"Phew, at least the beaurocratic red tape of legal jurisdiction will make it take months for them to figure out who's going to prosecute me. I've still got plenty of ti-" "Yeah so we're all going to prosecute you." "....WHAT!?"
The fact that a judge wound up revoking SBF's bail and putting him back in jail for witness tampering is *really* damning for his case, if all those witness testimonies aren't damning enough.
This entire saga has really made me understand why so many companies and people just go radio silent after a scandal. This dude really, really did himself zero favors by speaking so often and publicly after the fecal matter struck the atmospheric circulation device
Yep, exactly. There's a reason the miranda rights have a line stating "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law". Every time the dude gave an interview, he just gave the case being built against him much more fodder.
And those interviews -- especially the ones with Coffeezilla I think -- are what prompted Ellison and Wang to sing like Mariah and to do it QUICKLY. He was obviously going to start blaming them and others, so an escape route had to be built and fast.
Ofc he’s talked his way out of everything up til this point, he thought he was smarter than the feds. If you’re guilty, don’t talk at all. Pretty basic criminal tenet. I genuinely don’t believe he understood the gravity of what he was being accused of. Good for the feds, bad for his legal team lol
12:41 Lawyer: "Your honor... Do you really think my client has enough gray matter to be responsible for such an elaborate fraud?" Judge: "Holy shit. Thank you, I'm gonna take that into consideration!"
Your duty is not to try getting them off. Only to ensure they are getting a fair trial and that all evidence towards their innocence is properly presented to judges and jurors.
@@Andreamom001 that angle will be tough with his two most culpable confidants 100% spilling their guts. The scrappy idiot in over their head angle only works if there seems to be no clear answer, which his partners are providing extensive details and evidence of.
Or maybe Adam McKay will give SBF a proper stripdown and highlight all the terrible shit he did, in the style of The Big Short (even if that wasn't an entirely faithful representation of reality, it got the point across).
@Matt DK Maybe not. I'm assuming you're a daily smoker; generally, people who smoke weed habitually haven't had the best luck in life. You are lucky to have a substance dependence and still be doing that well in school - that's what I meant. If you're still achieving a high level of academic success, it is because you already had a high baseline of performance. Just imagine what you could accomplish if you were using 100% of your cognitive faculties
@@scorch4299 It’s like political corruption. Nothing can be done about it when it’s actually legal. (Other than consistently voting out corrupt politicians but… yeah that’s not happening either.)
"after the meeting, most of the staff resigned" I can only imagine the shock of those employees and the subsequent realization that their job prospects in tech and finance are now incinerated.
@@kittyspam2146 which surprisingly is not true as criminals will always seek out other criminals in order to do more shady crap so I'm sure their resumes will be as accepted as every other corrupt individual in both government and business
Hope that is also the case with Tech former employees who decided to do the bidding of a agenda "rotten to the core". An agenda we taxpayers are funding day in and day out. Did any of those mutants get fired ? The Congressional representatives SACKED ? Our system is not handling the situation.
I hope that the feds are looking into his parents. They were both heavily involved in FTX and its hard to imagine they had no idea what he was up to especially considering they are both compliance lawyers.
They're not actually compliance lawyers, they're professors. This has been repeated all over the place, starting with I think FTX shill Kevin O'Leary, but it's not true. But even if it was, they're complicit with those gonzo expensive properties he bought them with stolen customer funds.
@@amarketing8749 That's why they need to investigate the heck out the Parents. I believe some (if not a lot) of that Money is squirreled away somewhere.
They won’t investigate the parents…what rock are living under? There’s no law and order in this country anymore. The only reason this guy got caught is because how much he ducked up. That sounds mean…I’m sorry if I sound mean.
the chatroom was actually called... wire fraud?! that would be like painting "getaway vehicle" on the side of your car before robbing a bank... or labling a safe "big metal room with all the stolen money in it" or naming your front business the "money laundering store"
Every time he tweets, he makes it a little bit worse. Somewhere out there is a very tired lawyer considering trying to get their own client's twitter account banned Edit: Now that I think about it, this comment could apply to like 80% of Legal Eagle's videos
@@jupiterjones3789 Trump definitely had lawyers crying with his tweets but hes not the only one with terrible tweets when in trouble theres a few people usually youtubers that get chatty when in trouble
@@bucksatanII Ryan O'Reilly had one of the best arcs from the main cast... the show is very underrated but it also didn't age the best in some areas. No one today would believe there aren't cameras in a maximum security prison and they published in SD with the 4:3 letterbox format which didn't age that well
He is who he is: a dopey tech dude who bought his hype. It’s the dumb a-holes who blindly trade in fantasy money who are to blame for this schitt show. Now all these anti-government libertarians are cramming into government courts for protection. It’s disgusting.
If he vanished and lived large with billions on a private island I would agree with you. Instead he lost everything, caught charges for everyone, and his mom will probably lose her house.
"... enough crimeing and torting to go around ..." I chuckled at that one. As lawyers, we always find a way to discover new verbs, but those were a couple of good ones hiding in plain sight.
Cleary this guy's biggest mistake was scamming the wrong people. If he'd just exploited the poor and vulnerable like every other Big Business, he'd be considered a modern success story.
@@ronblack7870 I mean OP might not be exploited by iPhone production but several people in the manufacturing process definitely are. Just off the top of my head the people mining the materials are definitely not being paid enough. I mean we live in a world where you can't eat M&Ms with guarantee that child slave labor wasn't involved in it's creation.
great video as usual! love the blend of education, humour and style :) humble suggestion: official subtitles on your videos? your witty phrasing often moves rather quickly, and it'd be great to support those with auditory comprehension difficulties (like myself). cheers either way!
Love how he literally pinned down the focal point in misleading investors via terms of service and then grilled sbf on intermingling funds all before we knew there was even a investigation
CZ is the man, but that single informal/indirect admission is at most the tiniest drop in the bucket the authorities have against SBF. It was a slam dunk in terms of public opinion but it doesn’t really compare to mountains of documents and collaborator testimony.
this man did literally everything in his power to go to jail, he admitted he committed crimes to anyone who would ask and fired every single lawyer who ever told him to keep his mouth shut and stop telling press about all the crimes he committed in every interview, it got to the point where even the journalists felt so bad they started prefacing questions with "you don't have to answer this" and he did anyway
@@artsyscrub3226 "That guy" which have 8 in Charisma, 4 in Intelligence, 10 luck, and 23 points on speech, shame he thought he had speech 100 and would be able to talk down the entirety of the legal system. This is an overly complicated Fallout joke, please laugh.
Multi-Billion, with a big ass b for it's over 20 billion valuation before like 8 billion was moved and anywhere form like 2-4 billion is "lost" somewhere
Facts, but even then, the guy that pulled out the bottom brick must have known what was up the whole time, but didn't do anything until SBF was going to mess with _his_ money (just through support for specific regulations)
True.. But No one could really deny that gullible Joes lost their savings to this fraud with so many influencers shilling it through their "not financial advice".
@@maryricketts7337 This is why you would not want to gamble pension money on stock markets. And certainly not in an entirely unregulated market made by a bunch of douchebags and yahoos. Poor or rich, it was the wrong decision and you need to own it.
I think it's absolutely hilarious how the various agencies fight over who gets to sue/prosecute the really juicy miscreant. Then they realize he is so bad that there is plenty of cake for everyone.
@Something-Something-Dark-Side What do you mean by "you snakes"? Does that mean Democrats? Are you saying it is sad when Democrats hold other Democrats accountable when they commit crimes??? NO THIS IS NOT SAD. IT IS CALLED JUSTICE. THIS IS HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO WORK. The fact that Republicans cover for the crimes of other Republicans is exactly why our country is so fcked up! Supporting criminals just because they have a certain letter by their name is knowingly aiding and abetting those criminals and helping them commit more crimes. It is also despicable. But let me guess, you voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, you think Biden stole the election, you think Jan 6th was caused by Antifa, and you bought one of those $100 NFT trading cards, right?
@@taylorlibby7642 I don’t think they knew it was happening and waited until it got bad. In fairness to the regulators, this is such a stupid crime (scheme couldn’t run like this in the long term, would inevitably blow up a criminal prosecutions). So I don’t think the regulators were expecting this.
is actually quite simple. They really did not try to hide the scam with accounting. The most complicated thing they did was the code and that is obvious.
Worked as a prosecutor in the 1970's and 80's. Handled hundreds of cases like this one. Obviously, cases I handled involved a lot less money. What happened is the company makes some bad investments, needs money, uses trust fund money thinking they can make the money back and no one will know. Entrepreneurs always think positively, they can correct the situation, given enough time. But, of course, what they're doing is illegal.
It's hilarious how these types hype themselves up as being so much smarter than everyone else, but when you catch them out on their wrongdoings, they're all like "well, I didn't really know what was going on, I'm just a poor innocent babe caught up in things I didn't understand".
It’s narcissism. People like these think they’re better (smarter) than everyone else, then when they’re in trouble they say it’s not their fault one way or the other. It may seem strange for a narcissist to admit to not being smart enough to do it, but it still beats them admitting that they failed. (And if they get away with that defense, well there’s another ego boost for them.)
