I’d look at pp. 5-12 of the linked sentencing memo for customers, pp. 15-18 for investors/lenders for the government’s statement of the offense conduct. The jury merely utters guilty / not guilty on each count, it does not provide detailed findings of fact. Judge Kaplan heard all the evidence as he presided at trial, and can rely on his own factual findings at sentencing under a more-likely-than-not standard. Of course, that is just a summary; Ellison alone testified for ~3 days.
Basically, SBF & FTX falsely represented that the customer assets were segregated from FTX’s own assets and would not be used by FTX. Yet Alameda regularly took large sums of money out of accounts holding FTX customer funds, and the “allow negative” feature allowed it to borrow ~unlimited money as well. This was not limited to funds made available to customers through the margin lending program.
At various points discussed on pp. 9-11, SBF directed Alameda to “borrow” more money from FTX despite knowing it was underwater at the time. For instance, at one point SBF directed Ellison “to use FTX customer funds to repay loans” (her words), despite knowing that Alameda was $11B in the hole and was already “borrowing” $13B in customer funds (p. 11). About $4.5B more in customer funds was used to pay Alameda’s lenders as a result (p. 11). In short, I don’t think the narrative presented in the linked post is backed up by the trial evidence.
Judge Kaplan heard all the evidence as he presided at trial, and can rely on his own factual findings at sentencing under a more-likely-than-not standard
The document is written by the prosecution though, right? Not the judge.
Or are you saying that, since the judge ended up more or less agreeing with the prosecution, we can just trust the prosecution’s arguments?
Yes, that’s in the quick take. It was still (and may still be), in my view, the best source reasonably available. The jury doesn’t say anything other than guilty / not guilty to each count—where a conviction could be based on multiple theories, it doesn’t even tell us which one the jury bought. The sentencing judge would make factual findings at sentencing (then a future event) but only as necessary to sentence. Anything written by the defense would almost certainly be inconsistent with the jury’s verdict, so that leaves the prosecution.
Given that the USAO is a long-term player, knows that Judge Kaplan presided over the trial and the pre-trial motions, and knows that SBF could file a reply, it’s very unlikely it would puff the facts to more than a moderate extent. Probably the trial transcripts provide a more authoritative resource, but are too long to recommend to much of anyone.
Cool, I fully acknowledge that this is my naivete, but for what it’s worth I assumed that “The government’s sentencing memorandum” was a memo explaining the judge’s sentencing decision, not what the prosecution was requesting the judge to decide.
Good to know! This may be one of those interpretations that becomes more plausible due to an intervening event. (The quick take was posted well before the judge decided the sentence.)
I can’t think of any circumstances like this in which “the government” would mean the court rather than the government-as-a-party-before-the-court. But that could only be obvious to me because of professional background.
In case you know this off-hand or it’s easy for you to get or point me in the right direction, do you know how they established SBF’s intent to misuse the billions in customer funds? What I got from Googling this didn’t seem very convincing, but I didn’t read court documents directly. (See also https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ggkiDAZowmuzqZrnX/is-anyone-else-still-confused-about-what-exactly-happened-at )
I’d look at pp. 5-12 of the linked sentencing memo for customers, pp. 15-18 for investors/lenders for the government’s statement of the offense conduct. The jury merely utters guilty / not guilty on each count, it does not provide detailed findings of fact. Judge Kaplan heard all the evidence as he presided at trial, and can rely on his own factual findings at sentencing under a more-likely-than-not standard. Of course, that is just a summary; Ellison alone testified for ~3 days.
Basically, SBF & FTX falsely represented that the customer assets were segregated from FTX’s own assets and would not be used by FTX. Yet Alameda regularly took large sums of money out of accounts holding FTX customer funds, and the “allow negative” feature allowed it to borrow ~unlimited money as well. This was not limited to funds made available to customers through the margin lending program.
At various points discussed on pp. 9-11, SBF directed Alameda to “borrow” more money from FTX despite knowing it was underwater at the time. For instance, at one point SBF directed Ellison “to use FTX customer funds to repay loans” (her words), despite knowing that Alameda was $11B in the hole and was already “borrowing” $13B in customer funds (p. 11). About $4.5B more in customer funds was used to pay Alameda’s lenders as a result (p. 11). In short, I don’t think the narrative presented in the linked post is backed up by the trial evidence.
The document is written by the prosecution though, right? Not the judge.
Or are you saying that, since the judge ended up more or less agreeing with the prosecution, we can just trust the prosecution’s arguments?
Yes, that’s in the quick take. It was still (and may still be), in my view, the best source reasonably available. The jury doesn’t say anything other than guilty / not guilty to each count—where a conviction could be based on multiple theories, it doesn’t even tell us which one the jury bought. The sentencing judge would make factual findings at sentencing (then a future event) but only as necessary to sentence. Anything written by the defense would almost certainly be inconsistent with the jury’s verdict, so that leaves the prosecution.
Given that the USAO is a long-term player, knows that Judge Kaplan presided over the trial and the pre-trial motions, and knows that SBF could file a reply, it’s very unlikely it would puff the facts to more than a moderate extent. Probably the trial transcripts provide a more authoritative resource, but are too long to recommend to much of anyone.
Cool, I fully acknowledge that this is my naivete, but for what it’s worth I assumed that “The government’s sentencing memorandum” was a memo explaining the judge’s sentencing decision, not what the prosecution was requesting the judge to decide.
Good to know! This may be one of those interpretations that becomes more plausible due to an intervening event. (The quick take was posted well before the judge decided the sentence.)
I can’t think of any circumstances like this in which “the government” would mean the court rather than the government-as-a-party-before-the-court. But that could only be obvious to me because of professional background.