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2ndprize t1_j2arvtj wrote

Yeah, like pretty much everyone charged with a serious crime

433

Expendable_Employee t1_j2ay1tu wrote

Assuming his lawyers may have told him to not do this, I'm not surprised.

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SyrioForel t1_j2azwks wrote

He’s going to jail either way, and for a very long time. If he pleads guilty, his chances of jail time are 100%. If he pleads not guilty, he has a one in a million shot of miraculously getting off.

He looked at those odds and decided, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance!”

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TheUmgawa t1_j2azzha wrote

"Your honor, my client pleads not guilty by reason of idiocy. It is our belief that any jury would be convinced that no rational person would have entrusted a moron like my client with their money –or pretend digital money, as it were– and so I currently move for summary judgment, with prejudice, vis a vis ex post facto ad nauseum mens rea. I'm not sure if any of those apply, because I'm as good a lawyer as my client is a CEO. He found me on Facebook, where I go by Hindu Kush 420 Esquire, and must have just thought I was a lawyer."

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Eponymous-Username t1_j2b279z wrote

Can't imagine he'd have much to gain from pleading guilty at this point...

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screaming_vultures t1_j2b2d8r wrote

He is going to be protected by his donations. They are going to try to find an excuse like he was on drugs or he had mental health issues

−1

BRCKDefenseAttorneys t1_j2b2jm4 wrote

Click bait. Pleading not guilty is the first step in almost all criminal cases- it doesn’t mean he won’t change his plea to guilty later in exchange for a plea bargain.

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ActualSpiders t1_j2bayih wrote

What's going to be his defense? That all the stuff he's already admitted to doing in interviews aren't actually crimes? Is he going to walk over to the jury box and just start handing jurors checks (that will all bounce)?

Bold strategy, Cotton...

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StackOwOFlow t1_j2bb5uv wrote

"Crypto isn't real money" is probably the defense. Gary Gensler to testify

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sign_up_in_secondss t1_j2besgl wrote

I feel like his legal defense is going to rest on convincing an impressionable jury he was not responsible and it was all the other schemers at FTX that did him in

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colin8651 t1_j2bkv4c wrote

96% rate and not asking for forgiveness. Good luck

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cludinsk t1_j2bna4a wrote

Once you abscond with that much money you can buy entire law firms to represent you.

−1

guy_incognito784 t1_j2bonwq wrote

Replying to methcache (#1,205,975)

It’s always nice when complete dipshits like to pretend they understand monetary and fiscal policy.

Hyperinflation, lol fucking dipshit. Stick to what you know….which appears to be trading avatars.

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ColoradoSpringstein t1_j2bpfwg wrote

Pretty sure we need to be arresting the people who (used him as the fall guy) enabled him to get into this position in the first place.

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zoltan99 t1_j2bq5he wrote

Replying to methcache (#1,205,975)

Go look up examples of hyperinflation and reflect on your comment, or sit in ignorance thinking this is hyperinflation. Jesus. I mean, my god, that’s a lot of confidently being wrong packed in so few words, the density of the wrongness is actually impressive.

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methcache t1_j2bqdxb wrote

Replying to zoltan99 (#1,206,391)

You’re making a lot of assumptions here, never did I ever say we’re in hyperinflation right now. Chill my dude. Other guy doesn’t need anyone white knighting for him

−5

GordianNaught t1_j2bqoty wrote

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines looks at the dollar amount of the fraud or intended fraud to score the length of sentence. Even as a First Offender he is looking at 25 years plus. Changing his plea to guilty later and accepting responsibility will give him a 3 level of severity decrease to something like 18 years. FFS, he already had 2 insiders turned government witness against him! This kid is toast.

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Neatcursive t1_j2btv5r wrote

No one should ever plead guilty before filing their request for discovery, and seeing the evidence in the government's case. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot, and has no idea how incredible our criminal justice system is compared to most countries around the world.

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ThisPlaceSucksRight t1_j2buv37 wrote

Replying to SyrioForel (#1,199,706)

Did you read about the one Todd Chrisley went to or is going to? It irritates me so bad reading about the tennis and basketball courts, the hobby shops, the woodworking and music room. Pool room. Store that had everything Basically like a locked down apartment building. White collar criminals go to fantastic prisons and Sam won’t suffer. He will be there for max 10 years and come out to the billions left to him by his parents. I hate this dude.

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unbuottawa t1_j2c1k24 wrote

I wish Law and order was still on the air. This would have made for a great episode

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Techutante t1_j2c2a3f wrote

Innocent by virtue of stupidity your honor!

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ColoradoSpringstein t1_j2c59hj wrote

Replying to TheNerdWithNoName (#1,209,676)

Think about it. What did ftx do? Renamed a stadium, got Larry fucking David to do a Super Bowl commercial, made donations to politicians on both sides of the aisle, lobbied the chair of the finance committee to presumably help with the writing of any crypto related regulations, got tons of high profile celebrities to endorse and invest in their exchange, that they ran alongside their hedge fund, they bailed out or acquired bunch of other crypto exchanges.. like that’s a pretty large list of high profile side missions if this shit were just a scam. Idk I been smoking that good shit while looking into this. Going off on all sorts of tangents.

You can blame all this on the greater fool theory running wild and think that sbf just got a bunch of strangers to invest gobs of money with him that he then went on to do all this baller shit with. I just can’t buy it. Too early to tell but it’s fun to speculate.

0

ZootTX t1_j2c97rr wrote

Replying to EZKTurbo (#1,207,123)

That's not really true at all. Court cases are about what the prosecution can prove, not what everyone 'knows.' A large number of the witnesses in this case will also have been complicit in the whole thing, which can be used against them.