Well... yeah, I mean why should they? If technically you break the rules but nobody loses their investment because you trade your way out of it (as unlikely as that is) of course nobody's going to press charges. Which seems appropriate to me? Law being ideally intended to protect & remedy against harm rather than just to exist for enforcing arbitrary rules?
@@ItWasSaucerShaped Well, buddy pal chum! Who do you think takes the hit when fraud is committed? The money's gotta come from somewhere, and if someone doesn't get their fair share...
My favorite part of this whole thing is how before the arrest he was just like “oopsie poopsie accidentally lost billion of other people’s dollars. My b”
Fun Fact: Bankmann derives from the German and actually means a Banker (someone who works at a bank) and Fried is an old German name meaning Peace(keeper) & Security. A Fried was a man who would walk along the town and ensure that everything is and stays peaceful. The Peacekeeper used to do rounds at night with a lantern and would also every full hour yell out the time, so that people would know what time it currently is. It was basically a guy who should warn the people if the city would be either attacked by foreign invaders or if for example two or more citizens had gotten into an argument or if something else is going on that disturbs the peace, like Prostitution in the streets and so on or even organize people, in case a fire broke out at night, since back at the day there wasn't the firefighters a thing yet in German towns as they are today and so the people would line up with buckets and water and throw it into the flames and hand the used bucket back in line so that they could be refilled with water, while new buckets had been coming in at the same time to get the fire under control. Basically a sort of Police and Watchman/Nightguard (but for a whole town rather then just one area/building) at the same time. So that some of his ancestors must had had those jobs working in Germany, since last names in Germany had been given by the job one did, like Bankmann or a Bäcker (which is someone working in a bakery) or Schuler, which often remembers one on someone who is a Schüler, a German word for someone going to school but actually Schuler is different in meaning (as you can notice it had an u and not an ü) and an old German word for the person who teaches and today gets called in German Lehrer (Teacher).
So basically his last name implies that he should’ve been the one to warn investors about people like SBF. (His ancestors must be rolling in their graves after all of this.)
Between FTX, Theranos, and others, it just blows my mind how easily VCs apparently drop millions of dollars on companies. It seems like if you have a good enough sales pitch, they will just ignore financial data (or lack thereof) and just blindly invest?? How is that possible?
If you take 20 startup companies and invest $1M in each, you can afford to lose 19 out of 20 investments if the 20th becomes a massively overvalued hype worth over a billion. That's how they reason. As another commenter posted, these people are mostly just gamblers.
The big VCs aren't evaluating the technical merit or potential profitability of the pitch. They are evaluating how readily they can package that investment for a 10x gain. They need a big idea that moves the needle in the billion dollar funds, not business ideas that will work or even be very profitable on a modest scale.
Theranos targeted these family run VC or investing firms who lack ability to do sophisticated DD and relied on big names board members without any medical laboratory or pharmaceutical expertise. Those with the expertise didn’t invest in them so clearly it was not hard to tell it was on a shaky ground.
Never have I been so entertained and informed by an attorney who’s hilarious, factually accurate AND makes some of the best content. Truth is power; especially when you can laugh about it. 😂
big words from a criminal bound to live in his mother's basement before these court dates. He, he does realize his existence is just writing memes on their own right now, right? His dismissive reaction to the court case and the interviews is giving plenty of things to work with as he's being sentenced at the end of this.
It really seems like he thought he was the smartest guy in the room, in every room. Like he was raised being told ‘be smarter than the people you’re dealing with’ kind of thing.... the fact he legit didn’t think he was going to jail is amazing
He’s clearly narcicistic so I guess it’s possible he may have believed he wasn’t going to jail. But I think it’s more likely he just didn’t want to say that he thought he was going than a real belief that he wasn’t. But if he did genuinely believe he wasn’t going then that is an incredible level of narcicism that is hard to get yourself to understand being possible.
Lol the only reason he is going to jail is because the government didn't get their cut and that's assuming the government can convict him. They really don't win these crimes as often as you'd think.
I'm always amazed that compared to pretty much any other crime, wire fraud is the one that ends up waking the hornets nest of federal law enforcement and sending it on the warpath. I hope everyone involved in FTX stays behind bars for a long, long time.
Federal law is supposed to be limited by the powers afforded to the federal government in the constitution (with everything else either being an individual right, or being subject to state law). The most standard way to get around this and keep the law from being struck down by the supreme court is to lean on the specific enumerated power of regulating interstate commerce (so-called the "commerce clause"). The supreme court _loves_ legal arguments that laws are valid under the commerce clause. So, in terms of jurisdiction (does the Fed have the power to prosecute in this case?), wire fraud is an absolute slam dunk. It's very unlikely (and difficult to show) that an electronic message never crossed state lines in the course of being transmitted or stored, and bam you instantly have interstate activity (even if the fraudster and the victim might be residents of the same state), meaning the Fed has jurisdiction. In terms of nailing the bad guys and/or filing subpoenas, it's just a fantastically applicable and easy route, so it gets used all the time. Well, at least that's my lay observation. I'm no expert.
@@Mr_Walleti have come to the realization that the federal government has one and only one power, to regulate interstate commerce. I mean, technically there's others, like collecting taxes and providing for national defense, but most of the laws that we think of or even want come down to needing to fit within the commerce clause framework.
His parents must be real proud of the son they raised and the values they instilled in him. Not beyond the realm of possibilities that it was all under their guidance/consultation.
Its likely they knew about/were complicit in some of the crimes. Both of his parents spent time in the Bahamas "Advising" for FTX and hes given them houses and other assets bought with FTX client's money.
I would love to hear your take on the legal issues around Hasbero trying to deauthorize the Open Gaming License and replace it with something that would allow them to steal other people's work?
I'm not so sure. If he had a massive stockpile of money stashed, wouldn't he be sitting by a pool in Cuba (or any other country without extradition protocols) sipping rum cocktails and smoking hand made cigars? I know I would.
@@davidbrayshaw3529 No, because it's too soon. If he was found, people would question how he had the money to live such a lavish lifestyle with only 100k. Then he'd get investigated and the money would probably be found, incriminating his parents as well. My assumption is that he gave his parents a whole bunch of money to keep safe while he's in jail, banking on them not getting investigated too closely and being able to use his connections to get out early.
@@pravus9769 That's the whole point of going somewhere where there is no extradition treaty. You can smile for the paparazzi's cameras, and you can sit at the bar with a dozen FBI agents, and you can't be brought to justice. The time to go was weeks ago and he was literally a Cessna ride away from freedom. If he gave his parents money to ensure his safety in jail, his ignorance is impressive. It's impressive enough that he might also believe that the powers that be aren't investigating the financial transactions of his extended family and friends.
I agree - blowing through 8 billion takes some doing, and wasn‘t there a mysterious ‚hack‘ shortly after the bankruptcy? That may or may not have been SBF? I‘m sure he has millions stashed somewhere… but I‘m not sure I‘d give up my 30s, 40s, and most of my 50s in prison no matter how much money was waiting for me afterwards.
"Alameda didn't segregate those customer funds." Twenty years of investment bank compliance training over >here< and this is rule #1. I'm screaming inside. And a bit outside, too.
I suppose when one is doing fraud, that doesn’t really matter: either you keep them segregated, making your unlawful activities easier to trace; or you don’t, making your records damning evidence about your intent on fraud by keeping your unlawful activities hidden.
Hey, my LegalEagle-friend, Would you consider covering some Wizards of the Coast - OGL controversy? I love your content, but I also love D&D. If I can somehow get you to make a video on this, my month's been a good month.
Hearing about all this SBF stuff right after watching Glass Onion hits home how accurate that film’s criticism of new money tech billionaires & how stupid they really are is.
it's clear that the character of Ed Norton was in part based on Elon Musk. Especially the beginning where he had just sent notes to scientists that said "invent xyz" or the part where Norton does his disruption speech. It's so on point.
Even though i would have been furious if this _hadn't_ been the outcome, it still feels good to hear the news and be reassured humanity hasnt lost all sense of order when it comes to financial crime & punishment
Not sure how to tell you this, but he's currently relaxing at his parents. Not in a cold jail cell. I wouldn't hold your breath if I was you. It isn't just vast wealth but also the very, very influential people he knows in politics, media, and his parent's know judges and other legal big hitters.
@@tonebonetones You realise he's at home with his parents now because he's awaiting trial, right? These things aren't resolved overnight and when he goes to court, if he's found guilty and gets sentenced to jail, then he's going to jail. Just like Skilling did for 14yrs (reduced from 24) for the Enron fraud. Besides, that's not my point. Im saying it's just nice that given the alternative of SBF not even having to go to court, i think it's nice to see when the legal system does something that it's supposed to do because it doesn't always...
Fun fact: one of the 2010 changes to Frank-Dodd is called the "Eddie Murphy" rule. Because it closes a loophole that was used in the movie Trading Places in 1983 (when they sabotage the frozen orange juice futures market).
