SBF/FTX
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Andy McCarthy: "I question the timing."
I confess to being perplexed by the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried on Monday night.
I’m not perplexed by the fact of it — as Rich Lowry and I discussed in recent episodes of The McCarthy Report, when billions of dollars in investor funds go poof, the Justice Department routinely files charges, so it would be surprising if there were not an indictment in SBF’s case.
The now-notorious SBF was slated to testify on Tuesday at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, with fireworks anticipated to result. It is highly unusual for a suspected fraudster who knows he is under investigation to make public statements explaining himself — especially when his very-prominent lawyer parents are presumably pleading with him to exercise his constitutional right not to help prosecutors build a case against him. Good defense lawyers advise even clients they believe are innocent to remain silent, at least until charges are filed and discovery begins. Having access to the charges and the Justice Department’s prosecutorial theory, along with information about what the witnesses and documents say, enables defense counsel to gauge the strength of the government’s case, and potentially trade testimony for leniency.
Consequently, if you were a prosecutor from the Southern District of New York (SDNY), the U.S. attorney’s office that has filed the charges against SBF, you would be delighted that your defendant has been ignoring sound advice and making public statements for weeks. You would, moreover, have been salivating at the prospect of his being grilled under oath for hours by grandstanding Congresscritters.
So why, on the eve of the House hearing, would the SDNY suddenly mobilize to arrest SBF, knowing this would inevitably abort his testimony? Plainly, there was no great rush to apprehend him. SBF has remained at liberty and talking very publicly in the month since the FTX collapse. Plus, if he were testifying before Congress, even by remote transmission, his whereabouts would be known, providing prosecutors an assurance that he was not poised to flee to a country from which it would be hard to extradite him. Why wouldn’t the Biden Justice Department wait a day or two, then, to give SDNY prosecutors the benefit of wide-ranging testimony that could be used against SBF — both in the criminal proceedings and in the SEC’s civil lawsuit, which like the indictment was made public Tuesday morning?
One obvious possibility, for the cynical among us, is that the Democrats who run the House Committee (which is led by firebrand lefty Maxine Waters of California), were loath to abide Republican harangues about SBF’s prodigious political contributions to Dems, whose regulatory enthusiasm he echoed, making him the bane of his crypto competitors’ existence. SBF reportedly donated about $40 million to Democratic candidates and PACs, making him second only to George Soros in Democratic contributions in the just-concluded midterm cycle. The committee majority may not have relished giving Republicans a chance to spotlight the fact that prominent Democrats received lavish contributions from SBF of what now appears to be stolen money, while the investors who provided the money — and had no idea it was being donated to politicians — lost their shirts.
If this were the reason for the sudden arrest, it would not be the first time the Democrats who run the Justice Department accommodated the whims of congressional Democrats. But is it the reason? There are reports that SBF, despite being a progressive darling until the recent contretemps, also donated heavily to Republicans — although he says he did it through “dark money” vehicles because these are less public and thus less apt to draw the ire of the media–Democrat complex. (The Guardian reports SBF’s elaboration on the claim that he gave more or less equally to both parties: “‘All my Republican donations were dark,’ he said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed. ‘The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f*** out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.’” It has been reported that SBF’s associate Ryan Salame, an executive at FTX Capital Markets, donated about $23 million to Republicans and GOP PACs.)
While we await an explanation for the timing of the arrest, there are some suggestions that SBF will try to fight extradition from the Bahamas. Perhaps he will, but it is unlikely he’ll be successful if he does. The Bahamian authorities have good relations with their American counterparts.
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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A month-old video which illuminated some of the basics I hadn't been aware of.
Link to videoWhat strikes me is the extent to which this was a beta nerd takeover of billions of dollars due to a combination of family connections and blind faith in "geniuses".
Maybe there is a good reason that many people have evolved with latent distrust of experts and authority. This shit gets out of hand pretty easily, and there really are no trustworthy gatekeepers. Even if the psychological mediocrities with the gift of faith in institutions they do not truly understand, will never get that.
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Extradited to the US.
