon, sure. But you'd also be a billionaire, and which point I'd not be terribly concerned about "stigma".
My understanding that being a convicted felon is terrible because it can make it difficult to ever secure a decent job. Does she ever need to work again?
Bingo. For as little as, say, $10 million, you wouldn’t even have to work again or voluntarily interact with other humans. So who cares if you can’t get a job due to “stigma”? I’d sit in my living room collecting my monthly interest checks, not giving a single shit about what anyone, including employers, thought about me.
Enough money insulates you from ever having to care about what anyone thinks of you.
Having a billion will override any stigma of a convicted felon. Throw a few million at charity and you will be a celebrated and respected member of society. You will get more respect than most people who work a regular job without breaking laws.
>Throw a few million at charity and you will be a celebrated and respected member of society. You will get more respect than most people who work a regular job without breaking laws.
> I wouldn’t serve 30 days in jail for a billion dollars.
I certainly would. $1 billion is well into "never work again" territory, and lots of people spend much more time in jail than that, have far fewer resources waiting for them, and turn out just fine.
No, he had lots of help and this lady, who helped put him away, is also going away for two years because of her part in it. She would have gone away for longer, but she put effort into trying to correct her bad decisions.
I do not like the US judicial system and also I think this particular example is pretty reasonable.
Wikipedia states FTX had 300 employees total. How many were in the inner circle?
SBF: pled not guilty, 25 years.
Ryan Salame, co-CEO: pled guilty, 90 months.
Gary Wang & Nishad Singh, co-founder & engineering director: pled guilty, awaiting sentencing later this year.
Caroline Ellison, Alameda CEO: guilty, two years.
That's five high ranking folks 'in the know'. Likely others who knew but they didn't have enough evidence for an airtight case.
Regardless of the sentence, there's only one federal prison for women above low security so she's probably going to end up somewhere cushy with no fences and work release.
I don't think the Feds do work release, they have their own industries that you can slave away at for $0.17/hr. But you are right she will go to a camp since she is non-violent and only has 2 years. It's a points system and assuming she hasn't committed any crimes prior then her points will be low enough to go to a camp.
It's a prison but it's generally much more open. Prisoners sleep in open air dorms, there are minimal to no fences, there are generally good education and recreation programs and vast majority of people are white collar criminals, the violence is much much lower.
The no snitching rule applies mostly to someone who is already in prison and consequences depend on the security level. No one’s going to kill a snitch in minimum security, worst case scenario is that they’ll be outcasts and get into a fight occasionally.
The majority of prisoners are in prison because of a plea deal, not a jury verdict, so they often have to snitch on their accomplices as part of the plea deal (with severe consequences for lying and omissions). In practice the traditional prisoner’s dilemma usually plays out with everyone snitching on each other and everyone getting a deal because the prosecutor doesn’t want to waste time and money on a trial.
> In practice the traditional prisoner’s dilemma usually plays out with everyone snitching on each other and everyone getting a deal because the prosecutor doesn’t want to waste time and money on a trial.
This seems unlikely. Any prosecutor running for re-election wants to score. At least one big fish.
Over 95% of criminal cases end in a plea bargain. Trials are rare and unpredictable. The last thing prosecutors want is their career derailed by a fickle jury and the vast majority of crimes don’t involve a “big fish” worth the risk.
This is actually a term used by the BOP to describe minimum security institutions:
"Minimum security institutions, also known as Federal Prison Camps (FPCs), have dormitory housing, a relatively low staff-to-inmate ratio, and limited or no perimeter fencing. These institutions are work- and program-oriented."
Federal minimum security prisons don't have fences surrounding the prison so the only thing keeping prisoners from "escaping" is the extra five years that'd be added to their sentence. They have far fewer guards and the prisoners live in dormitory style quarters so it's far more like adult summer camp than prison (commonly referred to as "Club Fed"). Instead of having services on site they'll often drive the prisoners to a local dentist or doctor, etc.
As they get closer to release or if their sentences are short enough, prisoners can even get work release which allows them to leave the prison during the day to work at a regular job. (I think the GP is confusing work release and parole - the Federal system does have work release)
If you're in Western Europe a minimum security federal facility is probably closer to your understanding of a prison than an American's understanding. Hence Americans describe it as a camp, whereas if you looked at it you might say hey, that's a prison.
The sibling comments are incorrect, the minimum security prisons are called 'Federal Prison Camps", the colloquial name is 'Club Fed'. There aren't a ton of these facilities, so I can see why other people thought that the camp phrasing wasn't literal. Think military camp rather than summer camp.
In almost every case the prisoner is doing it voluntarily.
There are actually fewer prison jobs than prisoners willing to work. So in nearly every case being able to have a job while in prison is actually a privilege for the prisoners. One that can be taken away if they get in trouble.
There's a lot of reform we should make with relation to prison jobs including raising wages and introducing relevant skills.
But criticisms of it being slave labor are misleading.
Forced labor is legal in the US and there are isolated cases of it happening but you're talking about a fraction of a percent of all prisoners.
> But criticisms of it being slave labor are misleading
It depends. In Georgia on work release, for instance, it pretty much is slavery. You're forced into a minimum number of hours and get less than minimum wage.
You're forced to take a job - not having one isn't an option. Because you have close to 0 chance of getting parole without a job. And when you sentence people 20+ years for possession and such, you need parole. Not to mention there's also indefinite imprisonment - meaning you're locked away until you get parole.
These prisoners don't work in the prison, they typically work in food establishments like McDonald's. Even with the privilege and getting a job and having good behavior, parole is shockingly low - just 8% for nonviolent offenders. So the prisoners are trapped, coerced to work for many years to prove themselves and hope for a chance to get parole. All while they're making a couple dollars an hour, maybe, and the prison keeps half their wages.