I lost nothing In this, if sbf gets anything but the maximum sentence pluse no special treatment it will be travesty.. So sorry for all the unnamed people that lost so much..
You actually lost something Every single criminal activities like this limits your travelling freedom , your scope of sending money out of your country Slows your airport boarding and decreases the value of the currency ... Not a direct financial loss but hassle and waste of time
I don't condone innocent people should lost their money, but the big corpo promoting this deserves to be jailed too for promoting it WITHOUT due diligence and acting as "Non Financial Advice" to invest.
@@swans184 it's even worst because he made good money legally in the beginning. He could have lived a wonderful rich life but just kept commiting crimes.
Hey! I'm just wondering if the Wiizards of the coast OGL would be something worth analyzing. I like how you break things down and would love to hear your take on it.
I'm at that age, when I look at people younger than me and think, "This guy just got convicted of multi-billion dollar fraud. What am I doing with my life?"
An aquaintance of mine got caught being a multimillion dollar cyberdruglord... 6 years ago. I'm 31, yea it sucks but at least we arent in jail for this shit.
I hate break this to you, *but billion dollar fraud is, like, really bad and no one should be envious of someone of doing it.* Pissing off rich people is one of the worst crimes on the planet, in fact.
@@Delightfully_Witchy Assuming even a fraction of it is hard working peoples money. That's still thousands of families getting less food/heating etc. The human cost of a billion dollars, even if only a fraction of it is 'hard earned money' is pretty remarkable. On the level of a few lifetimes of work.
Hey @LegalEagle, Can you do a video around the legal issues surrounding Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast and the current speculation about ending the OGL 1.0a? I feel like this would be a wonderful topic! There’s a lot people don’t know or don’t understand and a lawyer’s breakdown of the issues at hand would be really insightful for the Dungeons and Dragons community!
@@rangergxi for the government it was fast. They needed solid evidence of his many frauds, not just "this is sus, that it sus, wow there that's mega sus". They need to have a solid case because he can't be tried twice for this. Have to get it right the first time.
I would really like to see you cover some instances in court where the judge allowed some strange behavior or tactics. I just watched your react to liar liar and it got me thinking. I bet there are some pretty interesting cases where a judge allowed a normally not allowed act with some interesting results. One example I thought of was when Michael Jackson defended a song of his as being original by basically beatboxing in court.
I've seen some people comment that "gosh they look so young, they couldn't have possibly known what they were doing". F that! These are highly educated people and they clearly knew what they were doing coupled with the arrogance they wouldn't get caught.
Putting all your problema in a single "private" account and then kind of forgetting about it is the equivalent of sweeping ashes under the rug when the entire building is on fire
@@rangergxi they were also donating to the republican party, man thought he'd bought out both sides and didn't realize the justice department doesn't actually care about party affiliation.
I think he looked at what he did as more of an exercise of how far he could take it before he got caught and was like "oh well, I tried". After that, he embraced a self serving sense of entitlement and using his Dream Board thought he could talk his way out of it using his "I'm just a dude" persona that the media and investors embraced. He had to know that he was going to eventually get caught. I think the game for him was trying to get ahead of it far enough so that when he did get caught, he'd had enough money stashed waiting for him after he got out of prison. Oh, and he probably has psychotic tendencies to boot.
I love that all of SBF's defenses when he's questioned boil down to "I wasn't there, and if I was there I was asleep" I'm sure that the case will go sooooo well for him. /s
Well it's always worked for Trump - "I don't know that guy, I get photographed with a lot of people", "I didn't say what my Tweet said", "that interview where I said things was fake news, it's a witch hunt!". 'Billionaires' with bad memories.
@@rockdinosaur8619 the difference is that Trump is a useful fraud and SBF is not... anymore. Powerful people have kept Trump free so they can keep making millions off him and using his name to get elected. SBF has only ever lost billions of dollars, so those people have no reason to support or help him because he is of no financial or political value to them. Not to mention all the reputations he hurt by getting super wealthy people to invest and be spokespeople.
@@xboy4331 I agree with most of what you said except not sure how useful Trump ever was - certainly didn't help in the last 2 midterms. Looks mostly useless and destructive to me.
i would love for you to discuss the wizards of the coast/hasboro open game license legality and the effects it could have on the ttrpg industry if you are looking for something interesting to do a video on
I just imagine the investigators looking at the Wirefraud chat and saying to each other; "This is a joke, right? There's no way that there's actual evidence in here. But lets just check anyway to be thorough."
I'm still trying to figure out what the hell his parents were expecting with that one. Like...What exactly was the PLAN exactly? What did they think was going to happen?
Yes, I think we can all agree that jails should be able to meet people’s dietary restriction needs - such as lactose intolerance, or celiac disease. But I do think that a lot of prison food has been linked to causing diabetes and/or not been suitable for those already suffering from it, and there was a law change a couple years back which bars families from providing fresh fruits and vegetables to inmates. (Which would be at no cost to the prison besides the manpower required to check packages.) So vegan options are the least of prison food concerns. Now, I am not trying to downplay the severity of other people's situations, but I do think that we should recognize that dietary CHOICES are at a different level entirely from medically necessary alterations. As well as the fact that many white collar, white, and rich criminals often get special treatment and preferential housing. So if he DID have his food requests granted where so many others are denied it would demonstrate that all the more.
Its going to be a fun trial bc he gave interviews during all of this. If it becomes a public trial it is going to be fun to rewatch his interviews with Coffeezilla
Yes, I couldn't understand why he didn't just disappear with whatever loot he managed to siphon off before the sh*t hit the fan. Or at least stopped talking to the press. Instead the guy kept on incriminating himself in public.
@@nataschavisser573 he was high on clout. Imagine if you were a serial killer, got caught and instead of getting arrested, you get a louis vuitton partnership and asked to guest star in 5 up coming block busters. Your not gunna just disappear, even if you should
In general rich people invest in safe and regulated assets and markets while poor people put it all on black and spin the wheel in an illegal house. You tell me which group is going to get a better defense and protection.
Exactly: Donny Dumpster steals from the poor, and is still playing golf. Sam Banking-Fraud steals from the rich, and is in home detention awaiting trial. Kindly explain that, Merlin Garlic.
I'd love to see a video on the Coffeezilla/Logan Paul issues and potential lawsuit. Particularly the issue of recording phone calls in one-party consent vs two-party consent states.
This most upsetting thing about stuff like this is that you just know in the end, all these people will be sitting on a beach in their old age as multi-millionaires, still richer than the rest of us with just a fraction of their ill-gotten gains left.
I'd rather be dead broke (or, frankly, just dead) than spending decades of my life in an American prison, to have access to a lot of money when I'm 60 or 70.
Bankman-Fried’s biggest mistake is he failed to document the receipts of his agreements between him and political figures he “donated” to support their campaigns and “personal projects.”
The fact that he has no money himself now suggest he is rather a true believer. He ripped off investors and basically gave all the money away. In a sense he could be viewed as a Robin Hood.
@@alecwhatshisname5170 thank you. I'm 💯 sure he has hidden money in off shore accounts. All rich people do because they want an escape plan. They don't want to pay taxes and they want to be able to live comfortably in a country with no extradition.
I'm sure he doesn't need receipts. Now a days allegations are just like getting convicted. This guy aint stupid ( a theft but not stupid ). If he has info he will talk or he will be found dead in his cell and a black Correctional officer will get blamed. If this was Russia he would have fell out of a hotel.
Honestly, I think it was paid for by some leftover stolen money he has. SBF lied about so much, there isn’t a chance in hell I believe him about “only” having $100k. It serious pissed me off that he said that sum as if it were $5, not the life changing amount it would be for the majority of people right now. I’d do SO much to have that money right now.
It's not true. SBF was given bail for nothing more than surety against his parents' home, which is worth only 4 million dollars. There's no way a normal person would have been allowed to bail out with so little collateral vs. their bail amount. Yet another example of special treatment for SBF.
"The Justice Department and Mr. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers ultimately negotiated over how to extradite him in exchange for letting him stay out of prison without posting a huge bond, given his lack of funds. So while prosecutors could herald a $250 million bail, one of the highest in history, he was ultimately released on something closer to his own recognizance, which is also a standard arrangement. Prosecutors did demand that his parents post their home as collateral and co-sign the bail deal, expecting that Mr. Bankman-Fried wouldn’t want to hurt his family."
@LegalEagle With the new D&D license change, do Wizards of the Coast have any legs to stand on? Would the derivative works of custom campaigns, stories, and maps fall under fair use for being transformative? Is 20-25% royalties excessive for 3/4 million sales excessive/ is there a precedent? I would really like to know your prospective on this topic.
"Weird trick your accountant doesn't want you to know about." 🤣 I've gone back to school for accounting and yeah, if his balance sheets were my term assignments back in first semester, I would have received a failing grade.
It's bad that SBF "doesn't understand" what went wrong. It's worse that SBF won't admit there was no reasonable way to expect his "system" not to go wrong.
