Sam Bankman-Fried loses bid to appeal against fraud conviction in FTX case
theguardian.com75 points by pseudolus 7 hours ago
75 points by pseudolus 7 hours ago
He will hold a Cabinet-level position before 2029.
Trump already chose the Binance money-launderer Zhao which was a competitor of FTX.
But the administration loves frauds, so maybe if Bankman can come up with a bribe.
Sammy is left winger who thought it was ok to do wrong then make up for it at the end by then pursuing false ideologies. No chance of parden. Too bad he wasn't Biden's son.
Crime is only okay if you’re on the right. It’s like in India, politicians with criminal backgrounds switch parties to the right. It’s called the washing machine.
he ain't a left winger. right winger cosplaying
"Sam Bankman-Fried was one of the largest financial supporters of the Democratic Party and left-wing campaigns. He publicly cultivated a center-left persona and aligned his philanthropic efforts with progressive ideologies."
Src: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/geor...
He did that for PR. He stated he also secretly donated to the right.
> SBF claims he gave tens of millions in untraceable donations to Republicans
> Although federal election receipts show that Bankman-Fried donated almost exclusively to Democrats, he claimed on a November phone call with YouTuber Tiffany Fong that he donated an equal amount to Republicans and Democrats.
> “All my Republican donations were dark,” he said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed in FEC filings. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”
> Given that he donated nearly $40 million to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle—and he admitted to giving an equal amount to Republicans—his total political contributions may have actually been around $80 million.
https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...
I think it would be prudent to disengage democrats from being 'left wing'. There is certainly a progressive wing of the democratic party, but none of those are the people he donated to. After all, this is the Democratic Party that a couple years ago during election season were trying to get George Bush and Dick Cheney to come to Kamala's rally.
He also secretly donated significant amounts of money to republicans (self-admitted), so all-in-all his contributions definitely skew center-right.
Bankman won't be Fried
Scam Bankman-Fraud is just one of the few highly publicised cases they will use to pretend they are actually serious about tackling these issues. Wake me when someone gets prosecuted for front-running Axios' "Iran deal is imminent" articles in the oil market.
He committed the one crime you can't buy your way out of: scamming the ruling finance class.
> scamming the ruling finance class
Loads of fraudsters get off on technicalities or are being pardoned by this President. What started as a joke on Reddit appears to be taken seriously by way too many people.
"You kill a whale, you'll get the greens, you'll get Greenpeace, you'll get Commander Cousteau on your back! But decimate a school of sardines, I like to tell you that you will be helped to can them!"
From the 1992 movie man bites dog.
Waste of time. Just buy a pardon [1][2][3][4][5].
[1]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/04/donald-trumps-...
[2]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/04/donald-trumps-...
[3]: https://apnews.com/article/nikola-trevor-milton-fraud-trump-...
[4]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7e0jve875o
[5]: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/28/trump-pardon-bitmex-crypto-e...
He keeps trying: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2026/06/08/sam-bankman-fried...
Hasn't succeeded yet, probably because he doesn't have the money, also too publicly associated with the Democratic Party. I wouldn't be shocked if Trump does it in the end because his empathy seems to be reserved for high-profile scammers.
Trump reportedly was disinterested in SBF money. During his tenure, SBF leaned left - with Clinton and others as paid speakers for events.
Trump himself supported Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2008.
Not sure how that's relevant. Trump does whatever Trump thinks is good for Trump. I'm sure his support of Clinton back then made sense to him, as did shifting far right several years later.
If he thinks accepting money from SBF will be good for him, he'll do it. If not, he won't. I suspect SBF is going to be left out in the cold, though, so Trump can say he's tough on white-collar crime, while pardoning the Binance guy and so many other rich fraudsters.
I was responding to the implication that SBF's association with the Clintons was a reason he would not get any favors from Trump. Trump has had a lot of associates on the D side of the ballot over the years, pretty much unavoidable if you're a wheeler-dealer in New York.
Why would Trump's previous associations with the Democratic party prevent him from spiting someone else's associations with the Democratic party? That would require he not be a complete hypocrite. On the other hand, associating SBF with the Democrats makes them look bad. Why pardon an albatross around the neck of your enemies?