Failure to work or problems at work result in the loss of "good time". No phone calls, no visits.
I used to drive by this prison- for years I thought it was a country club until I asked my dad about the sign that said "Do not pick up hitchhikers" which seemed odd for a golf course.
Since the same comment is getting posted over and over about the light sentence, I'm raising this quote here for visibility:
> Prosecutors did not recommend a specific sentence for Ms. Ellison, but they filed a memo to Judge Kaplan praising her “exemplary” cooperation with the government. Her lawyers requested that she serve no prison time.
> “I have seen a lot of cooperators. I have never seen one like Ms. Ellison,” Judge Kaplan said before announcing the sentence. “What she said on the stand was very incriminating of herself, and she pulled no punches about it.”
> Judge Kaplan said the difference between Ms. Ellison and Mr. Bankman-Fried was that “she cooperated and he denied the whole thing.”
We knew her sentence would be light back during SBF's trial because she was a key witness in that case. The prosecutors traded her sentence for his.
So all diddy needs to do is get on the stand and describe every single party of his and he’ll get a slap on the wrist?
While there should be more incentives to cooperate, like the type of prison, allowed visits, etc. claiming someone should serve less time because they described so much of their own crimes is kind of silly
You only get a reduced sentence if you cooperate in the prosecution against someone else the government / prosecutor is just as or more interested in. That wouldn't be the case with the diddle.
Not technically true. Even without a formal plea, you can enter a plea of guilty and throw yourself on the mercy of the court. Showing remorse and admitting your crimes definitely makes judges like you more!
We want to bribe criminals to betray each other. The people who they are betraying could do anything up to killing them to prevent this, and we have to compete with that.
The world gets zero benefit to imprisoning this woman indefinitely, it in fact costs money, and if the government had to prove their case against her without her cooperation, it would just cost even more money. Not letting a fully-cooperating sucker like her off is the opposite of a deterrent to crime. It's telling low-level people who are involved in crimes that it's better to keep quiet. We want to encourage them to betray. I hope when she gets out she becomes a celebrity, and it encourages other young people to decide to whistleblow or turn snitch on the scammy companies they work for.
> The world gets zero benefit to imprisoning this woman indefinitely
What sorts of people does the world benefit from imprisoning indefinitely, and where on the spectrum does, say, being a serial and unrepentant shoplifter, stealing mid-four figures sums compare to being a financial criminal stealing mid-eight-figure sums?
She wasn't a 'low level whistleblower', she was one step below the ringleader, and only came clean after the whole thing went tits up and she was staring down two decades in federal.
If you're looking for heroes and whistleblowers, I don't think there were any in that whole organization. Just rats turning on eachother once the trap snapped shut around them.
I think a serial shoplifter or thief is worse. It is a bigger problem for me personally, and impacts far more people. Therefore I think it deserves harsher penalties.
In the real world, a prosecutor can only nail a higher-up with the cooperation of the people lower down. Those people only cooperate if they get a lighter sentence. It's too bad, but that's how it is and it plays out every day in criminal courts.
As for Diddy: a real, disinterested DOJ would say, "oh, you can testify against <people more famous than you>? Well, we might be able to cut you a deal."
Of course, if the DOJ is not interested in prosecuting those people, then no deal. If they think Diddy is already important enough and they can't let him slide, then no deal, or at least, a medium-stiff sentence.
Finally, two years in prison is not a picnic. See if you want to do it.
But a lighter sentence could, for example, range from no jail time to rates of less than 100 percent of the expected sentence in the case of non-cooperation. The prosecutor's recommendation of no jail time is frankly disappointing. She may not have been the main offender, but she committed the crimes.
What would her sentence have been if she did not cooperate (and suppose other did or there was enough evidence anyway)? Fifteen+ years? Two years is not a picnic, but given the alternative, it looks like it is.
According to the article I read (CNBC),
"The prison term was significantly stiffer than the recommendation by the federal Probation Department that Judge Lewis Kaplan sentence Ellison, who had run the hedge fund Alameda Research, to three years of supervised release, with no time at all behind bars".
In the same article, "Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon urged Kaplan for leniency".
It seems to me, as prosecutors and Probation Dept talk to each other, that all, except Kaplan, agreed on no prison time for Ellison.
The prosecutor didn't recommend no jail time. Ellison's lawyers did.
Also, in addition to jail time, she's going to owe a huge sum of money. The feds are going to have a claim on any money she makes for the rest of her life.
For better or worse (I think a little of both), long max sentences exist in the US criminal justice system to allow rewarding cooperators and to threaten non-cooperators alike.
You suspect well, I do not.
Let me ask you another question for which you and I do not know the answer. Since she got 2 years in prison, she was not promised (i.e. she did not sign any binding agreement with the prosecutor, beyond "we will do our best to get you a lenient sentence") not to go to prison. Why then not a sentence of 5, 10, 15 years in prison?
I did not say or believe that the prosecutor lied or they should renege on their word, far from it. I said that if she got two years, it means that the agreement Ellison-DA was not for no prison time in exchange for cooperation.
Thus I asked why two years and not five or ten of whatever time under the expected sentence time in case of no cooperation.
The prosecutor doesn't pick a time, and cant promise it. The judge selects the sentence. This judge thought 2 years was reasonable after the fact, and was not bound to it.
Two years is very short in the US for serious crimes. The US has more people in prison per capita than any other developed country by a wide, wide, wide margin, largely in part because of the judicial system's willingness to hand down sentences for relatively minor crimes that would be seen as insane in most other countries.
For what she was charged with, two years is probably the bare minimum that was available at sentencing given the constraint of "must serve jail time".
