Bankman-Fried Case Was Almost Impossible to Win: Naftalis

What does Sam Bankman free do now over the next 25 years? The judge did say that put in a prison close to his family in the San Francisco Bay Area. But what’s life like for him over the next 25 years? What can he do in prison? What will he be able to do? I mean he he will most likely be put in a minimum security prison or a camp which isn’t the most pleasant place to be. But it’s not as bad as a maximum security prison and he’ll have a lot of time on his hands obviously to to think right work on his appeal. But I would say it’s it’s obviously, you know a difficult time for him. Josh I would ask you if I could just about an argument that it seemed like Judge Kaplan really dismembered at the start of of this. And so you had the defense saying essentially no harm, no foul. As Max Chaffin was talking about just a moment ago, this belief that assets have been recovered people have been made mostly whole if not entirely whole. He had kind of a very vivid example like it’s like going to Vegas and using stolen money then winning. You still stole the money. Could you talk a bit about that just the the way that Judge Kaplan kind of contextualized the fraud that took place here and why that’s so, so important as we look ahead again through to bankruptcy as well. Sure. So I think what what Judge Kaplan was getting at is that what matters is the intended loss in the in in imposing sentence. It doesn’t matter that it may have worked out in the end that Mister Ray has recovered a lot of the assets. What matters is when he was committing the fraud, the intent to steal 8 plus billion dollars. And Judge Kaplan said yes, and I don’t buy, I don’t buy. Your excuses. And Joshua, I want to go back to that point you made about there’s sort of a message being sent here when you consider this sentence 25 years in prison that sort of, it seems like the judge is trying to deter other bad actors who might pop up in the crypto space, especially as we see the whole industry really rally back to all time highs. Agreed. I think that comes back to what David said, which is what matters in sending a message with a sentence is that this was an $8 billion fraud. This wasn’t a mistake that happened to work out in the end and people are going to get a lot of their money back. He was sending a message sort of to Wall Street, to Crypto, to everyone that if you steal money you will get a a stiff sentence and this is obviously a very stiff sentence for a white collar defendant. Well, Joshua, I want to go back to something that you said about what he will do while he is incarcerated over the next 25 years. You mentioned that he could spend time working on his appeal. Talk to us about the process there and and what avenues SPF faces now to appeal his sentence. Sure. So I mean SPF as we know change lawyers he has markedly Casey now who’s a great lawyer but he may have a a a big uphill battle to fight on the appeal. Usually the the notice of appeal will be filed within 30 days of to the 14 days of today. And he then has approximately 3 months to write the appeal, though he could ask for more time and he’s probably going to not throw the kitchen sink at the appeal but but pick the arguments that that really are the best ones. And I would imagine one of the arguments he’s going to make is that is that the the sentence was just too harsh because most white collar defendants other than a Bernie Madoff isn’t going to get 25 years. And whether that was a disproportionate sentence now, I don’t think it was, to be clear. But I think that’s an argument we’ll make. Josh, a last question for me, just about what you just mentioned that being that he switched lawyers. He he changed trains kind of halfway through all of this. And there’s a, there’s a sharp contrast between Mark Cohen, who was his lawyer throughout and the performance that we saw today from Mark Mukasey this this new lawyer. How odd is it to have that happen to switch lawyers before sentencing like this? And I guess what I’m getting at is there’s the appeals process, but there’s also kind of regret perhaps about how the process unfolded. How does the defendant deal with that? There might not be something here that could win on appeal, but perhaps regret that maybe the lawyer you picked the first time around wasn’t the one that that could present, present the most compelling case to the to the court. Sure. So I mean, to be clear, I think Mark Cohen and Chris Everdale are amazing. They did everything they could. So I don’t think that switching lawyers implies that they somehow did something wrong. This was an almost impossible case to win and typically when a defendant gets convicted at trial, he either brings on appellate council or switches lawyers. The reason is you want a fresh set of eyes. There’s also a certain exhaustion with the case. These guys were really slogging away for the better part of a year of this. And you know, Mark is a vigorous advocate too and you want some fresh blood to to mix it up. I wouldn’t read anything into the fact that you switch lawyers. There’s a cottage industry of white collar appellate lawyers who who do quite well. You know, when someone loses a trial, they step in.