$8 Billion in funds stolen; life savings gone, potential college funds lost, but at the same time, zero jail time served. How is this possible you may ask? The simple answer is powerful individuals using their money to elude consequences.
FTX is a trading platform that allows users to buy and sell various types of cryptocurrency. Similar to investing in the stock market, users would buy a certain amount of cryptocurrency and sell it for either a profit or a loss, whenever they deemed fit. FTX happened to have their own cryptocurrency, FTT, which millions of customers deemed trustworthy to invest in. Bankman-Fried, who was on the back-end of this cryptocurrency receiving all the funds,illegaly invested the money of his customers into various high risk assets. The result of this? Millions of customers unable to receive the money they had invested into FTX’s “cryptocurrency”.
Money Laundering, wire fraud, and conspiracy to violate campaign laws, are just three of the eight charges that Bankman-Fried had been accused of. These charges carried so much weight in fact, that a spokesperson for the United States prosecutors, Nicholas Bias, estimated that Bankman would receive 115 years: if found guilty on all charges.
“No extradition treaties” are often exploited by high net-worth individuals in order to avoid their crimes coming to light in the United States. Essentially, this treaty states that if someone is wanted in the United States for a particular crime(s), and they travel to a no extradition zone, they would not be sent back by the particular country’s government in order to await trial in the United States. One infamous country with a no extradition treaty is The Bahamas, which Bankman-Fried so conveniently happened to travel to in light of his scandals.
Many lawyers speculate that the only reason Bankman-Fried was given the choice of bail in the first place, was because of the power he held being in a no extradition zone. Bankman-Fried could have simply not traveled back to the United States in order to avoid persecution, but it is once again speculated that his lawyers conversed with official prosecutors prior to his return to the United States regarding the best outcome for Bankman.
Considering that the “average Joe” does not have the ability to travel to no extradition zones at ease, the bias our justice system carries for high power individuals is evident. If an individual with an average income of $50,000 happened to face legal trouble, his attorneys would not be able to communicate with officials regarding the best outcomes of his case, while the defendant himself happens to be sitting in a no extradition zone thousands of miles away from the United States.
Works Cited
Hounshell, Blake. “Why No One in Politics Wants to Talk about the Sam Bankman-Fried Scandal.” The New York Times, 22 Dec. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/us/politics/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-political-donations.html.
Sigalos, Rohan Goswami,MacKenzie. “How Sam Bankman-Fried Swindled $8 Billion in Customer Money, according to Federal Prosecutors.” CNBC, www.cnbc.com/2022/12/18/how-sam-bankman-fried-ran-8-billion-fraud-government-prosecutors.html.
Popli, Nik. “Sam Bankman-Fried’s Political Donations: What We Know.” Time, 14 Dec. 2022, time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donations/.
Sigalos, Rohan Goswami,MacKenzie. “How Sam Bankman-Fried Swindled $8 Billion in Customer Money, according to Federal Prosecutors.” CNBC, www.cnbc.com/2022/12/18/how-sam-bankman-fried-ran-8-billion-fraud-government-prosecutors.html.