Meanwhile in Germany, the sentence range for human trafficking is 6 months to a max of 5 years. Stealing a child is also max 5 years (if you're not intending to sell it).
Basically every free person in the US can get a 26,000 lb truck or a semi auto rifle in under an hour.
Germany has taken the other approach and implemented policies to make their country closer to a prison with all kind of harsher regulations, then reducing prison time.
genuinely interesting thought. I haven't decided if it carries any water, but interesting.
Why would harsher penalties be required in a place where individuals have more capability to do harm? That seems to place a lot of faith in a linear efficacy of deterrence
After she comes out she can write a book maybe sell movie right etc and she will be ok. Look at Anna Delvey or Jordan Belfort. Maybe she hid some crypto.
No, because when prosecutors offer a light sentence to a secondary criminal in a conspiracy, it's usually a strategic decision to secure cooperation in prosecuting the main target. It wouldn't make sense that a lighter sentence for an accomplice/secondary sets a precedent for a principal actor and Diddy is the principal actor in his case, AFAIK.
(I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with any of this, just saying this is the internally consistent approach.)
Are you saying that if SBF had cooperated in the same way, he would also have gotten 2 years instead of 25? Then he was really badly advised by his lawyers.
Going to a federal trial in general is almost always a mistake. The feds rarely lose cases; the plea bargain they offer is almost always going to be the best option for you.
True or not he could have created a pretty strong argument the investors purposefully selected a guy set up with all the moral hazards to run off the rails and make them cash while frontrunning a casino. Frame it as a clever deck of plausible deniability by rich elites who created the perfect recipe of a crime without actually explicitly inviting it.
We all know the investors knew what they were doing when they sent this arrogant, inexperienced, greedy sociopath on his course. Unfortunately for him he didn't realize he was also a patsy, and he took pretty much all the heat.
Whatever it is that got SBF in this mess it's the same thing that prevented him getting out of it with a light sentence. I don't know if that means he deserves it exactly - it seems like a better system wouldn't put a person like him in the place where he could do so much damage, but that's kinda where we're at.
Who is SBF going to flip on up the chain? The Feds give deals to people lower on the hierarchy to get the people at the top (in this case, in their judgement, SBF alone).
Did you read what he was doing while this case went on? Dude was on talk shows and podcasts and posting online while constantly admitting to felonies. I can't think of a worse client, there was absolutely nothing his lawyers could do short of a literal (not figurative) gag.
You have the right, but you are severely punished if you dare exercise it. This is 'just' (as in keeping with justice) because it helps reduce the strain on our justice system that is not designed and can in no way handle a non-trivial amount of cases actually going to trial and people exercising their rights. Just like companies can no longer function without people giving up their rights and requiring binding arbitration, our justice system would not be able to function if people didn't give up their right to trial.
The USA used to make fun of China because it has enshrined rights in it's constitution that, in practice, are not available or not applicable in actual daily life. I have free speech, but not where people would hear it. I have the right to a trial, but with it comes actuality the government will change my sentence to near life (or the portion of life that has any quality to it) if I dare avail myself of that right.
How many people close to you will die if you dare take your case to trial and get a trial tax imposed? How much of your childrens' lives will you miss? How long will they suffer without you earning money to support them? Or, will you miss out on the child rearing years completely when one starts a family because of the lengthy trial tax? Best to take the plea. There's a reason the Feds conviction rate is 95%, it's the explicit threat/coercion that is the trial tax. Remember, the longer the sentence, the rougher the prison you are sent to as well, because your security rating is heavily based on remaining sentence length. So it's not just a threat of length, but also the level of violence you will be subjected to during imprisonment.
Ironically, you have to testify that you were not coerced, to the judge, in court, to get out of having the trial tax imposed when you take your plea, when the very same judge knows of and is the person who applies the trial tax.
Being guilty and having no reasonable out, while using the justic system procedures as a hail Mary so that you might escape on a technicality should be punished. If you have no remorse you are a clear danger to society.
It is important to dispute this line of thinking because we are ALL guilty of many things through our lives. Our legal system is complicated and whether you think something is just or ethical has no bearing to whether it is legal.
Also remember if I "lie" to a federal agent, I go to prison but when Michael Flynn does it... The whole crime is a disgrace. Why is lying to a federal agent a crime? If they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt what I said was a lie, why does it matter what I said? They already know the truth. If they don't independently know what I said was a lie, how can they prove I lied? And if this is somehow something I missed, why does the national security advisor get a pardon? If he gets a pardon, why don't everyone else convicted of the same charge also get a pardon? This is not justice.
So there are two different things here that you are conflating: the specific pardoning of Michael Flynn and whether lying to a federal agent should be a crime.
Lying to a federal agent is a crime because the Government wants to make it easy to investigate crimes. Hence, lying to them being a crime. You are wasting the taxpayers money by mis-directing the investigators who represent us and are supposed to be investigating crime. That seems reasonable to me, though I did spend some time working as a contractor for the FBI, so I might have incorporated their views too much.
Michael Flynn's case in particular was a travesty because of the pardon power, a weird old legacy of monarchy brought over into our system by people who didn't really think it through, like a lot of weird, arcane corners of the US government. Pardons in general I think we would be better off without. Either it is used for small-bore corruption of the justice system like this, or it is used for things that really ought to be moved through the traditional justice system (pardoning all of the Vietnam draft dodgers, pardoning Nixon, etc.).
What a great mindset. People should be punished for exercising their rights based on an external interpretation of their motive. You realize you are saying rights should only exist after analyzing peoples' intention which is totally contrary to the Universalist definition of rights given by the constitution. To you rights are not something that all people should just intrinsically have. Just like the 'rights' granted by the Chinese constitution.