@@kourii You're absolutely right and I should've specified that. To all the rest of you that replied to the original comment, many thanks. All the suggested (and hopefully enforceable?) penalties sound fantastic. And appropriate! 🤞🤞🤞
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@@Gg-ij7li that wasn't the question.
SBF is yet another fraudster in the fiat movement.
no
Lol. No. Scammers gonna scam.
Nope. I don't have that kind of money to throw away...
Shit actually went from “okay who’s gonna prosecute this guy?” to “This guy actually committed so much crime we’re gonna need more hands on deck”
"Phew, at least the beaurocratic red tape of legal jurisdiction will make it take months for them to figure out who's going to prosecute me. I've still got plenty of ti-"
"Yeah so we're all going to prosecute you."
"....WHAT!?"
@@cksupreme That moment when you committed enough fraud for every prosecutor within a 5 mile radius to have something to sink their teeth into
@@גידיגדעון Legal aggro
@@גידיגדעון [YOU HAVE ALERTED THE HORDE]
“We’re gonna need a bigger legal team”
Watching Coffeezilla expose/explain a fraud then Legal Eagle explain the legal proceedings is one of my favourite pastimes
Touch grass?
@@danhobart4009 What's "grass"?
@@MezephelesArt No such thing. Don't worry about it.
Give me the recognition I deserve.
This has been definitely one of the best arcs this year, after the Amber v Johnny arc
Imagine giving your money to a company whose CEO's name is just a couple of typos away from "banking fraud."
That’s five very specific typos
It probably doesn't make for a good business card.
Better than "Made-off"
@@TheShadowcreator I've laughed at that name coincidence for YEARS
SBF - Serious Banking Fraud
The fact that a judge wound up revoking SBF's bail and putting him back in jail for witness tampering is *really* damning for his case, if all those witness testimonies aren't damning enough.
🙋🏻♀️I came looking for this comment, I Just heard about this! Absolutely crazy! Is he in Rikers Island in NYC?
the jury really won't like hearing that for sure
And with a case like this you absolutely NEED the jury on your side
This entire saga has really made me understand why so many companies and people just go radio silent after a scandal. This dude really, really did himself zero favors by speaking so often and publicly after the fecal matter struck the atmospheric circulation device
Yep, exactly. There's a reason the miranda rights have a line stating "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law". Every time the dude gave an interview, he just gave the case being built against him much more fodder.
And those interviews -- especially the ones with Coffeezilla I think -- are what prompted Ellison and Wang to sing like Mariah and to do it QUICKLY. He was obviously going to start blaming them and others, so an escape route had to be built and fast.
Is the first thing that competent lawyers they you to do
Money makes many folks blind to reality. His interview with Stephanopoulos was incriminating AF.
Ofc he’s talked his way out of everything up til this point, he thought he was smarter than the feds. If you’re guilty, don’t talk at all. Pretty basic criminal tenet. I genuinely don’t believe he understood the gravity of what he was being accused of. Good for the feds, bad for his legal team lol
are lawyers allowed to laugh in disbelief at just how guilty their client is? i could never be a defense lawyer...
12:41
Lawyer: "Your honor... Do you really think my client has enough gray matter to be responsible for such an elaborate fraud?"
Judge: "Holy shit. Thank you, I'm gonna take that into consideration!"
They could just think he’s an idiot who didn’t intentionally scam…
Your duty is not to try getting them off. Only to ensure they are getting a fair trial and that all evidence towards their innocence is properly presented to judges and jurors.
phoenix wright would find a way.
@@Andreamom001 that angle will be tough with his two most culpable confidants 100% spilling their guts. The scrappy idiot in over their head angle only works if there seems to be no clear answer, which his partners are providing extensive details and evidence of.
5-10 years from now this guy is gonna have a life story movie made about him that will grossly gloss over the damage he has done.
Or maybe Adam McKay will give SBF a proper stripdown and highlight all the terrible shit he did, in the style of The Big Short (even if that wasn't an entirely faithful representation of reality, it got the point across).
he's probably already talking to multiple movie studios/streaming services to set up a deal.
I hope Son of Sam laws syphon out every cent of profit for SBF when this happens
So like The Wolf of Wall Street?
Like the wolf of wall street I agree
The whole SBF/FTX situation has me excited for my white collared crimes class this winter. Thanks for the breakdown!
Good luck on your studies! Don't smoke weed
So are you writing that you belong to a particular class of criminals?
He got released, 250 mil bail, house arrest.
@Matt DK then you're lucky and probably still limiting your peak potential
@Matt DK Maybe not. I'm assuming you're a daily smoker; generally, people who smoke weed habitually haven't had the best luck in life. You are lucky to have a substance dependence and still be doing that well in school - that's what I meant. If you're still achieving a high level of academic success, it is because you already had a high baseline of performance. Just imagine what you could accomplish if you were using 100% of your cognitive faculties
How many kinds of fraud do you want to be accused of committing?
SBF: *Yes.*
🤣🤣
That's about right...
LOL!
How many? I'll let your comment likes decide that.
And how many actual regulations are there for his company? none
@@scorch4299 It’s like political corruption. Nothing can be done about it when it’s actually legal.
(Other than consistently voting out corrupt politicians but… yeah that’s not happening either.)
"after the meeting, most of the staff resigned"
I can only imagine the shock of those employees and the subsequent realization that their job prospects in tech and finance are now incinerated.
Its almost like that Trump lady saying "this made us all unemployable".
@@kittyspam2146 which surprisingly is not true as criminals will always seek out other criminals in order to do more shady crap so I'm sure their resumes will be as accepted as every other corrupt individual in both government and business
Hope that is also the case with Tech former employees who decided to do the bidding of a agenda "rotten to the core". An agenda we taxpayers are funding day in and day out. Did any of those mutants get fired ? The Congressional representatives SACKED ? Our system is not handling the situation.
When lying on your resume turns form an option to a necessity
@@jahleajahlou8588 what are you talking about?
I like how the potential jurisdictional tension was resolved.
"Will this be an FTC case or a SEC case?"
"Why not both?"
FTC + SEC = FTSECC: Federal Trade, Securities, and Exchange Commission Commission.
Por que no las dos?
@Ben Rider Both? Both. Both is good.
@@ARCCommanderOrar Kitten is kitten, kitten is good.
10 months later, I can confirm - you were right sir!
I truly hope SBF's father, Joseph Bankman, makes his Stanford ethics class publicly available online when he teaches it again.
I bet his introduction is ethics only matters if you get caught.
That is wild! 😄
@@meh4062 That's how it is with everyone.
Stanford has no ethics so why do they have an ethics class?
The ethical risk of having progeny?
I hope that the feds are looking into his parents. They were both heavily involved in FTX and its hard to imagine they had no idea what he was up to especially considering they are both compliance lawyers.
They're not actually compliance lawyers, they're professors. This has been repeated all over the place, starting with I think FTX shill Kevin O'Leary, but it's not true. But even if it was, they're complicit with those gonzo expensive properties he bought them with stolen customer funds.
Not only that, his dad was cc'd on an email to Bahamian officials about giving people in the Bahamas preference for withdrawing funds
Wow, they should have taught him better. Then again, maybe they did, and a decent chunk of that money is well hidden.
@@amarketing8749 That's why they need to investigate the heck out the Parents.
I believe some (if not a lot) of that Money is squirreled away somewhere.
They won’t investigate the parents…what rock are living under? There’s no law and order in this country anymore. The only reason this guy got caught is because how much he ducked up. That sounds mean…I’m sorry if I sound mean.
the chatroom was actually called... wire fraud?! that would be like painting "getaway vehicle" on the side of your car before robbing a bank... or labling a safe "big metal room with all the stolen money in it" or naming your front business the "money laundering store"
Maybe it will be part of his defense. He definitely informed his victims that this is a fraud. So, he didn't lie to them.
@@TheBiggreenpig lol😊
I want to own a laundrette and call it that now. I just, yeh, I know I know not a great idea but what a great name!
To be fair... we aren't dealing with geniuses here.
Err, ever heard of hiding in plain sight?
I'm kidding.
Every time he tweets, he makes it a little bit worse. Somewhere out there is a very tired lawyer considering trying to get their own client's twitter account banned
Edit: Now that I think about it, this comment could apply to like 80% of Legal Eagle's videos
"Everything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law."
Do you mean Trump specifically or more people?
@@jupiterjones3789
Trump definitely had lawyers crying with his tweets but hes not the only one with terrible tweets when in trouble theres a few people usually youtubers that get chatty when in trouble
Reminds me of a classic prison conversation from Oz:
"That is an amazing list of crimes."
"What can I say? I really applied myself."
Ryan O'Reilly was a great character
@@bucksatanII Ryan O'Reilly had one of the best arcs from the main cast... the show is very underrated but it also didn't age the best in some areas. No one today would believe there aren't cameras in a maximum security prison and they published in SD with the 4:3 letterbox format which didn't age that well
It really builds confidence when a CEO refers to company funds as "a bunch of money." No accounting skills there, for sure.
Look, he's a mature kid
SBF is going to be tortured in prison so that no other rich kids can scam and screw over people (rich people)
And FTX has no accounting department. I wonder how the auditors did their audit of a company that has no accounting department.
