I see a lot of anger in the form of "she should get 10 years, it's the right thing to do".
I wonder if that's precisely the sentiment that has been part of the reason the USA has become the country with the highest % of incarcerated people. I'm not an American, so I'm wondering if there's a cultural difference here that explains the different feelings / viewpoints.<p>2 years + owing money to the feds + not being able to get a job: this person will suffer the consequences for her action for the rest of her life. Whether it's fair or not (I'll get to that point later), it's a huge deterrence for commiting crimes, particularly for white collar crimes like this.<p>Regarding the fairness of the punishment: I have zero feelings about this. The punishments should be chosen to make society work: deter future crimes, keep people that are harmful and hopefully help them change course. In this case, there's also providing incentives to cooperate.<p>I don't need people to suffer for stuff. If it's needed somehow for society to work, them great, but I don't feel (as many in this thread seem to feel) that long periods of suffering is needed for some reason (to appease their sense of justice? God? The victims? All of the above?). And let's be clear: the suffering in higher levels of security prison in the USA is on a whole different scale.
Regardless of the sentence, there's only one federal prison for women above low security so she's probably going to end up somewhere cushy with no fences and work release.<p>SBF on the other hand... <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1av88z5/first_photo_of_sam_bankmanfried_in_jail_goes_hard/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1av88z5/fir...</a>
I follow a bunch of longtime lawyers who have a lot to say about how prosecutions work in practice and it's pretty interesting. Here's what I've learned:<p>1. The Federal conviction rate is ~99%. Federal prosecutors don't bring charges when they aren't going to win;<p>2. Most prosecutions end in plea deals before they get to trial. In fact, the threat of a heavy sentence at trial is used to extract a plea deal because trials are expensive. If every defendant went to trial the entire justice system would collapse;<p>4. You can never predict what a jury will do or what they will focus on. It's a huge gamble but it favors the prosecution. Juries want to convict, generally;<p>5. In Federal court, you want to get past the trial phase and into the sentencing phase. That's where the defendant can do a lot to get a lesser sentence. In state court, it's the opposite;<p>6. Judges and prosecturos are aligned on their goals. Not for prosecution, necessarily. Both don't want to be overturned on appeal;<p>7. Appeals are a deeply unfair and drawn out process. This can be abused. If you followed the YSL trial at all, you saw the judge essentially coerce testimony and refuse to disclose the details to the defense saying there was a record that would be preserved for an appeal. That judge ultimately got removed from the case but you should know that an appeal is a much higher burden to meet than anything at trial;<p>8. Prosecutors want a slam dunk case. The best way is to a cooperating witness. The first person to flip, gets the best deal.<p>So Ellison got a sweetheart deal because she immediately flipped besides arguably being the main person responsible for losing billions of dollars. Yes, SBF allowed her access to custodial funds and for that alone he deserves to go to prison.<p>Judges have a lot of discretion with sentencing despite their being sentencing guidelines. It's one area where a judge's biases can really show up when similar defendants can get wildly different sentences for the same crime.<p>2 years does seem pretty light given the gravity of the fraud, even with being a cooperating witness. Her lawyer is alrgely responsible for that, I would guess by gaming the sentencing process. Still, I imagine there was some belief that she was simply naive or she got caught up in the fraud and wasn't really responsible.
I still don't understand why they did it. SBF came from a period as a successful trader. He didn't need to defraud people to be successful. The same thought came to me when watching the Netflix show about Madoff: his pyramid scheme was only a sideline to a successful market-making business, he could have shut it down before his losses became too great, and the losses were only going to get bigger as time went on.
How does she have billions of dollars to pay the fine, if not stolen from Alameda/FTX users? How much money will she have when she gets out of jail in less than 2 years?
I am almost positive Sam Trabucco is in witness protection somewhere waiting to testify when they eventually get Tether off the board and crater this useless scamfest excuse of an industry
FTX executives have collectively gotten 35 years in prison (with more to go). Maybe this will help people in this thread see that there is a big picture.
How many of us here could steal 8 billion, do orgies at work, and escape with 2 years of prison?<p>If the justice department was doing their job, and justice is blind... all of us?
Two years in prison relaxing and reading books?<p>A lot of us have blown more years of our lives, in worse environments, to hang on for four-year vesting schedules.
Proof once again that justice at its highest levels in the US is to punish the poor and middle class and slap the rich on their wrists. There are people who have stolen food to eat who have gotten harsher punishments.
I'm more curious if all the money had to be paid back? If she received a salary of millions and did not have to pay that back, I would say white-collar crime is a viable path to becoming a millionaire?<p>For example, Martha Stewart was in prison, but has never lost a step in her empire.<p>FOUND:<p>>> Late Monday, Ellison’s attorneys in a court filing said they had finalized financial settlements with prosecutors and the FTX debtor’s estate.<p>>> The filing did not say how much she would pay in those settlements, which are separate from the forfeiture order, but it was already known that Ellison’s $10 million in shares in the AI startup Anthropic, which have grown substantially since she first bought them, provide the bulk value of her settlements.
Idiot girl... but I feel like it could be anyone easily swayed by sleazy characters.<p>Seems like a situation that just got worse and worse until it was a disaster without remediation.<p>Meanwhile SBF was quite happy to watch the world burn.
Since the same comment is getting posted over and over about the light sentence, I'm raising this quote here for visibility:<p>> Prosecutors did not recommend a specific sentence for Ms. Ellison, but they filed a memo to Judge Kaplan praising her “exemplary” cooperation with the government. Her lawyers requested that she serve no prison time.<p>> “I have seen a lot of cooperators. I have never seen one like Ms. Ellison,” Judge Kaplan said before announcing the sentence. “What she said on the stand was very incriminating of herself, and she pulled no punches about it.”<p>> Judge Kaplan said the difference between Ms. Ellison and Mr. Bankman-Fried was that “she cooperated and he denied the whole thing.”<p>We knew her sentence would be light back during SBF's trial because she was a key witness in that case. The prosecutors traded her sentence for his.
> In recent months, Ms. Ellison has collaborated on a math textbook with her parents, who both teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And she has written a novella set in Edwardian England that is “loosely based on her sister Kate’s imagined amorous exploits,” her mother, Sara Fisher Ellison, wrote in a letter to the court.<p>What strange sad details. And absolutely baffling inclusions in this article and in this court case, compared to something like<p>> Since her guilty plea, Ms. Ellison has struggled to find paying work, according to the memo her lawyers filed. At one point, the memo said, she had secured a position helping low-income families with their taxes, only to have the offer revoked after the employer realized who she was.<p>which has an obvious angle and story it's trying to sell
I have no skin in the game, and can't judge the sincerity of her remorse, but 2 years seems astonishingly low, given she was a senior executive of a multi-billion dollar fraud.<p>Almost makes it worth having a go at one.