Nate Silver interviewed SBF before the court case for his book, and asked if he would accept a plea deal:
> The last question I asked him is Hey Sam, what if they gave you a two-year plea deal, right? Two years in some minimum security prison and then you can't do some trading stuff for some probationary period of time. Bankman Fried said no, he wouldn't take that deal. His day in court was worth the risk.
FTX executives have collectively gotten 35 years in prison (with more to go). Maybe this will help people in this thread see that there is a big picture.
There are enough wildly different conspiracy theories around these events that I genuinely have no inkling of a clue what you mean. Which big picture are we supposed to see, and what's the relation to 35 years?
Oh okay, yes I see your point and it's a sensible one. Not conspiratorial, sorry if I insinuated that.
The sentences are still all at the low range of what I'd like to see, and it's fine for people to quibble about the relative treatment & how much the cooperation should count for, but yeah, the total is useful context for perspective here.
SBF's trial was one of the the most high profile trials in years, and resulted in a long sentence. I can't imagine a two year low security custodial sentence for Ellison is going to change anyone's mind who thinks that the crew got away with it. Caroline very publicly cooporated and testified against SBF.
How was your experience from the time of pandemic lockdowns? I don't know about you, but I was pacing around the house like a caged animal after first couple weeks, and I was free to leave the premises and e.g. go for a hike anytime I wanted.
Then you should have just left the premises to go for that hike or a walk in some park at least. There was no moral or practical reason or, as you mention, legal reason not to. The virus wasn't/isn't a demon that hangs around in the open air for days. If you avoided others in open spaces, you'd have put no one at risk. What you describe sounds like some strange obedience fetishism.
Nowhere did I write that I didn't go out for a walk/hike on my own. I limited my activities among other people to the level I deemed safe and moved the rest of my social activities to the Internet, but just that was sufficient to feel caged. It made me recalibrate my opinion on what "1 year in prison" must be like.
It was ok, but I was with people. I'm sure prison is good or bad depending on who you get locked up with. And, given the selection process, maybe those odds aren't great.
Time passes quickly when there's no stimulation. I feel two years would go by in the blink of an eye. In a way, maybe that itself is the punishment.
I'm more curious if all the money had to be paid back? If she received a salary of millions and did not have to pay that back, I would say white-collar crime is a viable path to becoming a millionaire?
For example, Martha Stewart was in prison, but has never lost a step in her empire.
FOUND:
>> Late Monday, Ellison’s attorneys in a court filing said they had finalized financial settlements with prosecutors and the FTX debtor’s estate.
>> The filing did not say how much she would pay in those settlements, which are separate from the forfeiture order, but it was already known that Ellison’s $10 million in shares in the AI startup Anthropic, which have grown substantially since she first bought them, provide the bulk value of her settlements.
At her age with world as your oyster it would be tough.
At 30,40+ already locked into a narrowly defined routine of toddlers screaming at you 24/7 because of some variation of you selected the wrong color cup, and your bank account and energy constantly being drained to zero by thankless familial responsibilities I can see how someone might find it attractive to spend a few years reading in a cell and working out with the cartel bros and some payload of cash waiting to satisfy any remaining child support.
There are not many jobs out there that pay you a few million dollars for two years of work, so yes!
Downside: among the usual US-specific stuff, as a felon it's much harder to receive most countries' permanent visas. It's a case by case and you will get unlucky. There's often a 'character requirement' which is very loosely defined.
Unless you have hard requirements the visa is worked around easy enough. If you don't work you stay off the radar in most countries. If you are flexible some countries accept criminal reports from your local sheriff/police, which often only show offenses in that jurisdiction.
It rules out the five eyes countries but there's little reason for a US already rich person to emigrate to another similar anglo country.
For instance, I have read court cases of felons who illegally entered Argentina and were later granted Argentine citizenship. And Cambodia sells citizenship that expressly brags basically the king will look at it and decide if you are a douche, no criminal reports iirc.
Man. American poor people enlist to the army, knowing very well they have a pretty good chance of being sent to be maimed or killed in some desert fighting for some oil company or Israel for far less money than a few million.
it's dubious whether it would pay off long term given the stigma of being a felon. whatever return there is, probably not enough to account for the mental distress involved
Martha Stewart built that empire well before she dabbled in insider trading. Wikipedia says that she sold $230 thousand of ImClone stock. I doubt that paying that back--and to whom?--would have seriously hurt.
I follow a bunch of longtime lawyers who have a lot to say about how prosecutions work in practice and it's pretty interesting. Here's what I've learned:
1. The Federal conviction rate is ~99%. Federal prosecutors don't bring charges when they aren't going to win;
2. Most prosecutions end in plea deals before they get to trial. In fact, the threat of a heavy sentence at trial is used to extract a plea deal because trials are expensive. If every defendant went to trial the entire justice system would collapse;
4. You can never predict what a jury will do or what they will focus on. It's a huge gamble but it favors the prosecution. Juries want to convict, generally;
5. In Federal court, you want to get past the trial phase and into the sentencing phase. That's where the defendant can do a lot to get a lesser sentence. In state court, it's the opposite;
6. Judges and prosecturos are aligned on their goals. Not for prosecution, necessarily. Both don't want to be overturned on appeal;
7. Appeals are a deeply unfair and drawn out process. This can be abused. If you followed the YSL trial at all, you saw the judge essentially coerce testimony and refuse to disclose the details to the defense saying there was a record that would be preserved for an appeal. That judge ultimately got removed from the case but you should know that an appeal is a much higher burden to meet than anything at trial;
8. Prosecutors want a slam dunk case. The best way is to a cooperating witness. The first person to flip, gets the best deal.