Yeah, it's odd he can't scrape together a couple million and just get a pardon. It seems like the people who were able to pick up FTX claims for .50-.60 on the dollar, and have now made a killing, would toss Sam a tip.
Why would they? What would be the return for them?
On the same basis as phishing emails having spelling mistakes a smart pyramid scheme would hire him as a mascot to keep the idiots buying and the critical analysis hard to separate from jokes.
He was a top Democrat donor (the article says he was their number 2 individual donor in 2022) so I doubt he could buy one. Not that he seemed particularly left leaning himself and he also donated to Republicans but 5.2 million publicly to Biden seems like a dealbreaker.
https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...
Small criminals rot in jails but big ones like founder of silk road get out paying the government. This is shows how rotten american government is
Good
Good night, sweet prince
How utterly predictable.
>In appealing against the conviction, Bankman-Fried’s defense lawyers argued that US district judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the trial, improperly prevented Bankman-Fried from introducing evidence to back up his belief that FTX had enough funds to cover customer withdrawals.
So it's been a few years now. Did people get their money in the end? That would presumably answer the question of whether they were stolen from. It wouldn't affect any decisions on crimes related to flouting regulations.
That is not how any of this works. He was convicted of fraud, and fraud was committed the moment he transferred the funds to Alameda. That he placed some bets that worked out, like his Anthropic investment, doesn't negate the crime any more than if I robbed a bank, placed a winning bet with it and returned the funds with interest.
I'm saying a Fraud conviction is not the same a stealing. I'm completely ok with a conviction for fraud, provided that the conviction and sentencing is based upon that fraud.
I would characterise robbing a bank, placing a bet and returning the funds as theft.
However if you entrusted me with $500 and I gambled and paid you back when you wanted the $500, I would not say that is theft. If I had promised not to gamble, then it would have been fraudulent.
Except SBF didn't gamble away the money (still a criminal offence if he did); he spent it on lavish goods and apartments, with a lot of political donations. The very definition of fraud is deception, misappropriation, and loss to the users, all of which did happen.
In between placing a bet and returning the funds, the customer's funds were totally non-existent hence the loss to the user. That things later worked out after some years does not take away the misappropriation and that there was no actual money where it was meant to be at that moment, hence a fraud.
You can characterize things however you want. But "theft" and "fraud" are extensively defined concepts in caselaw. Fraud, specifically, is legally defined quite differently than what most people think the word means in common usage and your example here does not have much relationship to it.
Well I have only seen media reports alleging theft, such as the article linked, they don't necessarily have to conform to legal definitions. A cynical person might suggest that perhaps media coverage deliberately chooses between colloquial, legal, and scientific definitions at will depending on the narrative they would like to create.
Was there ever a charge of theft in the legal sense filed in court?
Proof you can graduate from MIT and still be completely dumb.
I know people with doctorates who can't organise their lives. Being a good student does not make you smart in all aspects of your life.
It's hardly even that-- he dumped the remaining customer assets to briefly crash the price of Bitcoin... causing an understatement in what he took from people.
Except when you pay someone to manage your money.
Remember this.
Clarify? I don't understand how whether or not I pay someone to manage my money makes a difference as to whether what they did was commit fraud. People paid Bernie Madoff to manage their money and early investors got promised returns but he still went to jail because he was running an illegal ponzi scheme.
They have far greater latitude to move it and do what they deem smartest with it. And take fees for themselves. And put you in deals that benefits other clients they prefer.
And on and on. And on.
Dumping, swapping, bag holding, fee based investments that are crap. All legal.
Would you consider it theft if you asked someone to watch over your house, and when you came back, they told you they sold your house but give them a few months and they should be able to buy it back? That's basically what SBF did here--he sold the customer assets that were not his to sell, and his defense is trying to obscure the basic fact.
If Michael Lewis is to be believed making Gemini whole was his largest mistake.
I think Kraken has been selected to redistribute the funds, but not sure if it has happened yet. These things take time, I think Mt. Gox took like a decade to be distributed
They did, I had something like $50 in FTX and I got it back. I don’t remember when, I think it was about a year ago.
