A federal prosecutor says two associates of Sam Bankman-Fried have pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Carolyn Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, a trading firm started by Bankman-Fried, and Gary Wang, who co-founded FTX along with Bankman-Fried, pleaded guilty to charges “related to their roles in the fraud that contributed to FTX’s collapse”, US attorney Damian Williams said Wednesday night.
Because those two have flipped on ‘im.
That old Prisoners’ Dilemma. The correct outcome of which is that if you know, absolutely, that you’re gonna get done then flip first to get done less.
I think a few days in that Bahamas gaol proved very convincing too.
What is also funny is that when he is found guilty, all those donations to pols count as proceeds of crime and have to be paid back to the liquidators.
Repayment of political donations? Already starting. And some folk are going to get very surprised too. For some pols (folk who got $5k sorta stuff) have said, well, we’ll donate that to charity. Which won’t work. They’ll make the charity donation and the liquidator is going to still demand the $5 k back. The Madoff liquidator actually claimed back more than was “lost”……claimed back more income paid out than the capital loss that is.
The nick is the safest place.
Not for SBF obviously, but for the Democratic Party.
SBF will make lots of friends who will ensure that he doesn’t get bored. The same way that Jeffrey Epstein’s friends looked after him…
I assume he’ll be protected by the same cameras they had watching Jeffrey Epstein.
Sam Bankster-Fraud being “Epsteined” gets rid of who, why and when, but it doesn’t get rid of the requirement to repay, presuming that all transfers have sufficient audit trail to be reversed, which any decent team of criminal auditors (hired by the liquidator) should be able to do.
Shame the electoral consequences of that money being fed into the MidTerms can’t be reversed, but as long as some rich Democrat is out of pocket, I’m happy.
🙂
The political donations were, relatively speaking, chump change.
How long before any speculation about the nitty gritty of FTX’s involvement in the transfer of tens of billions in US aid to persons and organisations in or associated with Ukraine is designated as Russian disinformation?
I’ll believe it when I see it…
Sure, but whose guessing that the Ukraine transfers were related to “The big guys 10%” and other political kickbacks. Those aren’t donations as such just good old fashioned money laundering.
Which is why a 50 year veteran of congress and his associated family are multimillionaires.
This time its “Ukraine” a few years back it was Mastercard, same old routine, just the marks change.
A very large percentage – probably the majority – of ‘aid’ to the Ukraine ends up in the bank accounts of Lockheed Martin, the various evil perverts who rule American politics, and the various criminal thugs who rule Ukrainian politics.
When this is done, Ukraine will have as much to show for the West’s interest in it as Afghanistan or Iraq now does. But the Biden family will be considerably richer than you.
Steve
Certainly Afghanistan, because Ukr will be left with all that nice shiny military hardware.
Great to know that the Ukrainians are kicking Russian arse even though all the US aid has been stolen by the Bidens and Lockheed Martin. Russian cabbagemunchers are even more useless than I had previously thought.
. . . speculation about the nitty gritty of FTX’s involvement in the transfer of tens of billions in US aid to persons and organisations in or associated with Ukraine . . .
FTX was one of three outfits that facilitated private crypto donations to Ukraine. It wasn’t used as a conduit of US government aid; the World Bank was used for that.
. . . Ukraine will have as much to show for the West’s interest in it as Afghanistan or Iraq now does.
Unlikely, since Ukraine is part of Europe and has close allies there.
Otto – much good it’ll do them.
PJF – there are no “allies” in Europe (look at what the EU is doing to Poland, Hungary, and indeed us). At the end of the day, Russia cares a lot more about Ukraine than we do, it’s of strategic importance to them but of zero (indeed, negative) value to us.
It’s shades of lockdowns 2.0 tho – after the lockdowns/sanctions failed to work (actually backfired and made the situation worse), the West simply doubled and trebled down on the same failed strategy. The likely result of this will be the deindustrialisation of Europe during 2023-4 and the continued decline of the UK.
. . . the West simply doubled and trebled down on the same failed strategy.
You should wait until it’s over to proclaim failure. As things stand Russia is bollixed. Their best chance is that the West will cave in, which is entirely possible (Republican -stupid party- House coming up).
Of course Ukraine has strategic importance to us – keeping the fucking Russians away for one thing.
SBF and his FTX colleagues donated to both Democrats and Republicans (mainly the former) in order to influence crypto legislation, legitimise his dodgy business and to make himself look good.
FTX was also involved in a platform which raised funds for Ukraine. That platform has only raised $60m in total and only partly via crypto donations processed via FTX.
The claim that US aid to Ukraine was laundered by FTX and then handed to the Democrats is the 1+1 = wake up sheeple! fantasy of some basement-dwelling QAnon loser in a tinfoil hat. Which was subsequently spread by people just as thick, but with less imagination.
It’s bollocks on stilts.
As far as I have read he donated 100 million cash to Democrats just for the midterms, making him second place to G Sor os. It’s an extremely significant sum and was embezzled from his company clients. The effects need to be undone.
You should wait until it’s over to proclaim failure. As things stand Russia is bollixed. Their best chance is that the West will cave in, which is entirely possible (Republican -stupid party- House coming up).
Whilst I agree with you I fear the worst. With Steinmeier, Scholz and Macron all giving Putin signs that they want to do business with him he’s only going to turn up the butchery.
Steve getting more and more pissed that his beloved Putin is getting his arse handed to him on a plate.
Deep joy.
snag, likewise no victories should be proclaimed until it’s over.
Also, misrepresenting someone’s position is just tacky.
Macron isn’t saying he wants to do business with Putin. He’s saying when this is all over Europe needs a functioning peace. That will require doing business with Russia, or it will all just kick off again.
France hasn’t been that badly hurt by the war, as they haven’t provided much kit and aren’t big users of Russian gas. It will be easy for them to hold firm.
Germany is the weak link, and have been all the time.
If they go all weak kneed they should be asked to leave NATO. What’s the point of them being in it? They have a tin pot army and their foreign policy sucks.
@PJF – Traditionally, kickbacks work in the other direction and FTX was well suited for that.
Traditionally, kickbacks work in the other direction and FTX was well suited for that.
Equally well suited for Putin to pay his Western propagandists, but I suspect that’s a load of toss too.
Aw! No! Steve will be so disappointed that he isn’t going to get his shill Roubles.
🙂
Amazing at just how many fascist and Nazi sympathisers appear in these comments. All this REussian hysteria, hy, if the Russians can’t get together more than 120-150K troops to launch a pre-emptive strike on Ukraine, how in the hell do you bunch of ignorant Nazis think they were going to steamroll over large parts of Europe ? Their armed forces are fine for bullying small straggler states like Georgia and the like, but despite the parlous state of EU armies, they had zero ambitions in Europe itself.
Talk about Steve and his “shill roubles”, trust you are all getting your CIA sponsored $$$ to act as useful idiots, certainly sound like it.
Amazing at just how many fascist and Nazi sympathisers appear in these comments.
Nurse!
Sam’s out already…
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/business/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-bail.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes