SBF Asks Court To Dismiss Most Criminal Charges Against Him (axios.com) 63
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is seeking the dismissal of 10 of the 13 charges against him over the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange. Axios reports: Lawyers for Bankman-Fried, who's pleaded not guilty to fraud, conspiracy, campaign finance law violations and money laundering, in a filing argued that several of the charges failed to properly state an offense. The motion that was filed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York is seeking the dismissal of 10 of the 13 charges against him. "Simply making a false statement, by itself, does not constitute wire fraud unless it is made for the purpose of obtaining money or property from the victim of the fraud," Bankman-Fried's lawyers wrote.
According to Ars Technica, SBF's lawyers are essentially arguing that there's no evidence of harm caused because fraud requires a "scheme to cause economic loss to the victim," which prosecutors allegedly haven't proved. Instead, SBF alleges that federal prosecutors have concocted "a hodgepodge of different intangible losses" suffered by banks and lenders -- including "the right to honest services," "the loss of control of assets," and "the deprivation of valuable information." [...] "In the end, the Government is trying to transform allegations of dishonesty and unfair dealing into violations of the federal fraud statutes," SBF's lawyers wrote. "While such conduct may well be improper, it is not wire fraud."
The 31-year-old Bankman-Fried, who is currently under house arrest on a $250 million bond at his parents' home in Palo Alto, California, faces more than 155 years in prison if convicted on all counts. A trial has been scheduled for October.
According to Ars Technica, SBF's lawyers are essentially arguing that there's no evidence of harm caused because fraud requires a "scheme to cause economic loss to the victim," which prosecutors allegedly haven't proved. Instead, SBF alleges that federal prosecutors have concocted "a hodgepodge of different intangible losses" suffered by banks and lenders -- including "the right to honest services," "the loss of control of assets," and "the deprivation of valuable information." [...] "In the end, the Government is trying to transform allegations of dishonesty and unfair dealing into violations of the federal fraud statutes," SBF's lawyers wrote. "While such conduct may well be improper, it is not wire fraud."
The 31-year-old Bankman-Fried, who is currently under house arrest on a $250 million bond at his parents' home in Palo Alto, California, faces more than 155 years in prison if convicted on all counts. A trial has been scheduled for October.
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He should probably start training with buttplugs now. So by the time he gets there, he will have a good, stretchy hobbit-hole that's ready to receive.
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That's kinda fucked up (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to say you're joking, but we know prison rape is real, and I don't think he's going to club fed as it were.
Using prisons for torture is fucked up.
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He actually reminds me of a boyfriend I had a few years ago. That's the main reason I started thinking about plowing him, so yes, I would inflict that myself, quite happily - provided he had a brain transplant. The body is fine.
Of course we shouldn't be allowing rape (or any number of other things) in prisons, which is why I didn't advocate for that. As a strictly practical matter, he's less likely to end up with an anal fissure if he gets used to being penetrated first, rather than someone just shoving it
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I'll take an honest "He should be executed" anyday. At least it's straightforward.
It's not funny (Score:3)
And that's before you talk about using prison as a form of punishment. Let's take the inmates out of the equation and the prison rape and just look at the concept of locking someone in a cage. Why do we do it? Obviously if they are an immediate threat to the community it's necessary but we certainly do it in many many cases wh
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Not a chance (Score:3, Insightful)
So just like Holmes Madoff before you you're going up the river for a very very long time.
I'm really surprised that these scammers haven't learned to cut and run when the real 1 percenters show up trying to invest. Then again I think it's a fairly recent thing that there is this many scams for the 1 percenters to lose money on in such an obvious and embarrassing fashion. So maybe words just hasn't gotten around yet.
Re: Not a chance (Score:2)
SBF's lawyer does lawyer thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is literally just the defense lawyer doing his job.
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Let's say you rob a bank. How many charges might you be hit with? It could be pretty much any number depending on how finely they slice it. But almost certainly one of the charges will be Federal Bank Robbery, and conviction on that alone is very bad.
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well 13 vs 3.
maybe the difference from an FPMITA vs club feb
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Re:SBF's lawyer does lawyer thing... (Score:5, Informative)
It is reference to a scene [youtube.com] in the movie Office Space.
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but money laundering may get you there.
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It is good if he gets it reduced to three charges then he can offer a plea in exchange for a light sentence in a minimum security fed camp. The DOJ is likely to accept to keep their stellar conviction rate intact and save a ton of resources and complicated trial. SBF still has hundreds of millions socked away for lawyers.