Trials are time consuming, expensive, and this one will be an absolute circus of media attention. Seating a jury for this will be a task in itself. Not to mention potentially highlighting instances of government agencies/watchdogs failing to do their jobs appropriately.

I don't think anyone expects the dude to walk but certainly there will be an attempt at a plea deal even if this ultimately goes to trial.

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TheNerdWithNoName t1_j2ca82c wrote

Replying to ColoradoSpringstein (#1,210,590)

When you are conning people out of actual currency and giving them imaginary currency. Then assigning the imaginary currency a value based on who-knows-what, then you have a shitload of real spending money. When the whole thing is completely unregulated there isn't much stopping anyone from doing the same thing.

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WiebeKong t1_j2cacsf wrote

There's pretty strong evidence to indicate he's committed fraud since he bailed out.

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PerfectPercentage69 t1_j2ci8kz wrote

Replying to ZootTX (#1,211,749)

Thankfully, with the size of damages and number of victims, a conviction of even one of the charges will put him behind bars for at least 20 years. He also doesn't have a lot of the sympathy points that Elizabeth Holmes tried to use to lower her sentence (ie. becoming a monther, claiming rape in school, and being controlled by abusive Balwani, etc.)

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PerfectPercentage69 t1_j2cilaj wrote

Replying to permanentmarker1 (#1,200,680)

No. It's going to be more than that. The sentence is heavily impacted by the amount of damage and the number of victims. Considering the damage is in the billions of dollars and there are millions of victims (ie. customers), he's most likely going to max out the criteria for sentence length.

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fleker2 t1_j2cjxe6 wrote

I'm not surprised he'd plead not guilty. Most criminal defendants do. It just means the whole thing will go to trial.

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SoylentRox t1_j2cp3im wrote

Replying to EZKTurbo (#1,207,123)

Maybe? I mean he's gonna try to convince everyone he just set directives and played video games all day. That's he wasn't aware of the backdoor hacks letting FTX gamble with client's money and the shady loans and so on.

Yeah I'm not sure how he could possibly claim to be unaware, the dude can code and in a company this small would have directly involved in the decisions.

Plus I mean they used slack and other collaboration tools. Presumably there are smoking gun thumbs up emojiis from him.

like back in 2020.
coworker1: "alamada is low on funds, we're gonna have to fold"
coworker2: "I have an idea, let's borrow a little from the exchange balance, we'll make it back"

with a thumbs up by SBF.

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SoylentRox t1_j2cpqpm wrote

Replying to ThisPlaceSucksRight (#1,207,631)

It's the rules. White collar criminals are often smart - they know not to escape because they are able to plan ahead at least short windows into the future. (they wouldn't be criminals if they could plan long term). So the prison doesn't need bars or guard towers, just a daily roll call. If you escape they send you to a higher security facility.

They don't necessarily riot or destroy property, and they often have money stashed to afford the prison staples. If they do escape they don't necessarily murder or rape, maybe a little conning.

I'm just saying - some of the suffering violent criminals and poor criminals endure is because the prison HAS to be built like that. Another problem is the state prison system is inconsistent, some state prisons are hell on earth, others are probably about as nice as a federal prison.

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Royalstopdrop t1_j2cro9c wrote

If the courts fail to bring justice to this idiot, the thousands people people he scammed will.

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Traditional-One-3742 t1_j2ctqbm wrote

He need to be put on death row Solitary for the fraud he committed Or put him in gen pop to get raped by his new cell mate …… It’ll be the new Bahamas for him

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CantKBDwontKBD t1_j2d3crq wrote

Wierd. He kind of seemed like a guy that would admit he was a criminal once caught

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bkornblith t1_j2dev0w wrote

I don’t care what he pleads as long as they lock him up and throw away the key. I’m

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gozba t1_j2dh0fu wrote

Doesn’t matter, he’ll be locked up for over 20 days (seeing he is white and rich)…

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ahungrylilsandwhich t1_j2drlae wrote

He didn't get a plea deal which means he likely won't be flipping on whoever set him up to do all of this. Dude's going to serve time.

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Akratus2 t1_j2dxliy wrote

Replying to el_muchacho (#1,202,607)

Yes but he gave shit tons of money to the democrats, so Trump would never help him, and the Democrats are looking to make an example of him. Bridges to both parties are burned.

Now his buisness partner who was giving money to the republicans could have gone with that strategy, but instead got a deal to help them get SBF which is the smartest thing he has done yet.

1

TheUmgawa t1_j2e0q02 wrote

Replying to WTFrashelle (#1,224,476)

That’s what I’m saying. They don’t want it regulated like money, and they don’t want it regulated like securities, but when someone steals or loses their pretend digital money, they want the government to help them.

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Ky0fu t1_j2e7654 wrote

😱😱😱no way??! 🙄

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Ok_Fox_1770 t1_j2ebsbi wrote

The big donator… I’m sure he’s gonna be just fine and it’s disgusting.

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danielravennest t1_j2ehn9q wrote

When your own name screams "Bank-man Fraud", it is going to be hard to maintain a presumption of innocence.

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proudpeasant t1_j2epnlo wrote

SBF said his defense antisemitism if he's found guilty. He said he's targeted due to antisemitism. Dunno what that means

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beepbeepboopbeep1977 t1_j2f9ft7 wrote

Replying to 2ndprize (#1,227,122)

Are you saying that you plead not guilty, then use the cost of trial as a bargaining chip in a plea deal? I thought plea deals were negotiated before pre-trial hearings? (Please excuse my probable use of incorrect terms - I live outside the US and am using our local terms, hopefully they’re similar enough to be understandable).

1