Sam Bankman-Fried FTX fraud victim tells judge: ‘My whole life has been destroyed’
NEW YORK, US – JANUARY 03: Sam Bankman-Fried leaves the court in New York, on January 03, 2023.
Fatih Aktas | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
In a letter to the Department of Justice, an FTX customer who lost $4 million when the exchange filed for bankruptcy in 2022 expressed disgust at a circulating narrative that clients of the crypto exchange would ever be made whole.
“I have scraped the docket of scheduled claims and calculated the exact amount stolen,” wrote the former FTX customer, whose identity has been concealed by the government. “The total value of customer liabilities is $19,722,911,002.84.”
This week, that letter ended up on the desk of U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who on Thursday will inform FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried of his prison sentence stemming from his role in the collapse of the exchange. At 9:30 a.m., sentencing proceedings will take place on the 26th floor of the federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan, the same place where a jury found the former crypto executive guilty of all seven criminal counts against him in November.
The victim, who wrote that 30 years worth of savings had been deposited into FTX three months before the exchange collapsed, is part of a last-minute push by prosecutors to sway Judge Kaplan ahead of the sentencing.
“My whole life has been destroyed,” the person wrote. “I have 2 young children, one born right before the collapse. Beyond the money, I lost my happiness, my ability to get out of bed, my desire to continue living. My wife is suicidal and depressed.”
The same sorts of stories were told during Bankman-Fried’s monthlong criminal trial last year. Prosecutors won their case by convincing jurors that Bankman-Fried had stolen at least $8 billion from customers. For some people, that meant financial ruin.
“In its sentencing submission, the prosecution has included moving accounts from FTX’s former customers that speak to the devastation experienced by those losing their money, the uncertainty of wondering whether they might ever get any of it back, and dealing with the emotional fallout of being duped,” said Yesha Yadav, law professor and Associate Dean at Vanderbilt University. “These victim impact statements can be very powerful.”
Bankman-Fried, 32, faces a maximum sentence of more than 100 years in prison, though the government has suggested a sentence in the range of 40 to 50 years. The defense is angling for no more than 6.5 years.
For months, Judge Kaplan has been weighing the appropriate punishment for Bankman-Fried’s crimes related to the implosion of his $32 billion crypto empire.
CNBC spoke to former federal prosecutors, trial attorneys, and a mix of lawyers working to defend white collar criminals to get their take on what to expect on Thursday.
Damaging testimony
Bankman-Fried was convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud against FTX customers and against lenders to sister hedge fund Alameda Research, as well as conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit commodities fraud against FTX investors, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The defense team has argued that Bankman-Fried’s sentence should reflect the potential that FTX customers will be paid back in part or in full. The likelihood of that scenario has increased in recent months thanks to the rising value of cryptocurrencies and other assets FTX owned, such as its stake in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.
Even as the bankruptcy estate promises to pay customers back, many of FTX’s thousands of victims argue that their crypto stakes have been significantly undervalued by the exchange’s new leadership team.
“A lot will be said about the loss at the time of the conduct, not the recovery or potential recovery after it was discovered,” said former federal and state prosecutor David Weinstein, who now practices as a corporate compliance and white collar defense attorney at Jones Walker. Weinstein said he expects to see a sentence in the range of 30 to 40 years.
Mark Bini, a former state and federal prosecutor and U.S. assistant attorney who specialized in financial crimes, anticipates a sentence of no less than 30 years.
“Probation calculates the guidelines at 110 years,” said Bini, who currently represents white collar crypto defendants as part of law firm Reed Smith’s On Chain digital asset team. “I think the judge is likely to side with probation and the government on the loss amount and the appropriate guidelines.”
Caroline Ellison, former chief executive officer of Alameda Research LLC, arrives to court in New York, US, on Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Judge Kaplan, 78, is a veteran of the Southern District of New York and has presided over some of the biggest cases to roll through his courthouse. He showed little patience for Bankman-Fried during the defendant’s four days on the stand.