Re: SBF's lawyer does lawyer thing... (Score:2)
Re: SBF's lawyer does lawyer thing... (Score:4, Informative)
His parents have tens if not hundreds of millions of it and they haven't been charged with anything. Take that up with the DOJ and their political masters, not me.
In fact some of that money is what's being used to pay SBF's million-dollar attorneys who stand a good chance of getting him off with a light sentence (if any).
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Anyways if you are facing 13 serious charges, getting that reduced to 3 serious charges may not help you all that much, and doesn't seem to bode well for those 3.
Not all charges are equal. If I rob a bank and drop a snickers bar on the street on the way outside and get hit with armed robbery, assault, and littering, getting off on the armed robbery and assault would be an absolute win even if there is a charge I was found guilty of.
He has 13 charges against him which each range from a maximum of getting a fine to a maximum of 20 years federal prison depending on the charge. This very much could mean the difference between a minimum jail sentence (or even lower) vs s
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I'm glad you'll never be my lawyer.
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And rich people can hire the best lawyers!
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In the most routine possible way. If he didn't do exactly this, he'd be up for disciplinary action for not doing his job.
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Yep. Any defense lawyer who doesn't file such a motion to dismiss all charges needs to be fired. Unless it's a pro-pono half assed court appointed one, but even then it's worth trying to replace.
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Re:The feds are like that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not because of association, or horniness, or any of the other reasons you list.
Now, we could discuss whether some of our laws are wrong, or prudish, or unrealistic, or straight-up obsolete or idiotic. I totally agree that some of our laws need to be changed. But that’s a different discussion. The proud boys werent convicted cause they were actively s&*king Trump’s d&5k. They were convicted because they left a mile-wide electronic and physical trail of evidence proving that they wanted to stage a coup. They got off EASY, and in any case the next republican president will immediately pardon them.
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In practice, you can be convicted for associating with the Wrong Person (as the Proud Boys found out)
Uh, you kind of lost me there. They're a violent gang whose members thought they could overthrow the government through what was effectively a palace coup. Are you seriously suggesting that, for example, the guy who stole a shield from a police officer and used it to smash a window in the capitol building and then trespassed in the capitol building was simply convicted for associating with the "Wrong Person". I could talk a lot about his intent in all of this and what the private messages and published mate
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Welcome to Slashdot, where facts about insurrections are flamebait. These chucklefucks still think BLM burned down cities even after cops got spotted breaking windows and lighting fires. They will lick those jackboots all the way into their graves.
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Actually, this [youtube.com] explains it rather well. The problem isn't that the guy who actually assaulted police went to jail, but that the government claimed that someone else, who was in jail at the time, was a part of some conspiracy because he posted things like "1776".
The government had no evidence that any of the others had planned to do anything at the Capitol at all. That is guilt by association.
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Actually, this explains it rather well.
I'll never know how wrong that is, because I'll never watch that tripe.
Find a citation from someone who can write, and I'll skim that.
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Actually, this [youtube.com] explains it rather well. The problem isn't that the guy who actually assaulted police went to jail, but that the government claimed that someone else, who was in jail at the time, was a part of some conspiracy because he posted things like "1776".
The government had no evidence that any of the others had planned to do anything at the Capitol at all. That is guilt by association.
Your post makes me think that you don't know what the crime of "conspiracy" is. Especially the part about their leader being in jail at the time. Why would you think that's at all relevant to a conspiracy charge?
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The relevance is that he could not have directed the spontaneous actions of the only person who used "force" from jail. And if you'd watched the video, you'd know the government presented no evidence of an actual plan to do, well, anything. That's the issue.
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The relevance is that he could not have directed the spontaneous actions of the only person who used "force" from jail. And if you'd watched the video, you'd know the government presented no evidence of an actual plan to do, well, anything. That's the issue.
I'm not sure what confusion of ideas would lead you to believe that a leader has to issue orders in real-time. Consider a crime boss who tells his subordinates: "Whack Vinny!" Vinny gets killed the next week while the crime boss is at the Legitimate Businessman's Association annual children's charity ball. By your argument, since the crime boss was at the ball and not ordering around his minions on scene at the time of the murder, he has nothing to do with it. This is nonsensical.
