Benzinga - While the Sam Bankman-Fried trial has come to an end with multiple convictions, there are a number of interesting facets to look at, including who were the winners and losers of the case, as well as shining a light on fraud by other billionaires.
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SBF Not The First Billionaire To Be Locked Up: Bankman-Fried, 31 years old, once boasted a $24 billion net worth and was ranked at 41 among America’s richest. The sentencing date in the trial is March 28, 2024.
A Forbes report cited at least 11 former billionaires who have served time behind bars for fraud committed in varied sectors.
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Allen Stanford, age 74, is still in jail and has served 13 years of his 110-year sentence. Stanford's fraud was he sold $7 billion in fraudulent certificates of deposits through the Stanford International Bank in the Caribbean island of Antigua.
Russian oil and gas company Yukos’ business partners Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev were nabbed for tax evasion in 2003 and sentenced to 13 years.
Sri Lankan Rajaratnam was sentenced to 11 years in prison after being found guilty on 14 grounds of fraud and conspiracy related to the hedge fund Galleon Group founded in the late 1990s.
Among the others on the list are Elizabeth Holmes, Michael Milken, Thomas Kwok and John Kapoor.
Gain Or Fail, Who Stands Where? And now we get to the losers and winners from the Bankman-Fried trial.
Bankman-Fried had notably joined Elon Musk and Bill Gates in pledging the majority of his wealth to charitable institutions via the Giving Pledge, which is a commitment by the world’s richest to give away a significant portion of their fortunes, either during their lifetime or in their wills. How much money will be left to give to charitable groups or endeavors after he gets out of jail and pays fines is anybody's guess.
The Bankman and The Fried families top the list as those who are losing, as reported by CoinDesk.
Not only will the individual careers of Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, Bankman-Fried's parents, be damaged, but his younger brother Gabe Bankman-Fried will also have to deal with repercussions.
More losers include venture capital firms. Sequoia Capital invested a significant sum of money into FTX and has now written down the value to zero.
According to a class-action complaint submitted to the U.S. District Court in Northern California, VCs facing a lawsuit due to their involvement with FTX include Singapore's Temasek Holdings, Japan's SoftBank Group and Hong Kong's Sino Global Capital.
Meanwhile, former Alameda Research and FTX employees Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh pleaded guilty to fraud charges, remained silent early in the case, then revealed insider details during the trial.
Winners include traditional finance companies that operate as centralized crypto exchanges because they separate corporate funds and customer deposits, provide appropriate disclosures and compliance teams, and have chief risk officers in place.
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The Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers, who are managing FTX's bankruptcy, benefited as it earned huge amounts in legal fees.
And finally, the U.S. justice system won by bringing Bankman-Fried and his cohorts to justice.
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