“Unfortunately for SBF, some of his testimony at trial came across as highly evasive, somewhat cold and often contradictory,” said Yadav, adding that a sentence of 20 to 25 years could offer Judge Kaplan a way to balance the severity of the crime with a recognition of customer recoveries and the potential for future rehabilitation.
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani described Kaplan as “old school” and predicted a sentence of 20 to 30 years.
Tre Lovell, a Los Angeles corporate law attorney, said the core factors Kaplan will consider will be the extent of the fraud, along with the fact that Bankman-Fried appeared to have lied under oath while showing little remorse.
“The judge isn’t going to cut Bankman-Fried a break just because FTX has recovered a lot of funds to offset the amount that customers lost,” Lovell said. “The judge is just going to look at Bankman-Fried’s conduct at the time he was in charge of the company, not what the company did after he stepped down as CEO.”
Bankman-Fried has one last chance to take the stand in front of the judge in order to show some level of contrition and a promise to become a benefit to society.
“If he says he’s had a chance to think about what he did and that he’s very sorry for misusing the hard-won funds of investors, and that he wants to use his acumen in this field for the public good, then he may walk out with a prison sentence that is south of 20 years,” Lovell said. “In court, it’s never too late to say you’re sorry. But he won’t get a big discount on his sentence just for being contrite.”
WATCH: Prosecutors recommend a 40-50 year prison sentence for Bankman-Fried
Environment
U9 supercars from BYD’s new Yangwang brand are en route to the UK to compete at Goodwood
BYD’s young performance EV brand Yangwang wants to turn some heads in Europe by debuting its U9 supercar at the 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed. The annual event hasn’t seen many Chinese entrants, but Yangwang has at least two cars on their way to the UK to show performance enthusiasts the potential of its e⁴ platform technology.
Yangwang operates as one of the newest all-electric brands under the BYD umbrella. BYD launched the sub-brand in January 2023 while showcasing a new performance EV architecture called e⁴.
When paired with Yangwang’s DiSus-X Intelligent Body Control System, the automaker says these two core technologies will “revolutionize the pure electric supercar segment, seamlessly integrating track performance, street adaptability, and playful features.”
Like supercars than call ollie, for instance.
At the brand launch, Yangwang unveiled its first two models—the borderline amphibious U8 SUV and the U9 supercar, designed to compete with Ferrari. We’ve since seen a third, less extreme model called the U7 sedan emerge, but only its two siblings are currently available on the Chinese market – the most recent being the U9 this past February.
The U9 features quad motors, 1,287 horsepower (960 kW), and 1,200 lb-ft (1,680 Nm) torque for a 0 to 62 mph (0-100 km/hr) sprint time of 2.36 seconds. This summer, Yangwang will show the public at Goodwood what the U9 is capable of on the track, and its supercars are already making their way over from China.
Yangwang U9 to make overseas debut at Goodwood
According to CnEVPost, BYD’s Yangwang brand plans to compete at the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed held each year in West Sussex in the UK. According to a recent Weibo post from Yangwang’s general manager of sales, Hu Xiaoqing, two U9 supercars departed China by boat on May 7 and are on their way to England.
According to Hu, Yangwang looks forward to showcasing its U9s at Goodwood while “meeting with supercar enthusiasts around the world.” The Goodwood Festival of Speed began in the early ’90s and is considered by many to be one of the pinnacle motorsport events for showcasing vehicle capabilities and attempting record track times.
As a UK event, China has not had much of a presence at Goodwood in the past, but Yangwang hopes to change that this year. For example, NIO was the only China-based automaker present at last year’s event. Still, we expect to see more and more EVs making their way overseas as Chinese automakers continue to expand into new markets around Europe.
The 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed will take place July 11-14 this year, and we hope to do a full recap of the EVs (including the Yangwang U9) that stand out and hopefully don’t crash into a pile of hay. Stay tuned.
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Tesla is planning to remove the steering wheel nag, which alerts drivers to apply torque on the steering wheel, with a new Supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) update coming next week.
