Fried bank man

 The indictment against Sam the Sham has been unsealed:

1- Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud on Customers 

2- Wire Fraud on Customers

 3- Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud on Lenders 

4- Wire Fraud on Lenders 

5- Conspiracy to Commit Commodities Fraud 

6- Conspiracy to Commit Securities Fraud 

7- Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering 

8- Conspiracy to violate Campaign Finance Laws

 

I don't know specifically what the money laundering is about, but the rest of it is in plain sight. The ups and downs of the Monopoly money he was playing with aren't really the issue here, although the overall decline in cryptocurrency in recent months probably accelerated the debacle. But basically, this is as simple as it can be. He was stealing depositors' money. That's it.

Nothing new or interesting about that. And the fawning gullibility of the journalist class isn't exactly new either -- viz. Elizabeth Holmes. But at least Holmes was pitching a technology that was understandable and would actually have been worth a lot of money, if it had actually worked; and she didn't pretend to be a philosopher. Bankman-Fried just spewed inane bullshit, that reporters treated as profound wisdom, and touted a business that nobody understood and had no perceptible or definable value -- well, except that it might be useful for money laundering, and apparently it was.

I'm with Dr. Black on this.   They still can't admit they were just swindled by a con artist who wasn't actually even very good at conning. This wasn't a tragedy of hubris, or inexperience, or complex forces beyond our understanding, or a terrible missed transformative opportunity. It was just plain old stealing, concealed behind wishy-washy sophomoric philosophy unworthy of a pot-fueled late night dorm party.

 

Memo to the New York Times and 60 minutes: Just because somebody is, or purports to be, obscenely wealthy, does not imply, suggest or even marginally increase the probability that anything they believe, or say they believe, is compelling or interesting or worthy of our precious time and attention. It does suggest that you ought to look very hard at the possibility that they are actually a crook.