You SBF defenders have such a weird view of how the law works. If I embezzle money from my company and then bet it all on black in Vegas, intending to give it back if I win, your implication here is equivalent to saying I did commit a crime if the wheel comes up red, but I did not commit any crime if it comes up black.
Not a SBF defender, and at no point am I suggesting that a crime was not committed. I am saying that the crime is different to theft.
Would you say that a misuse of funds with zero chance of the rightful owner losing their money is a less serious crime than a misuse of funds with a 50% or 100% chance of losing their money.
I think it is, and penalties should be proportionate. That is a principle that I hold independent to any of the specifics of this case.
> Would you say that a misuse of funds with zero chance of the rightful owner losing their money is a less serious crime than a misuse of funds with a 50% or 100% chance of losing their money.
No, because the crime is the same either way. The crime is "misuse of funds", full stop.
If recklessly using those funds is also a crime, then there should be an extra charge tacked on, which would presumably increase penalties on conviction.
Agreed. I've seen local officials convicted of misusing an offical credit card for groceries and other personal purchases, even though they paid everything back and there was no "loss" to the taxpayers. But they were still misusing public credit for personal benefit.
Of course it was a pretty clear pattern of usage over time, not a one-time thing that could be explained as accidental.
Paying back a victim, or "making them whole" is part of required restitution, but it's not adequate as a deterrence. If all I have to do is pay back my victims, there's very little disincentive to keep trying my schemes until I "win."
Loss of freedom is ultimately what will reform a criminal, if reform is possible.
>Loss of freedom is ultimately what will reform a criminal, if reform is possible.
I don't believe that is correct. In fact there's pretty good research to suggest that custodial sentences inrcease recidivism. This does not really apply to the SBF case, but I shall elaborate for the general case.
There are far more burglars in their 20's than in their 50's. The predominant characteristic amongst people over the age of 50 being convicted of burglary is previous jail time for burglary.
Research has shown the single most reliable way to reform a criminal is to let them get older without going to jail, and to a lesser extent gaining a criminal record. People are far more often criminals by circumstance than by nature.
I would disagree, solely because one or more of the following reasons:
1. the person taking the money had no guarantee that the money, or some of it, would not be lost.
2. it wasn't their intention to give all or some of it back to its rightful owners.
3. the fact that some of it could repay some of the rightful owner's was often a matter of luck, not intent (there is some overlap between 1 and 3).
SBF hits all three of these. Your intent matters. At some point SBF intended by conscious acts to run and continue running a Ponzi scheme. He wasn't trying to bail himself out of the hole other than to the extent required to keep the Ponzi scheme going and enrich himself in the process.
So, respectfully, I disagree. May there be other cases that I agree with you on, depending on the particulars? Perhaps so. But not this one.
I agree on your points of what matters.
I disagree that this was shown in the SBF case. In fact, it seems much of the case was based on the fact that these points were not pertinent to the charges he faced. Which is also likely why his appeal failed. The argument that he was disallowed from making would have spoken to those issues. If it had have been relevant to the charges, he should have been allowed to make the argument.
Intent isn't necessarily an element required to prove fraud. Recklessness can be sufficient. Also to the extent intent is required intent to deceive is sufficient, ie the intent to cause someone to rely on a false statement, even if there's no intent to harm because you're convinced your fraudulent scheme will ultimately lead to success.
This is how people who get to the top act, the ones you see at the top are the ones who correctly guessed the roulette number .
If you want to become successful sooner or later you'd have to do the same .
As I realized this I am slowly but steadily abandoning the race for money and I am trying to approach it by finding the best deals for the stuff that I like as money saved is money earned and there is very little difference between experiencing a top 85 percentile thing and a top 99.999 percentile thing , but that last 15% man that is what the money exonential really goes crazy
I think the victims were helped quite a bit by the runup in crypto assets. So even though some was lost, the run up in what was left ended up being quite a bit.
Yeah that happened with MtGox too. I don't think that aspect should be factored in as a defence. It should be more down to the degree of risk that people were exposed to at the time the offence occurred.