He is who he is: a dopey tech dude who bought his hype. It’s the dumb a-holes who blindly trade in fantasy money who are to blame for this schitt show. Now all these anti-government libertarians are cramming into government courts for protection. It’s disgusting.
he's playing dumb he knew exactly what was going on
I have a phrase that applies here: "If you are going to do something wrong, you might as well do it right."
SBF took that phrase, really ran with it.
If he vanished and lived large with billions on a private island I would agree with you. Instead he lost everything, caught charges for everyone, and his mom will probably lose her house.
"If you are going to commit wire fraud, create an account called 'wire fraud'" 🤣🤣
My version of it is "If you are going to be stupid, you better be smart about it. "
Ran with it head first. Into a wall. With his shoe laces tied together. Because SBF is an idiot who can't even take a shit right.
@@mr.wookiesack So? Don't co-sign idiots, especially their son.
"... enough crimeing and torting to go around ..." I chuckled at that one. As lawyers, we always find a way to discover new verbs, but those were a couple of good ones hiding in plain sight.
Frankly at the part where they literally had a group chat named "wirefraud" I would've declared it lazy writing except it actually happened.
Cleary this guy's biggest mistake was scamming the wrong people. If he'd just exploited the poor and vulnerable like every other Big Business, he'd be considered a modern success story.
yah the iphone should be free . you are really exploited by business selling all the fantastic stuff everyone wants. /s
@@ronblack7870 I am not sure how you got free iPhones out of this discussion.
@@jefflittle8913 "Communism is when no iphone"
@@ronblack7870I think she believes the world owes her a living. 52 ppl liked it.
@@ronblack7870 I mean OP might not be exploited by iPhone production but several people in the manufacturing process definitely are. Just off the top of my head the people mining the materials are definitely not being paid enough. I mean we live in a world where you can't eat M&Ms with guarantee that child slave labor wasn't involved in it's creation.
Scam bankrupt fraud is still the best nickname
I like bankrun fraud better.
Soon to be Butt F***ed, though i doubt he will end up in jail.
theres a fried bank man, his name is sam bankman-fried
@es e LMAO
There are Frieds on my genealogical tree, and I always wondered where they got that pronunciation from.
great video as usual! love the blend of education, humour and style :) humble suggestion: official subtitles on your videos? your witty phrasing often moves rather quickly, and it'd be great to support those with auditory comprehension difficulties (like myself). cheers either way!
Don't forget those of us watching in a noisy environment, such as during NYE fireworks.
His language can also be quite hard to understand for ppl whose native language isn't English lol
@@jsas2047 I'm a native Engliah speaker with no hearing difficulties and sometimes he still speaks too fast for me lol
I agree... I personally turn down the speed to 75% and it helps :)
I can't believe that somebody from the group chat "wirefraud" would get indicted for wire fraud, like what a gosh-dang coincidence 🙃
Thankfully I'm only involved in a group chat named "mass murder"... ;o)
Classic Sam Bankfraud-Man
I love that.
Thanks you CoffeeZilla for getting SBF to finally admit to fraud!! Merry Christmas 🎄
I hope they use his interviews. SBF's lawyers will try everything to keep them out. I hope they can't.
Love how he literally pinned down the focal point in misleading investors via terms of service and then grilled sbf on intermingling funds all before we knew there was even a investigation
CZ is the man, but that single informal/indirect admission is at most the tiniest drop in the bucket the authorities have against SBF. It was a slam dunk in terms of public opinion but it doesn’t really compare to mountains of documents and collaborator testimony.
@@LAK_770 and admission is still an admission I take that as a win
if its public they will use it
this man did literally everything in his power to go to jail, he admitted he committed crimes to anyone who would ask and fired every single lawyer who ever told him to keep his mouth shut and stop telling press about all the crimes he committed in every interview, it got to the point where even the journalists felt so bad they started prefacing questions with "you don't have to answer this" and he did anyway
When the journalists start reading you Miranda rights.
Bro thought he was him.
@@godsonalvarado6656 What?
@@briancrawford8751
SBF thought he was "that guy" and thought he could simply talk his way out of charges
You can tell how well that went.....
@@artsyscrub3226 "That guy" which have 8 in Charisma, 4 in Intelligence, 10 luck, and 23 points on speech, shame he thought he had speech 100 and would be able to talk down the entirety of the legal system.
This is an overly complicated Fallout joke, please laugh.
Imagine starting a multimillion dollar "business" and then having to live at home with mommy and daddy awaiting your jail time
sadly he will never serve jail time. he will be pardon by the US gov. hope I'm wrong.
That's just what it's like being a millenial
And the fact that they called the prison to request vegan meals is so telling. These people coddled and enabled him his entire life.
Little hat scammers
Multi-Billion, with a big ass b for it's over 20 billion valuation before like 8 billion was moved and anywhere form like 2-4 billion is "lost" somewhere
Funny all the things that can happen so quickly when you're caught stealing from the rich
Facts, but even then, the guy that pulled out the bottom brick must have known what was up the whole time, but didn't do anything until SBF was going to mess with _his_ money (just through support for specific regulations)
True.. But No one could really deny that gullible Joes lost their savings to this fraud with so many influencers shilling it through their "not financial advice".
But yeah.. idt that smaller investors will recover their funds from the output of this case. Not after the bigger ones at least.
Tell that to the pensioners whose retirement is now gone. He was stealing from the poor and funneling to the rich politicians.
@@maryricketts7337 This is why you would not want to gamble pension money on stock markets. And certainly not in an entirely unregulated market made by a bunch of douchebags and yahoos. Poor or rich, it was the wrong decision and you need to own it.
I think it's absolutely hilarious how the various agencies fight over who gets to sue/prosecute the really juicy miscreant. Then they realize he is so bad that there is plenty of cake for everyone.
@Something Something Dark Side Everyone that doesn't agree with you is just a "snake", aren't they ;)
I think It's absolutely apalling how it was allowed to continue until it got egregious enough to be sexy to those various agencies.
@Something Something Dark Side Ah, this comment tells us everything we need to know, I think.
Thanks.
@Something-Something-Dark-Side What do you mean by "you snakes"? Does that mean Democrats? Are you saying it is sad when Democrats hold other Democrats accountable when they commit crimes???
NO THIS IS NOT SAD. IT IS CALLED JUSTICE. THIS IS HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO WORK.
The fact that Republicans cover for the crimes of other Republicans is exactly why our country is so fcked up! Supporting criminals just because they have a certain letter by their name is knowingly aiding and abetting those criminals and helping them commit more crimes. It is also despicable.
But let me guess, you voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, you think Biden stole the election, you think Jan 6th was caused by Antifa, and you bought one of those $100 NFT trading cards, right?
@@taylorlibby7642 I don’t think they knew it was happening and waited until it got bad. In fairness to the regulators, this is such a stupid crime (scheme couldn’t run like this in the long term, would inevitably blow up a criminal prosecutions). So I don’t think the regulators were expecting this.
I pity the legal teams who have to explain the FTX mess in a way a jury can understand
Makes me really hope that prosecutors use LegalEagle and Coffeezilla vids as evidence, they're much easier to follow than the usual jargon
It will be easy, you hold up a photo of Madeoff = FTX meme style.
Job done
Maybe it's like the books from Trump staffers: another "I worked for this person and survived!" tale to sell.
Not complicated at all, really. SBF took his customers' money and gambled it into oblivion. It's really not complicated at all.
is actually quite simple. They really did not try to hide the scam with accounting. The most complicated thing they did was the code and that is obvious.
Worked as a prosecutor in the 1970's and 80's. Handled hundreds of cases like this one. Obviously, cases I handled involved a lot less money. What happened is the company makes some bad investments, needs money, uses trust fund money thinking they can make the money back and no one will know. Entrepreneurs always think positively, they can correct the situation, given enough time. But, of course, what they're doing is illegal.
It's hilarious how these types hype themselves up as being so much smarter than everyone else, but when you catch them out on their wrongdoings, they're all like "well, I didn't really know what was going on, I'm just a poor innocent babe caught up in things I didn't understand".
Agreed. Sounds similar to the words of an orange baboon.
True true true
It’s narcissism.
People like these think they’re better (smarter) than everyone else, then when they’re in trouble they say it’s not their fault one way or the other.
It may seem strange for a narcissist to admit to not being smart enough to do it, but it still beats them admitting that they failed. (And if they get away with that defense, well there’s another ego boost for them.)
🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
Well, whatever's convenient amirite? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Lesson learned: keep fraud below the level that causes your company to collapse and noone apparently cares
Well... yeah, I mean why should they? If technically you break the rules but nobody loses their investment because you trade your way out of it (as unlikely as that is) of course nobody's going to press charges. Which seems appropriate to me? Law being ideally intended to protect & remedy against harm rather than just to exist for enforcing arbitrary rules?
@@ItWasSaucerShaped Well, buddy pal chum!
Who do you think takes the hit when fraud is committed?
