Sam Bankman-Fried could plausibly beat his case

By CORBIN CARTAGINE ’23 OPINION EDITOR

Sam Bankman-Fried is undoubtedly guilty of financial crimes and negligence; however, his likelihood of evading criminal punishment seems to be growing. A few weeks ago, Bankman-Fried entered a not-guilty plea for allegations that include incredibly serious charges such as money laundering, wire fraud, and conspiracy. These legal repercussions come in response to the collapse of his cryptocurrency trading platform, FTX.

The allegations state that Bankman-Fried essentially took the funds of cryptocurrency investors that were meant to make direct trades, and instead maneuvered such funds to his hedge fund. The hedge fund, Alameda, was an entity that was supposed to be completely separated from the trading platform itself. Fried took investors’ money that was specifically directed towards executing personal trades, and he used such funds to make risky investments into his crypto trading hedge fund. The fund took increasingly bold strategies, such as trading derivatives on cryptocurrency. The hedge fund suffered from astronomical losses, and Fried did not have the funds to cover the withdrawals of his investors from the exchange.

In simple terms, everyone lost their money because Bankman-Fried’s behavior was reckless, greedy, and seemingly criminal. So, how could he possibly evade legal repercussions? Bankman-Fried has an incredible legal team who will most likely make the argument that Bankman-Fried’s actions were not malicious, but instead simply unpredictable mistakes. They will argue that Fried had no intention of defrauding investors and that he had zero intention of causing any of this. Unfortunately, these arguments may be approached with some level of sympathy by the legal system. The United States’ legal system has become notorious for letting white-collar criminals get away. With only 3% of prosecutions within the United States being white-collar crime cases, the number of white-collar criminals held responsible is