So Ellison got a sweetheart deal because she immediately flipped besides arguably being the main person responsible for losing billions of dollars. Yes, SBF allowed her access to custodial funds and for that alone he deserves to go to prison.
Judges have a lot of discretion with sentencing despite their being sentencing guidelines. It's one area where a judge's biases can really show up when similar defendants can get wildly different sentences for the same crime.
2 years does seem pretty light given the gravity of the fraud, even with being a cooperating witness. Her lawyer is alrgely responsible for that, I would guess by gaming the sentencing process. Still, I imagine there was some belief that she was simply naive or she got caught up in the fraud and wasn't really responsible.
> 2. Most prosecutions end in plea deals before they get to trial. In fact, the threat of a heavy sentence at trial is used to extract a plea deal because trials are expensive. If every defendant went to trial the entire justice system would collapse;
> 4. You can never predict what a jury will do or what they will focus on. It's a huge gamble but it favors the prosecution. Juries want to convict, generally;
And those are pretty terrible and make for an unfair system. How many people took a plea deal to avoid the risk of getting a heavy sentence by gambling with a jury, even if they were innocent?
Women also, statistically, commit fewer crimes and far fewer violent crimes. One might reasonably suppose that the statistical output matches the input. (I would also be unsurprised if they were more likely to cooperate, and to plead guilty.) This holistic perspective is less compatible with instinctive misogyny, however.
Unfortunately, the statistical output does not match the input.The evidence shows women receive lighter sentences for the same crime. Also, more attractive people receive shorter sentences etc.
None of it says good things about human nature, facts are facts though.
Yes, she would absolutely have gotten a greatly reduced sentence if she had been a man who immediately turned state's witness, gave them everything they wanted, and testified in court.
SBF played himself every step of the way. He tried to win in the court of public opinion rather than the court of law, leaking Ellison's diary to the press, blogging on Substack, talking to reporters any time they called, flaunting the judge's orders, etc. He also clumsily tried to tamper with witnesses. SBF got 25 years because he instigated the scheme, never fessed up, and did everything a lawyer would tell you not to do.
Ellison immediately made a deal with prosecutors, cooperated, testified, et cetera. While SBF was digging his hole deeper, she was climbing out of hers. And though she carried out the scheme, she wasn't the primary instigator (and there is lots of testimony, emails, etc to corroborate this).
People who immediately flip and cooperate heavily get good deals. That's just how these things work. Conversely, SBF did everything you could do to get yourself a longer sentence. It has absolutely nothing to do with Ellison being a woman. I've been following this story closely, and this sentencing came as no surprise. To be honest, if you were surprised - then you probably weren't following.
Refer to the article for quotes from Judge Kaplan about her "exemplary" cooperation, and consider whether you were too quick to jump to the conclusion she received special treatment because of her gender.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 336 ms ] threadIf the justice department was doing their job, and justice is blind... all of us?
There is a lot of room for manipulation in the justice system in determining the hierarchy and who gets to be offered a sweet deal. Had Caroline been labeled by the media as 'the mastermind' and Sam as 'the help' by the media, the outcomes may have flipped.
The media could totally construct a story where Sam was just the helpless front guy who knew nothing, misled as to the source of the money which Alameda Research was providing.
It’s also not strictly he-said/she-said; there were at least two other executives who knew what was going on, both of whom implicated Sam as the mastermind.
The Judge "believed Ms. Ellison was genuinely remorseful and that her cooperation had been substantial."
The remorseful bit is a very important component here. She didn't commit the crime with the intention of gaming the system later to get away with it.
Personally, I'm okay with this. It's a huge incentive for others involved in a criminal enterprise to do the same thing in the future. It's worth letting one person off lightly to guarantee you get everyone else.
Besides professionalism, it's just plain stupid. What happens if a participant claims they were pressured into it for the sake of a promotion, or for the sake of not being fired, or for the sake of not losing their visa? The result would be a disaster. This is also so predictable, that maybe an investor could claim legal negligence.
Anyone who could steal 8 billion while being white, rich, female and coming from a privileged family.
It is actually pretty easy once you met those pre-requisites.
Are there?
Not defending three strikes laws from thirty years ago which have since been repealed anyway, but this was not someone "stealing to eat."
(Also not defending these laws/the decision there, but) I'm not sure why this is phrased as merely an allegation by the prosecution, since this is what transpired even by his own account.
"One Friday he and some friends were hanging out on the pier on Redondo Beach. He claims he was "playing a stupid game of truth-or-dare with a friend" when he approached a group of kids whose parents had left them eating pizza at an outdoor table and asked them for a slice."
https://web.archive.org/web/20230408113219/https://www.smh.c...
if even poverty was unable to prevent that person from stealing food when hungry then they are clearly irredeemable.
/s
And keep in mind that she wasn't the mastermind, she was just dumb and easily manipulated...
Her parents are both MIT Professors. She was on the US team(!) for the International Linguistic Olympiad. She won all sorts of academic contests before getting a Math degree from Stanford.
She was CEO of Alameda Research.
And now we're supposed to believe she was a "dumb" naive waif, manipulated and preyed upon by SBF, that evil manipulative shark?!
Almost makes it worth having a go at one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Zhong
He's only been out for a little bit. Give it 10 years and ask him how being a broke felon is. Especially with a fraud conviction which will preclude him from employment even more.
She has no money, can’t get a job, and is going to be IN PRISON for two years.
I never understand people who seem to think any amount of jail time is trivial. I wouldn’t serve 30 days in jail for a billion dollars.
There's "jail" (colloquial for generic/television "prison" and all the real and fictional horrors that evokes), and then there's "minimum security womens' prison". These are qualitatively different things, and Ms Ellison is headed for the latter.