The money's gotta come from somewhere, and if someone doesn't get their fair share...
Truth. If the Ponzi Scam never runs out of victims it never collapses and no one goes to jail.
Kind of like how freeclimbing skyscrapers is totally fine as long as you don't fall.
My favorite part of this whole thing is how before the arrest he was just like “oopsie poopsie accidentally lost billion of other people’s dollars. My b”
Lmao
Requesting clarification of 12:15 can financial institutions make false claims to customers? Was this only a problem because he lied to investors?
Fun Fact:
Bankmann derives from the German and actually means a Banker (someone who works at a bank) and Fried is an old German name meaning Peace(keeper) & Security.
A Fried was a man who would walk along the town and ensure that everything is and stays peaceful. The Peacekeeper used to do rounds at night with a lantern and would also every full hour yell out the time, so that people would know what time it currently is.
It was basically a guy who should warn the people if the city would be either attacked by foreign invaders or if for example two or more citizens had gotten into an argument or if something else is going on that disturbs the peace, like Prostitution in the streets and so on or even organize people, in case a fire broke out at night, since back at the day there wasn't the firefighters a thing yet in German towns as they are today and so the people would line up with buckets and water and throw it into the flames and hand the used bucket back in line so that they could be refilled with water, while new buckets had been coming in at the same time to get the fire under control.
Basically a sort of Police and Watchman/Nightguard (but for a whole town rather then just one area/building) at the same time. So that some of his ancestors must had had those jobs working in Germany, since last names in Germany had been given by the job one did, like Bankmann or a Bäcker (which is someone working in a bakery) or Schuler, which often remembers one on someone who is a Schüler, a German word for someone going to school but actually Schuler is different in meaning (as you can notice it had an u and not an ü) and an old German word for the person who teaches and today gets called in German Lehrer (Teacher).
So basically his last name implies that he should’ve been the one to warn investors about people like SBF. (His ancestors must be rolling in their graves after all of this.)
That's interesting. He turned out to be the opposite of what one would expect from such a family history.
It is also a Jewish name. Very popular from those times. Bankmann, Goldmann, etc..
This is so long and I don't understand why it's on here
Interesting. I love learning this kind of thing
CFTC: You had a group chat named Wire Fraud.
SBF: Yeah but it wasn’t for committing Wire Fraud. That was gonna be the name of our new rap group.
It was to discuss your allegation of wire fraud, not to plan or commit any such crime.
Honestly, Wire Fraud is not the worst imaginable name for a rap group.
Between FTX, Theranos, and others, it just blows my mind how easily VCs apparently drop millions of dollars on companies. It seems like if you have a good enough sales pitch, they will just ignore financial data (or lack thereof) and just blindly invest?? How is that possible?
Gambling
These aren't investors, these are gambling addicts.
If you take 20 startup companies and invest $1M in each, you can afford to lose 19 out of 20 investments if the 20th becomes a massively overvalued hype worth over a billion. That's how they reason.
As another commenter posted, these people are mostly just gamblers.
The big VCs aren't evaluating the technical merit or potential profitability of the pitch.
They are evaluating how readily they can package that investment for a 10x gain. They need a big idea that moves the needle in the billion dollar funds, not business ideas that will work or even be very profitable on a modest scale.
The point is valid.
Theranos targeted these family run VC or investing firms who lack ability to do sophisticated DD and relied on big names board members without any medical laboratory or pharmaceutical expertise. Those with the expertise didn’t invest in them so clearly it was not hard to tell it was on a shaky ground.
I love the SBF asked for vegan meals to transition to the meal prep company add. Amazing.
I could imagine SBF being excluded from a wirefraud chat group if it's people panicking about how SBF is taking them all to jail
Good point.
They had a secret chat called "Wirefraud" 😂 I actually burst out laughing at that part
Never have I been so entertained and informed by an attorney who’s hilarious, factually accurate AND makes some of the best content. Truth is power; especially when you can laugh about it. 😂
Takeaway: If you are going to commit wire fraud, it is probably best NOT to start up an online chat room called "Wirefraud".
Did he actually do that?
Archer said it first: "Lesson one, never leave a paper trail"
That "classic pisces" took me out lmaoo 😂
I feel attacked. :)
@@Bill_Garthright me too! 😆
Totally. So true. I love this Saggittarius. 😁
...heyyyyyyy... I'm a Pisces... only thing is I'm smart enough to not be a criminal cuz I'm too damn stupid to be a good one...
It's Taurus behavior! Not pisces. 😜
Not even 30 seconds in and SBF really said "i'm real happy for you and your little court dates but I have an interview tour to do"
big words from a criminal bound to live in his mother's basement before these court dates.
He, he does realize his existence is just writing memes on their own right now, right? His dismissive reaction to the court case and the interviews is giving plenty of things to work with as he's being sentenced at the end of this.
Congress is not a court
While being bad at LoL too.
How to get away with wire fraud step -100:
Do not, under any circumstances, make a group chat called “wire fraud” with your co-conspirators.
It really seems like he thought he was the smartest guy in the room, in every room. Like he was raised being told ‘be smarter than the people you’re dealing with’ kind of thing.... the fact he legit didn’t think he was going to jail is amazing
He’s clearly narcicistic so I guess it’s possible he may have believed he wasn’t going to jail. But I think it’s more likely he just didn’t want to say that he thought he was going than a real belief that he wasn’t. But if he did genuinely believe he wasn’t going then that is an incredible level of narcicism that is hard to get yourself to understand being possible.
He was smart, he just got caught.
@@justforrow ngl, i don't know any real smart (in the sense of genius/high iq) person irl, that play league of legends.
Lol the only reason he is going to jail is because the government didn't get their cut and that's assuming the government can convict him. They really don't win these crimes as often as you'd think.
@@justforrow He was not smart.
I'm always amazed that compared to pretty much any other crime, wire fraud is the one that ends up waking the hornets nest of federal law enforcement and sending it on the warpath. I hope everyone involved in FTX stays behind bars for a long, long time.
Federal law is supposed to be limited by the powers afforded to the federal government in the constitution (with everything else either being an individual right, or being subject to state law). The most standard way to get around this and keep the law from being struck down by the supreme court is to lean on the specific enumerated power of regulating interstate commerce (so-called the "commerce clause"). The supreme court _loves_ legal arguments that laws are valid under the commerce clause.
So, in terms of jurisdiction (does the Fed have the power to prosecute in this case?), wire fraud is an absolute slam dunk. It's very unlikely (and difficult to show) that an electronic message never crossed state lines in the course of being transmitted or stored, and bam you instantly have interstate activity (even if the fraudster and the victim might be residents of the same state), meaning the Fed has jurisdiction. In terms of nailing the bad guys and/or filing subpoenas, it's just a fantastically applicable and easy route, so it gets used all the time.
Well, at least that's my lay observation. I'm no expert.
Not gonna happen
@@Mr_Walleti have come to the realization that the federal government has one and only one power, to regulate interstate commerce.
I mean, technically there's others, like collecting taxes and providing for national defense, but most of the laws that we think of or even want come down to needing to fit within the commerce clause framework.
His parents must be real proud of the son they raised and the values they instilled in him. Not beyond the realm of possibilities that it was all under their guidance/consultation.
Rich people have a certain sense of entitlement where they think they can get away with anything
his father directly advised him so yeah
to be fair, he didn't murder anyone. But he will serve his time, just like Elizabeth Holmes or Madoff
Thry probably helped him
Its likely they knew about/were complicit in some of the crimes. Both of his parents spent time in the Bahamas "Advising" for FTX and hes given them houses and other assets bought with FTX client's money.
I would love to hear your take on the legal issues around Hasbero trying to deauthorize the Open Gaming License and replace it with something that would allow them to steal other people's work?
"I only have $100k to my name" 99.9999% chance his parents hid a massive stockpile of money for him somewhere.
I'm not so sure. If he had a massive stockpile of money stashed, wouldn't he be sitting by a pool in Cuba (or any other country without extradition protocols) sipping rum cocktails and smoking hand made cigars?
I know I would.
@@davidbrayshaw3529 No, because it's too soon. If he was found, people would question how he had the money to live such a lavish lifestyle with only 100k. Then he'd get investigated and the money would probably be found, incriminating his parents as well. My assumption is that he gave his parents a whole bunch of money to keep safe while he's in jail, banking on them not getting investigated too closely and being able to use his connections to get out early.
@@pravus9769 That's the whole point of going somewhere where there is no extradition treaty. You can smile for the paparazzi's cameras, and you can sit at the bar with a dozen FBI agents, and you can't be brought to justice.
The time to go was weeks ago and he was literally a Cessna ride away
from freedom.
If he gave his parents money to ensure his safety in jail, his ignorance
is impressive. It's impressive enough that he might also believe that the powers that be aren't investigating the financial transactions of his extended family and friends.
I agree - blowing through 8 billion takes some doing, and wasn‘t there a mysterious ‚hack‘ shortly after the bankruptcy? That may or may not have been SBF? I‘m sure he has millions stashed somewhere… but I‘m not sure I‘d give up my 30s, 40s, and most of my 50s in prison no matter how much money was waiting for me afterwards.