Released on $250 million bail. Apparently his parents are using their house as security for the bail. He is restricted to the house.
Two questions.
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Two lawyers have a house worth $250 million?
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(seen on Twitter)
How do you find a Bail Bondsman who can put up $250-million?
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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I was surprised to read that the CEO and co-founder of the company plead guilty.
Only about one month after things started to fall apart.
In cases like this, a guilt plea only happens after many months (years) of bargaining, etc.
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Extradited to the US.
Released on $250 million bail. Apparently his parents are using their house as security for the bail. He is restricted to the house.
Two questions.
- Two lawyers have a house worth $250 million?
Wouldn’t need to be worth the whole amount, 10% is typical in ‘normal’ cases.
- (seen on Twitter)
How do you find a Bail Bondsman who can put up $250-million?
I assume they did this in a very non-standard way, maybe some bespoke credit deal with a bank syndicate. But that’s just a guess.
DON’T let them eat cake.
- RFK Jr -
Wouldn’t need to be worth the whole amount, 10% is typical in ‘normal’ cases.
Yes, but if he skips, aren't they on the hook for the entire amount.
But, even if I'm wrong, a $25 million house?
I assume they did this in a very non-standard way, maybe some bespoke credit deal with a bank syndicate. But that’s just a guess.
Could be.
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Andy McCarthy's take on the bail - it's all for show.
The Biden Justice Department and the SDNY want you to know that this is a very serious case — an “epic” fraud, the prosecutors said in court today. So bail was agreed to at $250 million, so the Justice Department could say it is the highest bail amount in the history of federal prosecutions, maybe even the history of the universe.
But is it really? SBF did not have to put up $250 million in collateral. The only thing that appears to be posted is his parents’ home in Palo Alto. I’m sure it is very nice, but rest assured it’s not anything remotely close to $250 million nice.
Other than that, the bond has to be co-signed by four “financially responsible people.” A financially responsible person is one who is reasonably trustworthy when it comes to paying his bills; financially responsible does not mean financially rich. There is no requirement in the bond that the FRPs demonstrate a capacity to pay $250 million if Sam goes on the lam.
The fact is, SBF has already been released. They let him go on a signature. He didn’t need to establish that, if he absconds, the government would have $250 million in cash or other assets on which to execute. DOJ likes being able to tell the media that SBF’s bail is “a quarter billion dollars.” But if an alleged criminal were really so terrible as to rate that kind of historically exorbitant bail amount, then the government wouldn’t release him on little more than a signature on a piece of paper. It would instead make him come up with lots and lots of property so that the government would have something close to the bond amount that it could quickly collect if he took off.
I am not saying that the crimes charged are unserious. SBF is obviously looking at scores of years in prison. But Bernie Madoff’s swindle dwarfed what SBF is charged with — about $50 billion, compared to about $2 billion. Yet, Madoff’s bail was $10 million, 1/25th of what the Biden Justice Department claims SBF’s bail is.
Clearly, it is true that anyone who signs the bond as a surety would be liable for the face amount of the bond. In theory, if SBF flees, the four co-signers, only one of whom must be nonfamily, would theoretically be on the hook for a quarter-bil. That doesn’t mean, though, that the sureties have that kind of money, or that the government has any realistic expectation of collecting such a sum.
In essence, the government took SBF’s passport and told him to stay with his parents. They told the world he was such a flight risk that he was forced to sign a bond for $250M . . . and then they released him — home for the holidays! — having posted no assets and having provided the government with no indication that the taxpayers can expect to see anything close to $250M if he flees.
I don’t believe he’ll flee, mind you. He’s probably tapped out, he doesn’t want to see his parents lose their home, and he doesn’t seem like the type who’d do well in the life of a fugitive. But the bail amount is meant to shape public opinion about the gravity of the case, that’s all.
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In fairness, he’s confined to the parents home and has an ankle bracelet. It’s not like he’s “a free man”.
This is interesting:
He also pointed out that Mr. Bankman-Fried had consented to extradition. Had he resisted the process, leading to a drawn-out legal fight, it was “a near certainty” the government would have opposed any pretrial release, Mr. Roos added.