> I wouldn’t serve 30 days in jail for a billion dollars.
Interesting. I suspect that for a lot less than that, most people would even consider serving 30 days in a supermax. Or solitary confinement.
We have a few regular posters here on HN who have spent much more than 30 days in some version of "prison". I am not one of them, so my thoughts are of little value, but I would be very curious to hear theirs.
If the food is passable and I can read books/meditate, I'd do it for free. That'd be a very nice holiday from child rearing.
Let’s also consider the fact that in terms of day-to-day experience, a billion dollars is not worth much more than a few million. I have floated in an infinity pool at a five star resort and I’ve also floated in a temporary aboveground pool in my backyard and the experience is 95% the exact same. A billion dollars sounds like a lot but what exactly is it good for? SBF had billions and also said he derived no pleasure from anything. I’d rather have my unjailed normal experience.
But everyone is different. I have a probably uneducated belief that I am charming enough and resilient enough to get through a month in jail without too much harm coming to me.
Prison isn’t that bad. Especially a federal minimum security woman’s prison. It’s basically like a summer camp, but with nothing fun to do.
Enough money insulates you from ever having to care about what anyone thinks of you.
Yep. cf. Michael Milken[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Milken
I certainly would. $1 billion is well into "never work again" territory, and lots of people spend much more time in jail than that, have far fewer resources waiting for them, and turn out just fine.
You’d rather spend 50 years _totally free_ in your cubicle?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_...
That would be a no brainer for me. I would do a year, no problem. Probably more.
The more they need an insider's testimony to make the case, find the money, and/or track the goods the better the deal can be.
Not sure why you added ‘probably’
I do not like the US judicial system and also I think this particular example is pretty reasonable.
That's five high ranking folks 'in the know'. Likely others who knew but they didn't have enough evidence for an airtight case.
SBF on the other hand... https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1av88z5/fir...
The majority of prisoners are in prison because of a plea deal, not a jury verdict, so they often have to snitch on their accomplices as part of the plea deal (with severe consequences for lying and omissions). In practice the traditional prisoner’s dilemma usually plays out with everyone snitching on each other and everyone getting a deal because the prosecutor doesn’t want to waste time and money on a trial.
This seems unlikely. Any prosecutor running for re-election wants to score. At least one big fish.
"Minimum security institutions, also known as Federal Prison Camps (FPCs), have dormitory housing, a relatively low staff-to-inmate ratio, and limited or no perimeter fencing. These institutions are work- and program-oriented."
https://www.bop.gov/about/facilities/federal_prisons.jsp
As they get closer to release or if their sentences are short enough, prisoners can even get work release which allows them to leave the prison during the day to work at a regular job. (I think the GP is confusing work release and parole - the Federal system does have work release)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_...
There are actually fewer prison jobs than prisoners willing to work. So in nearly every case being able to have a job while in prison is actually a privilege for the prisoners. One that can be taken away if they get in trouble.
There's a lot of reform we should make with relation to prison jobs including raising wages and introducing relevant skills.
But criticisms of it being slave labor are misleading.
Forced labor is legal in the US and there are isolated cases of it happening but you're talking about a fraction of a percent of all prisoners.
It depends. In Georgia on work release, for instance, it pretty much is slavery. You're forced into a minimum number of hours and get less than minimum wage.
You're forced to take a job - not having one isn't an option. Because you have close to 0 chance of getting parole without a job. And when you sentence people 20+ years for possession and such, you need parole. Not to mention there's also indefinite imprisonment - meaning you're locked away until you get parole.
These prisoners don't work in the prison, they typically work in food establishments like McDonald's. Even with the privilege and getting a job and having good behavior, parole is shockingly low - just 8% for nonviolent offenders. So the prisoners are trapped, coerced to work for many years to prove themselves and hope for a chance to get parole. All while they're making a couple dollars an hour, maybe, and the prison keeps half their wages.
Failure to work or problems at work result in the loss of "good time". No phone calls, no visits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/14/1219187249/prisoners-are-suin...
So it's Danbury, CT.
Perhaps by a small margin, but I don't think so.
That said, Danbury is ~150 miles from Boston and ~70 miles from New York City. And even less from New Haven or Hartford.
> Prosecutors did not recommend a specific sentence for Ms. Ellison, but they filed a memo to Judge Kaplan praising her “exemplary” cooperation with the government. Her lawyers requested that she serve no prison time.
> “I have seen a lot of cooperators. I have never seen one like Ms. Ellison,” Judge Kaplan said before announcing the sentence. “What she said on the stand was very incriminating of herself, and she pulled no punches about it.”
> Judge Kaplan said the difference between Ms. Ellison and Mr. Bankman-Fried was that “she cooperated and he denied the whole thing.”
We knew her sentence would be light back during SBF's trial because she was a key witness in that case. The prosecutors traded her sentence for his.
While there should be more incentives to cooperate, like the type of prison, allowed visits, etc. claiming someone should serve less time because they described so much of their own crimes is kind of silly
The world gets zero benefit to imprisoning this woman indefinitely, it in fact costs money, and if the government had to prove their case against her without her cooperation, it would just cost even more money. Not letting a fully-cooperating sucker like her off is the opposite of a deterrent to crime. It's telling low-level people who are involved in crimes that it's better to keep quiet. We want to encourage them to betray. I hope when she gets out she becomes a celebrity, and it encourages other young people to decide to whistleblow or turn snitch on the scammy companies they work for.
What sorts of people does the world benefit from imprisoning indefinitely, and where on the spectrum does, say, being a serial and unrepentant shoplifter, stealing mid-four figures sums compare to being a financial criminal stealing mid-eight-figure sums?