Probably Ukraine
"Alameda didn't segregate those customer funds." Twenty years of investment bank compliance training over >here< and this is rule #1. I'm screaming inside. And a bit outside, too.
I suppose when one is doing fraud, that doesn’t really matter: either you keep them segregated, making your unlawful activities easier to trace; or you don’t, making your records damning evidence about your intent on fraud by keeping your unlawful activities hidden.
@@arturoaguilar6002 basically, you lose either way.
Turns out the best way to not be convicted for a crime is to not do it.
Who could've thunk it.
I am always super impressed with the amount of research that goes into these episodes, and this one delivered just as well.
Hey, my LegalEagle-friend,
Would you consider covering some Wizards of the Coast - OGL controversy?
I love your content, but I also love D&D. If I can somehow get you to make a video on this, my month's been a good month.
A professional and objective video on this situation. So rare these days. Thank you
Hearing about all this SBF stuff right after watching Glass Onion hits home how accurate that film’s criticism of new money tech billionaires & how stupid they really are is.
Hah, I just watched that movie too! very true.
Who's Glass Onion?
@@blakksheep736 recent movie, just came out on Netflix, like 2 days ago. Murder mystery.
it's clear that the character of Ed Norton was in part based on Elon Musk. Especially the beginning where he had just sent notes to scientists that said "invent xyz" or the part where Norton does his disruption speech. It's so on point.
Thanks for letting me know about that, I'll probably watch it.
Even though i would have been furious if this _hadn't_ been the outcome, it still feels good to hear the news and be reassured humanity hasnt lost all sense of order when it comes to financial crime & punishment
Not sure how to tell you this, but he's currently relaxing at his parents. Not in a cold jail cell. I wouldn't hold your breath if I was you. It isn't just vast wealth but also the very, very influential people he knows in politics, media, and his parent's know judges and other legal big hitters.
@@tonebonetones You realise he's at home with his parents now because he's awaiting trial, right? These things aren't resolved overnight and when he goes to court, if he's found guilty and gets sentenced to jail, then he's going to jail. Just like Skilling did for 14yrs (reduced from 24) for the Enron fraud.
Besides, that's not my point. Im saying it's just nice that given the alternative of SBF not even having to go to court, i think it's nice to see when the legal system does something that it's supposed to do because it doesn't always...
Love this suit man. With the red tie? A whole look, catalogue worthy
Fun fact: one of the 2010 changes to Frank-Dodd is called the "Eddie Murphy" rule. Because it closes a loophole that was used in the movie Trading Places in 1983 (when they sabotage the frozen orange juice futures market).
I lost nothing In this, if sbf gets anything but the maximum sentence pluse no special treatment it will be travesty.. So sorry for all the unnamed people that lost so much..
Then prepare for travesty.
You actually lost something
Every single criminal activities like this limits your travelling freedom , your scope of sending money out of your country
Slows your airport boarding and decreases the value of the currency ... Not a direct financial loss but hassle and waste of time
Not sorry for them in my case, NFT bros were the most annoying people on the internet lately.
I don't condone innocent people should lost their money, but the big corpo promoting this deserves to be jailed too for promoting it WITHOUT due diligence and acting as "Non Financial Advice" to invest.
I choked on my drink when he was doing the "how does it feel to be the youngest billionaire" dance
Live nice for a minute to live like hell for the rest of your life?
@@swans184 it's even worst because he made good money legally in the beginning. He could have lived a wonderful rich life but just kept commiting crimes.
@@themanhimself3 yep reminds me of full tilt poker.
Hey! I'm just wondering if the Wiizards of the coast OGL would be something worth analyzing. I like how you break things down and would love to hear your take on it.
I'm at that age, when I look at people younger than me and think, "This guy just got convicted of multi-billion dollar fraud. What am I doing with my life?"
Dont worry he was born rich and in the money, so he had a few miles start in the race.
An aquaintance of mine got caught being a multimillion dollar cyberdruglord... 6 years ago. I'm 31, yea it sucks but at least we arent in jail for this shit.
Well, you're certainly not going to prison for decades of your life.
I hate break this to you, *but billion dollar fraud is, like, really bad and no one should be envious of someone of doing it.*
Pissing off rich people is one of the worst crimes on the planet, in fact.
@@Delightfully_Witchy Assuming even a fraction of it is hard working peoples money. That's still thousands of families getting less food/heating etc. The human cost of a billion dollars, even if only a fraction of it is 'hard earned money' is pretty remarkable. On the level of a few lifetimes of work.
Well, if even half of this is true then he deserves *everything* that is coming his way. And plenty more besides.
Lower your expectations when it comes to white collar crime.
@@oldmandoinghighkicksonlyin1368 It already is pretty low in case the "and plenty more besides" wasn't a hint. :P
Bernie Madoff got a 150-year prison sentence. When you let billions of dollars disappear, you get put under the jail.
@@oldmandoinghighkicksonlyin1368 They got Bernie Madoff pretty hard
For what? It’s people’s own fault if they make bad investments
I feel like most people can feel a small comfort in knowing they’ve never F’ed up as bad as this dude
that american psycho look
... due to their own intellectual hubris and epistemological arrogance.
@es e yes he did f up
@@tamarinds Ditto. Always wanted that much money, now I'm richer.
@es e Nah bro he f'ed up big; he's going from riches to rags.
Hey @LegalEagle,
Can you do a video around the legal issues surrounding Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast and the current speculation about ending the OGL 1.0a? I feel like this would be a wonderful topic! There’s a lot people don’t know or don’t understand and a lawyer’s breakdown of the issues at hand would be really insightful for the Dungeons and Dragons community!
Amazing how swiftly "justice " works when it affects rich people's revenue streams.
Lots of regular people lost money on this one.
Honestly, it was kinda slow. He was even a media darling for a while.
Yeah tons of insider trading and fraud in the gov't but thats not a problem.....
@@rangergxi for the government it was fast. They needed solid evidence of his many frauds, not just "this is sus, that it sus, wow there that's mega sus". They need to have a solid case because he can't be tried twice for this. Have to get it right the first time.
@@rangergxi no, it was extremely fast. Normally financial crimes take years to get an indictment. A month is basically unheard of.
'"About to be indicted. Classic Pisces." Priceless..!
I don’t get it
@@ToutCQJM It's a horoscope joke
I don't get the Classic Pisces reference.
@@leftcoaster67 it's sarcasm. Their actions are unequivocally not Pisces traits from a quick Google search.
@@Lessenjr Thank you!
Don't know who does your editing, but they deserve a raise.
I would really like to see you cover some instances in court where the judge allowed some strange behavior or tactics. I just watched your react to liar liar and it got me thinking. I bet there are some pretty interesting cases where a judge allowed a normally not allowed act with some interesting results. One example I thought of was when Michael Jackson defended a song of his as being original by basically beatboxing in court.
I've seen some people comment that "gosh they look so young, they couldn't have possibly known what they were doing". F that! These are highly educated people and they clearly knew what they were doing coupled with the arrogance they wouldn't get caught.
Exactly. He's a 30 year old man🙄
They had a chat called "wirefraud" they knew exactly what they were doing
Putting all your problema in a single "private" account and then kind of forgetting about it is the equivalent of sweeping ashes under the rug when the entire building is on fire
More like putting all the valuables in a safe while the building is burning down and expecting to walk away with it all
True unbelievable people invested their life savings that's just greedy
My question is why anyone gave his company any money.
In one word, Hopium
Green line go up (until it doesn't)
Cryptoidiots
People gave money to bitconnect which had 10% interest a month and was run by shady asians
Because a fool and his money are soon parted.
Hey man, Just heard from the filmora guy that, you helped him with his case. Speaking for everyone who watched his channel, Thanks!
This behaviour is of people who think they are too good to be caught. They forgot they screwed over people who care far more about money than they do.
Hahaha didn't expect you to end it off like that. Sad and true
He thought he was invincible because he had the press and D Party on his side. Just ended up digging a grave that was too deep.
@@rangergxi they were also donating to the republican party, man thought he'd bought out both sides and didn't realize the justice department doesn't actually care about party affiliation.
I would love to be as chill as SBF is when threatened with life in prison. Like seriously, wtf was he thinking?
maybe he made his peace
Denial is a hell of a drug
I think he looked at what he did as more of an exercise of how far he could take it before he got caught and was like "oh well, I tried". After that, he embraced a self serving sense of entitlement and using his Dream Board thought he could talk his way out of it using his "I'm just a dude" persona that the media and investors embraced.
He had to know that he was going to eventually get caught. I think the game for him was trying to get ahead of it far enough so that when he did get caught, he'd had enough money stashed waiting for him after he got out of prison. Oh, and he probably has psychotic tendencies to boot.
Yeah, madoff was the same
Never be chill enough to tell your lawyers to fck off my friend.
