https://www.axios.com/2023/10/11/ftx-sbf-bankman-fried-carolyn-ellison-thai
FTX tried a lawyer, Thai prostitutes and finally a bribe to get frozen funds unlocked, witness says::undefined
One of my favorite Twitch streamers recently mentioned he's a libertarian. I can't watch him anymore. It's one thing when an edgy 20-year-old says it, but a grown ass man. He was also playing that MAGA band, which I didn't pick up on because their lyrics are hidden behind good music.
These kids were very dumb about their crimes. I’m not surprised rich people tried to do crimes, I’m just stunned at how bad these rich people were at it.
I’m not surprised at how bad they are at it. These are highly educated rich people who think they’re smarter than they are. They probably think of crime as how stupid people without ethics get money. And so they cannonballed into white collar crime they believe that things like intelligence are just scalar values that they have a lot of. They aren’t going to think of all the little tricks you learn on small scale stuff.
Also a lot of their crimes are just reenactments of why finance laws exist but with crypto. Because they think it’s special since they got rich doing arbitrage but with crypto and they think they’re special visionaries. They’re pure ego, and often were rewarded for it.
They then tried to use the identification of Thai prostitutes to create accounts on those exchanges in a bid to get those funds back.
Not what I had in mind...
if the funds were frozen by the exchange how would having someone's identification tied to a (retail?) trading account have helped them?
Those money laundering accusations that got the funds locked up in China in the first place... I'm guessing they were true, right?