She wasn't a 'low level whistleblower', she was one step below the ringleader, and only came clean after the whole thing went tits up and she was staring down two decades in federal.
If you're looking for heroes and whistleblowers, I don't think there were any in that whole organization. Just rats turning on eachother once the trap snapped shut around them.
She also described somebody else's crimes, and did that in a way which helped the government with sentencing the "real villain."
As for Diddy: a real, disinterested DOJ would say, "oh, you can testify against <people more famous than you>? Well, we might be able to cut you a deal."
Of course, if the DOJ is not interested in prosecuting those people, then no deal. If they think Diddy is already important enough and they can't let him slide, then no deal, or at least, a medium-stiff sentence.
Finally, two years in prison is not a picnic. See if you want to do it.
It was her lawyers that asked for no jail time. Not the prosecutors.
It seems to me, as prosecutors and Probation Dept talk to each other, that all, except Kaplan, agreed on no prison time for Ellison.
Also, in addition to jail time, she's going to owe a huge sum of money. The feds are going to have a claim on any money she makes for the rest of her life.
For better or worse (I think a little of both), long max sentences exist in the US criminal justice system to allow rewarding cooperators and to threaten non-cooperators alike.
It could have been disingenuous. Maybe they knew the judge wouldn't go for it.
As for her not cooperating: would you rather SBF skate free?
I don't know what the case against SBF would have looked like without her, and I suspect you don't, either.
Thus I asked why two years and not five or ten of whatever time under the expected sentence time in case of no cooperation.
"Is integrity of the prosecutor a valid answer?"
Yes it is.
Seriously. I'm shocked how cavalier people are about the lengths of prison sentences. Two years in prison is a LOOONNNNGG time.
I was once detained for an hour in a small room at a border. Being deprived of my freedom, my phone, and any comfort, was fairly devastating.
For what she was charged with, two years is probably the bare minimum that was available at sentencing given the constraint of "must serve jail time".
Meanwhile in Germany, the sentence range for human trafficking is 6 months to a max of 5 years. Stealing a child is also max 5 years (if you're not intending to sell it).
The contrast is pretty stark.
Germany has taken the other approach and implemented policies to make their country closer to a prison with all kind of harsher regulations, then reducing prison time.
There are merits to be found in either approach.
Why would harsher penalties be required in a place where individuals have more capability to do harm? That seems to place a lot of faith in a linear efficacy of deterrence
Do you honestly think this is how the legal system works?
(I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with any of this, just saying this is the internally consistent approach.)
We all know the investors knew what they were doing when they sent this arrogant, inexperienced, greedy sociopath on his course. Unfortunately for him he didn't realize he was also a patsy, and he took pretty much all the heat.
Why are you asking a rando about a judicial decree?
The legal systems in most countries are rather more nuanced than your if ... then clause.
You have the right, but you are severely punished if you dare exercise it. This is 'just' (as in keeping with justice) because it helps reduce the strain on our justice system that is not designed and can in no way handle a non-trivial amount of cases actually going to trial and people exercising their rights. Just like companies can no longer function without people giving up their rights and requiring binding arbitration, our justice system would not be able to function if people didn't give up their right to trial.
The USA used to make fun of China because it has enshrined rights in it's constitution that, in practice, are not available or not applicable in actual daily life. I have free speech, but not where people would hear it. I have the right to a trial, but with it comes actuality the government will change my sentence to near life (or the portion of life that has any quality to it) if I dare avail myself of that right.
How many people close to you will die if you dare take your case to trial and get a trial tax imposed? How much of your childrens' lives will you miss? How long will they suffer without you earning money to support them? Or, will you miss out on the child rearing years completely when one starts a family because of the lengthy trial tax? Best to take the plea. There's a reason the Feds conviction rate is 95%, it's the explicit threat/coercion that is the trial tax. Remember, the longer the sentence, the rougher the prison you are sent to as well, because your security rating is heavily based on remaining sentence length. So it's not just a threat of length, but also the level of violence you will be subjected to during imprisonment.
Ironically, you have to testify that you were not coerced, to the judge, in court, to get out of having the trial tax imposed when you take your plea, when the very same judge knows of and is the person who applies the trial tax.
It is important to dispute this line of thinking because we are ALL guilty of many things through our lives. Our legal system is complicated and whether you think something is just or ethical has no bearing to whether it is legal.
Also remember if I "lie" to a federal agent, I go to prison but when Michael Flynn does it... The whole crime is a disgrace. Why is lying to a federal agent a crime? If they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt what I said was a lie, why does it matter what I said? They already know the truth. If they don't independently know what I said was a lie, how can they prove I lied? And if this is somehow something I missed, why does the national security advisor get a pardon? If he gets a pardon, why don't everyone else convicted of the same charge also get a pardon? This is not justice.
Lying to a federal agent is a crime because the Government wants to make it easy to investigate crimes. Hence, lying to them being a crime. You are wasting the taxpayers money by mis-directing the investigators who represent us and are supposed to be investigating crime. That seems reasonable to me, though I did spend some time working as a contractor for the FBI, so I might have incorporated their views too much.
Michael Flynn's case in particular was a travesty because of the pardon power, a weird old legacy of monarchy brought over into our system by people who didn't really think it through, like a lot of weird, arcane corners of the US government. Pardons in general I think we would be better off without. Either it is used for small-bore corruption of the justice system like this, or it is used for things that really ought to be moved through the traditional justice system (pardoning all of the Vietnam draft dodgers, pardoning Nixon, etc.).