I love that all of SBF's defenses when he's questioned boil down to "I wasn't there, and if I was there I was asleep"
I'm sure that the case will go sooooo well for him. /s
Well it's always worked for Trump - "I don't know that guy, I get photographed with a lot of people", "I didn't say what my Tweet said", "that interview where I said things was fake news, it's a witch hunt!". 'Billionaires' with bad memories.
@@rockdinosaur8619 Its working for Biden too (I think??), guy doesnt even know where he is and can barely speak but he's still the president
@@rockdinosaur8619 the difference is that Trump is a useful fraud and SBF is not... anymore.
Powerful people have kept Trump free so they can keep making millions off him and using his name to get elected. SBF has only ever lost billions of dollars, so those people have no reason to support or help him because he is of no financial or political value to them. Not to mention all the reputations he hurt by getting super wealthy people to invest and be spokespeople.
@@selectionn Biden is an old man who stumbles a lot, Trump is an old man who just lies a lot.
@@xboy4331 I agree with most of what you said except not sure how useful Trump ever was - certainly didn't help in the last 2 midterms. Looks mostly useless and destructive to me.
i would love for you to discuss the wizards of the coast/hasboro open game license legality and the effects it could have on the ttrpg industry if you are looking for something interesting to do a video on
I just imagine the investigators looking at the Wirefraud chat and saying to each other; "This is a joke, right? There's no way that there's actual evidence in here. But lets just check anyway to be thorough."
Right? There's no way you could justify /not/ checking.
That transition from vegan meal request to Factor meal's commercial is funny and nicely done!
I'm still trying to figure out what the hell his parents were expecting with that one.
Like...What exactly was the PLAN exactly? What did they think was going to happen?
I get the request on ethical grounds, but jail isn't a luxury
@@opertinicy What if someone has an allergy to meat (which is possible). The jail/prison should be able to provide that IMO.
Yes, I think we can all agree that jails should be able to meet people’s dietary restriction needs - such as lactose intolerance, or celiac disease. But I do think that a lot of prison food has been linked to causing diabetes and/or not been suitable for those already suffering from it, and there was a law change a couple years back which bars families from providing fresh fruits and vegetables to inmates. (Which would be at no cost to the prison besides the manpower required to check packages.)
So vegan options are the least of prison food concerns.
Now, I am not trying to downplay the severity of other people's situations, but I do think that we should recognize that dietary CHOICES are at a different level entirely from medically necessary alterations. As well as the fact that many white collar, white, and rich criminals often get special treatment and preferential housing. So if he DID have his food requests granted where so many others are denied it would demonstrate that all the more.
I wouldn't know. I have a sponsorship skipper, thankfully.
Its going to be a fun trial bc he gave interviews during all of this. If it becomes a public trial it is going to be fun to rewatch his interviews with Coffeezilla
Yes, I couldn't understand why he didn't just disappear with whatever loot he managed to siphon off before the sh*t hit the fan. Or at least stopped talking to the press. Instead the guy kept on incriminating himself in public.
He thought he was invincible because he had the press and D Party on his side. Just ended up digging a grave that was too deep.
@@nataschavisser573 he was high on clout. Imagine if you were a serial killer, got caught and instead of getting arrested, you get a louis vuitton partnership and asked to guest star in 5 up coming block busters. Your not gunna just disappear, even if you should
"classic Pisces" I literally screamed, died, resurrected and screamed again... that sparkle of astrology shade was perfect
yt is amazing. imagine ever finding this sort of quality info back in tv days. content creators are king. love it my man
You can steal from the poor but don't you ever think about stealing from the rich
They're too greedy
yeah they don't like competition....
In general rich people invest in safe and regulated assets and markets while poor people put it all on black and spin the wheel in an illegal house. You tell me which group is going to get a better defense and protection.
Exactly: Donny Dumpster steals from the poor, and is still playing golf.
Sam Banking-Fraud steals from the rich, and is in home detention awaiting trial.
Kindly explain that, Merlin Garlic.
@@MERCENARYTAO1 just say you hate poor people, don't try and blame poor people for being poor.
Oh no, consequences! 😂
Classic Pisces.
Consequences cause he defrauded the rich
@@Khronogi he defrauded the poor, too. And the poor cannot afford that.
SBF deserves to be crushed like a bug.
Only because he stole from rich people.
@@Gg-ij7li Just stop it you bot
imagine taking that excuse to court LOL
i'm sorry your honor, but in my defense, i'm a pisces
Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions.
I'd love to see a video on the Coffeezilla/Logan Paul issues and potential lawsuit. Particularly the issue of recording phone calls in one-party consent vs two-party consent states.
Have you seen LegalBytes' video about just that topic? You should deffo watch it if you haven't cuz she goes into the phone thing as well
So this aged well.
Fun Fact: Sam was also wearing a shirt with text that read "I Heart Wire Fraud" while chatting in the Wirefraud chat.
clever viewers might notice it's proof he doesn't only own 3 shirts from his "look at me I'm such a frugal humble billionaire" shtick
Why does this read like something you’d see in some 90s cartoon lol?
This most upsetting thing about stuff like this is that you just know in the end, all these people will be sitting on a beach in their old age as multi-millionaires, still richer than the rest of us with just a fraction of their ill-gotten gains left.
I'd rather be dead broke (or, frankly, just dead) than spending decades of my life in an American prison, to have access to a lot of money when I'm 60 or 70.
He caused probably more than ten suicides
Sideshow Bob Fraud is pretty damn special.
Damn, he DOES look like Sideshow Bob. Just gove him the floppy shoes.
Sideshow Bob has better hair amd wears better clothes. ; )
This is an insult to sideshow bob.
Scam Banking-Fraud
"Huh! Attempted securities fraud. Do they give Nobel Prizes for Attempted Chemistry?"
Bankman-Fried’s biggest mistake is he failed to document the receipts of his agreements between him and political figures he “donated” to support their campaigns and “personal projects.”
He didn't know the ancient art of blackmail and persuasion.
The fact that he has no money himself now suggest he is rather a true believer. He ripped off investors and basically gave all the money away. In a sense he could be viewed as a Robin Hood.
@@DaDunge you believe he actually has no money? How did he have a gamer house in the Bahamas?
@@alecwhatshisname5170 thank you. I'm 💯 sure he has hidden money in off shore accounts. All rich people do because they want an escape plan.
They don't want to pay taxes and they want to be able to live comfortably in a country with no extradition.
I'm sure he doesn't need receipts. Now a days allegations are just like getting convicted. This guy aint stupid ( a theft but not stupid ). If he has info he will talk or he will be found dead in his cell and a black Correctional officer will get blamed. If this was Russia he would have fell out of a hotel.
How he didn't see this coming is insane.
you cant wake someone that is pretending to be asleep
Sociopaths do not understand consequences.
Imagine your parents are rich enought to find $25M like that.
Honestly, I think it was paid for by some leftover stolen money he has. SBF lied about so much, there isn’t a chance in hell I believe him about “only” having $100k. It serious pissed me off that he said that sum as if it were $5, not the life changing amount it would be for the majority of people right now. I’d do SO much to have that money right now.
It's not true. SBF was given bail for nothing more than surety against his parents' home, which is worth only 4 million dollars. There's no way a normal person would have been allowed to bail out with so little collateral vs. their bail amount. Yet another example of special treatment for SBF.
Oh I see. Thanks
@@DavidJao wow only 4mil!?
"The Justice Department and Mr. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers ultimately negotiated over how to extradite him in exchange for letting him stay out of prison without posting a huge bond, given his lack of funds. So while prosecutors could herald a $250 million bail, one of the highest in history, he was ultimately released on something closer to his own recognizance, which is also a standard arrangement. Prosecutors did demand that his parents post their home as collateral and co-sign the bail deal, expecting that Mr. Bankman-Fried wouldn’t want to hurt his family."
Moral of the story, never trust someone who looks like John Ralphio.
He's the woooooooorst!
Money pleeeeeeease!!!!!
Never trust a Pisces.
The most delicious and accurate roast of sbf
@@484berkshire I'm a Pisces. I can confirm this.
@LegalEagle With the new D&D license change, do Wizards of the Coast have any legs to stand on? Would the derivative works of custom campaigns, stories, and maps fall under fair use for being transformative? Is 20-25% royalties excessive for 3/4 million sales excessive/ is there a precedent? I would really like to know your prospective on this topic.
"Weird trick your accountant doesn't want you to know about." 🤣 I've gone back to school for accounting and yeah, if his balance sheets were my term assignments back in first semester, I would have received a failing grade.
It's bad that SBF "doesn't understand" what went wrong. It's worse that SBF won't admit there was no reasonable way to expect his "system" not to go wrong.
21:36
Could he be further penalized for not putting his shirt collar under his jacket collar?
Maximum sentence 10 years + fines
Charges from the FFP(Federal Fashion Police) will applied in the coming days
@@andrx074 Too lenient, immediate execution as far as I'm concerned
If you're going to put it over, at least do it for both points. You'd better believe that's a paddling
@@kourii You're absolutely right and I should've specified that.
To all the rest of you that replied to the original comment, many thanks. All the suggested (and hopefully enforceable?) penalties sound fantastic. And appropriate! 🤞🤞🤞