Yesterday, we reported on CEO Elon Musk giving an outline of the upcoming FSD software updates.
The CEO says that Tesla is preparing to launch fully retrained models in FSD v12.4 as soon as next week.
Musk used his usual hyperbole, like “mind-blowing”, to describe the update, but he didn’t go into much detail about it otherwise… until now.
The CEO has now confirmed that Tesla plans to remove the steering wheel nag with the upcoming Full Self-Driving v12.4:
“Steering wheel nag” is what Tesla drivers call the alerts the vehicle sends to remind drivers to apply pressure on the steering wheel. Tesla doesn’t have a way to detect hands on the steering wheel, so it can “confirm” drivers keep their hands on it – by detecting torque being applied on the wheel.
Tesla sends out those alerts every minute or so, depending on your driving speed on FSD.
The alerts can get annoying and redundant because Tesla now uses its cabin-facing camera to detect driver attention and it will send out alerts if it detects that the driver is not looking at the road for more than about three seconds.
Electrek’s Take
This was always a very poor driver monitoring system, anyway. I wouldn’t have a problem with it going away if it wasn’t for the infamous loophole in the camera-based driver monitoring system.
There will be more abuse, but it wasn’t like there wasn’t any in the first place with defeat devices.
It is certainly a ballsy move for Tesla, considering NHTSA is opening a new investigation into its recall that involved more alerts for Autopilot/FSD.
Either way, regardless of Tesla’s level nag, the drivers should always keep their hands on the steering wheel and be ready to take control at all times when using Autopilot or FSD features.
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Southern California truck spotters will have plenty of electric semi trucks to watch out for as Amazon adds fifty Class 8 EVs to its commercial fleet.
The fully electric Volvo semi trucks purchased will haul both heavy cargo containers and customer package loads in Amazon’s first- and middle-mile operations in California. The trucks will join the hundreds of last-mile electric vans from Ford and Rivian that are already delivering packages across the golden state.
These are the first-ever electric trucks in the company’s ocean freight operations, also known as drayage operations. They’ve already started hitting the road at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, with a dozen expected to be in service by the end of the year.
“We’re proud to launch our largest fleet of electric heavy-duty vehicles yet in California,” said Udit Madan, vice president of Worldwide Amazon Operations. “Heavy-duty trucking is a particularly difficult area to decarbonize, which makes us all the more excited to have these vehicles on the road today. We’ll use what we learn from deploying these vehicles as we continue to identify and invest in solutions to reduce emissions in our transportation network, and to impact sustainability in the trucking industry more broadly.”
Amazon picks Volvo VNR Electric semi
Amazon’s electric semi of choice this time is the Volvo VNR Electric. These class 8 trucks have a range of up to 275 miles with a gross combined vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 82,000 pounds. The heavy-duty Volvo trucks ship with a number of safety features that will be familiar to Volvo Car owners, including active collision mitigation, blind-spot detection, lane departure warning, lane keeping assist, and adaptive cruise control.
Altogether, the Volvo VNRs Amazon just added to its fleet are projected to travel more than 1 million miles each year with zero harmful carbon and diesel particulate emissions coming out of their exhaust pipes.
Electrek’s Take
On the one hand, Amazon is making a big deal out of buying electric drayage trucks – which isn’t really big a deal in 2024, since that’s a legal requirement at this point. You literally can’t buy a new, internal combustion drayage truck in California as of this year.
That said, I’m a “celebrate every positive change” kind of guy, and the people who live and work around Amazon’s operations will be literally and figuratively breathing easier with these trucks in operation. As such, I’m willing to give California Governor Gavin Newsom a victory lap.
“California continues to lead the way in setting world-leading climate goals. No other state has created the kind of environment where Amazon and other businesses can lead on sustainability and take major steps forward like deploying this fleet of electric trucks,” said Gavin, in a statement. “California’s climate action continues powering our economy and creating jobs.”
SOURCE | IMAGES: Amazon.
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