The post Financial crimes deserve a life sentence appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Sam Bankman-Fried faces a maximum sentence of 115 years in prison for FTX’s loss of customer funds.  If sentenced to over 100 years, his punishment will match that of serial killers and rapists, child molestors, mass shooters, cult leaders and top gangsters. Only a handful of US fraudsters in history have ever been sentenced to over 100 years. Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150, but his fraud was the scale of $64 billion versus Bankman-Fried’s mere 10. With all that in mind, should Bankman-Fried spend the rest of his life behind bars? The natural inclination of many, myself included, is no. White collar financial crime doesn’t “hurt” anybody — its instruments aren’t guns and intimidation, but meetings and signatures. If they hurt anyone, they hurt faceless corporations and the already rich. Losing your freedom for life for cheating people who have money to lose and “know the risk” feels harsh. But the thing is, the economic well-being of everyday Americans is becoming increasingly tied with giant corporations.  Americans have long heard from politicians that the economy is powered by small businesses, but this is a misconception. Most Americans now work for large employers — more than a quarter of all US employees work at firms of 10,000 people or more. And these large companies account for more sales of products and services than smaller companies do. In addition to wages and the cost of goods, corporate activity touches households in the form of their relationships with their suppliers (who in turn employ people), investments and taxes as well. While high-income households benefit more from corporate prosperity than lower income ones do, corporations still dominate the economy and its growth, a trend that’s likely to continue. In 2021, corporate fraud committed by public companies alone destroyed an estimated…

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Filed under: News - @ December 7, 2023 10:18 pm