> The last question I asked him is Hey Sam, what if they gave you a two-year plea deal, right? Two years in some minimum security prison and then you can't do some trading stuff for some probationary period of time. Bankman Fried said no, he wouldn't take that deal. His day in court was worth the risk.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0jqbjp5
Don't steal money from or offend the rich/elite and you will be all right?
Both SBF and Martin Shkreli have learned that.
The sentences are still all at the low range of what I'd like to see, and it's fine for people to quibble about the relative treatment & how much the cooperation should count for, but yeah, the total is useful context for perspective here.
Her cooperation landed Sam in prison by helping the feds understand the evidence, and alerted them to crimes they hadn't yet discovered.
Sam's cooperation... wasn't. He could have cut a plea deal and he chose to deny everything despite ample evidence.
Acceptance of responsibility is a thing.
A lot of us have blown more years of our lives, in worse environments, to hang on for four-year vesting schedules.
Time passes quickly when there's no stimulation. I feel two years would go by in the blink of an eye. In a way, maybe that itself is the punishment.
For example, Martha Stewart was in prison, but has never lost a step in her empire.
FOUND:
>> Late Monday, Ellison’s attorneys in a court filing said they had finalized financial settlements with prosecutors and the FTX debtor’s estate.
>> The filing did not say how much she would pay in those settlements, which are separate from the forfeiture order, but it was already known that Ellison’s $10 million in shares in the AI startup Anthropic, which have grown substantially since she first bought them, provide the bulk value of her settlements.
I wouldn't, but millions of people would.
At 30,40+ already locked into a narrowly defined routine of toddlers screaming at you 24/7 because of some variation of you selected the wrong color cup, and your bank account and energy constantly being drained to zero by thankless familial responsibilities I can see how someone might find it attractive to spend a few years reading in a cell and working out with the cartel bros and some payload of cash waiting to satisfy any remaining child support.
2 years in a supermax or in one of the super violent federal prisons... probably not.
(unless they already attempted to escape from the minimum security / camp, or some weird corner cases like that)
Downside: among the usual US-specific stuff, as a felon it's much harder to receive most countries' permanent visas. It's a case by case and you will get unlucky. There's often a 'character requirement' which is very loosely defined.
It rules out the five eyes countries but there's little reason for a US already rich person to emigrate to another similar anglo country.
For instance, I have read court cases of felons who illegally entered Argentina and were later granted Argentine citizenship. And Cambodia sells citizenship that expressly brags basically the king will look at it and decide if you are a douche, no criminal reports iirc.
2 million is about 10 years of salary. maybe double if you include the time value of money.
Would you spend 2 years in jail now to live 20 years longer? Have 2 more children? to retire 30 years earlier?
1. The Federal conviction rate is ~99%. Federal prosecutors don't bring charges when they aren't going to win;
2. Most prosecutions end in plea deals before they get to trial. In fact, the threat of a heavy sentence at trial is used to extract a plea deal because trials are expensive. If every defendant went to trial the entire justice system would collapse;
4. You can never predict what a jury will do or what they will focus on. It's a huge gamble but it favors the prosecution. Juries want to convict, generally;
5. In Federal court, you want to get past the trial phase and into the sentencing phase. That's where the defendant can do a lot to get a lesser sentence. In state court, it's the opposite;
6. Judges and prosecturos are aligned on their goals. Not for prosecution, necessarily. Both don't want to be overturned on appeal;
7. Appeals are a deeply unfair and drawn out process. This can be abused. If you followed the YSL trial at all, you saw the judge essentially coerce testimony and refuse to disclose the details to the defense saying there was a record that would be preserved for an appeal. That judge ultimately got removed from the case but you should know that an appeal is a much higher burden to meet than anything at trial;
8. Prosecutors want a slam dunk case. The best way is to a cooperating witness. The first person to flip, gets the best deal.
So Ellison got a sweetheart deal because she immediately flipped besides arguably being the main person responsible for losing billions of dollars. Yes, SBF allowed her access to custodial funds and for that alone he deserves to go to prison.
Judges have a lot of discretion with sentencing despite their being sentencing guidelines. It's one area where a judge's biases can really show up when similar defendants can get wildly different sentences for the same crime.
2 years does seem pretty light given the gravity of the fraud, even with being a cooperating witness. Her lawyer is alrgely responsible for that, I would guess by gaming the sentencing process. Still, I imagine there was some belief that she was simply naive or she got caught up in the fraud and wasn't really responsible.
> 4. You can never predict what a jury will do or what they will focus on. It's a huge gamble but it favors the prosecution. Juries want to convict, generally;
And those are pretty terrible and make for an unfair system. How many people took a plea deal to avoid the risk of getting a heavy sentence by gambling with a jury, even if they were innocent?
None of it says good things about human nature, facts are facts though.
SBF played himself every step of the way. He tried to win in the court of public opinion rather than the court of law, leaking Ellison's diary to the press, blogging on Substack, talking to reporters any time they called, flaunting the judge's orders, etc. He also clumsily tried to tamper with witnesses. SBF got 25 years because he instigated the scheme, never fessed up, and did everything a lawyer would tell you not to do.
Ellison immediately made a deal with prosecutors, cooperated, testified, et cetera. While SBF was digging his hole deeper, she was climbing out of hers. And though she carried out the scheme, she wasn't the primary instigator (and there is lots of testimony, emails, etc to corroborate this).
People who immediately flip and cooperate heavily get good deals. That's just how these things work. Conversely, SBF did everything you could do to get yourself a longer sentence. It has absolutely nothing to do with Ellison being a woman. I've been following this story closely, and this sentencing came as no surprise. To be honest, if you were surprised - then you probably weren't following.
Refer to the article for quotes from Judge Kaplan about her "exemplary" cooperation, and consider whether you were too quick to jump to the conclusion she received special treatment because of her gender.