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"This thing that happened in the UK helps prove that US law is out of control!"
and
"I read this thing about the statues of imitation or whatever somewhere, and that makes Donald Trump innocent!"
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I'm laughing at Person Who Shall Not Be Named, where the judge told his lawyer that, yes, he should be given a chance to testify, please arrange this to happen. The lawyer never filed the paper work for this, the trial is over and The Unnamed Person immediately claims "I wasn't given a chance to defend myself! Biggest Bitch Hunt Evar!" That in a nutshell is "post truth America". SBF is just following the lead of the 4D chess master.
WTLF are you talking about? (Score:1)
I think SBF really, honestly believes that in a post-truth America, that actual guilt or innocence matters. In practice, you can be convicted for associating with the Wrong Person (as the Proud Boys found out), embarrassing the government (Snowden, Manning, et al...), saying the wrong thing in an obituary (as Chelsea Russel discovered), or having dirty thoughts (as so many sexting teenagers have discovered).
While I have no sympathies for Him Who Shall Not Be Named, the fact that prosecutors have violated the statute of limitations to charge him does not bode well for the rest of the country. The fact that people are being prosecuted for things which are not even crimes is certainly troubling.
Um... wow. The Shamed Boys are going to jail for... associating with the wrong person? Really? You mean it has nothing to do with the actual crimes they committed? Nothing to do with assualt and battery, breaking-and-entering, attempting to disrupt or prevent procedings of the federal government mandated by law and in the US Constitution? Are you fucking high? Were you kidding? That's the thing about text. It's devoid of the nuance of tone and inflection that could signal that you were kidding when
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You're very obviously living in a windchill factor world. It's not how things are, it's how you feel they are that matters to you.
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you can be convicted for associating with the Wrong Person (as the Proud Boys found out)
Seditious conspiracy, actually. [cornell.edu]
embarrassing the government (Snowden, Manning, et al...)
Snowden was never convicted of anything. He was charged with espionage [cornell.edu] and theft. [cornell.edu] Manning was convicted of the same, with a 35 year sentence. Apparently it wasn't all that embarrassing, because it was commuted to seven.
saying the wrong thing in an obituary (as Chelsea Russel discovered)
You do know the UK isn't a state in your "post-truth America", right?
or having dirty thoughts (as so many sexting teenagers have discovered)
You got me there. I have no idea what it has to do with your whole 'post-truth' thing, since this is about sexual hangups, but given the rest of this idiotic post, I guess you desperate
So SBF’s lawyers are hoping that the (Score:2)
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Judge had a stroke in the last 30 minutes? Well, it’s always possible..
No. Nothing here is unreasonable. Lawyers argue on minute details, judges rule on the same. Justice is not a morality game.
No. (Score:2)
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20 years would be sufficient.
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For which charge? 7 of the charges he has committed each carry a potential 20 years sentence, the rest other sentences of varying lengths.
Why are you so quick to take it easy on him and water down the laws on the books which he broke before anyone has even presented legal arguments?
No different than a lot of people his age (Score:3)
The 31-year-old Bankman-Fried, who is currently under house arrest on a $250 million bond at his parents' home in Palo Alto, California,
So we're saying he's living in his mom's basement, yes?
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Mom's basement in Palo Alto is probably a mini mansion in itself.
I can imagine what the discussion was like (Score:5, Funny)
"Your honor, I move to drop that case."
"Why the hell for would I do that?"
"Because else I'd lose it. DUH!"
Hope he walks (Score:1)
I saw one comment (currently scored 5, Informative) talking about him being raped in prison, implying he deserves it.
Are we really so far gone? How horrible the propaganda has made us.
He's a nonviolent offender - at the end of the day it doesn't matter what we think, our justice system isn't supposed to be enforced through rape and murder.
It's sick.
The dude did CRYPTO.
Not kidnapping, rape, murder, but CRYPTO.
I'm not even
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Ask yourself: Why do SO MANY people suddenly HATE some random guy who... started yet another crypto failed exchange. Who cares??
Pretty sure most of these comments are the banks.
Just like how when it was net neutrality, all the worst posts came from ISPs.
Beware propaganda
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Economic crimes affect lives. Some people kill themselves, have heart attacks, lose families, etc.
A punch in the face is a violent crime. If presented with the option of a punch in the face or losing my life's savings, I'll take the punch.
Frankly, I think economic crimes should be tried on a scale, where if you steal a multiple of the average person's income over the course of their life( a life earni