Well most fraud trials involve a person stealing directly from their company.
Atleast SBF took the extra step of first funneling money to Alameda and then directing Alameda to send it back to him and then send it to his dad as a tax free gift.
That way he could honestly say he personally has no money left.
That atleast makes it harder for FTX to claw back that money.
One interesting thing a lawyer pointed out to me is that a lawyer has a duty to ensure that the money used to pay them wasn't from the proceeds of a crime.
I wonder how SBF's lawyers have done thier diligence in this case and satisified themselves that this wont' get them into trouble with the state bar.
Aren't tax free gifts capped at $14,000.00 per year?
Edit: Er, I guess it's $16,000.00 without needing to report it, and then anything above that can be offset against a $12 ish million lifetime exclusion.
The gift tax thing seems like a distraction. He would have needed to file a gift tax return for giving $10 million, but no taxes would be due. But he could just as easily have given $100 million, filed the return, and paid a large gift tax—he had plenty of cash floating around back then.
I guess what I’m saying is, it wasn’t a way to hide the gift, because it still triggered the need for a gift tax return filing.
Yeah that's how I read it. He gave [possibly ill-gotten] money to his parents. If tax was involved, then the treasury might need to give that fraction back to the bankruptcy trustee. If not, great, then it's just the family that needs to disclose to the trustee.
You need to report a gift over $14k but you don't owe until much higher limits. Same as how people who make very little money have to report income even if it's lower than the lowest tax bracket.
Also, as a reminder, the gifter pays the tax and not the person who received the gift. If someone gifts you an illiquid asset, you aren't forced to go into debt to pay a tax. But the gifter has to figure things out on their end.
Gifts larger than 14k essentially count against your eventual estate tax exclusion.
If you give away $12.06 million on the day before you die (which would be tax-free), then the entirety of your estate is taxed at 40% (both 2022 numbers). If you die without having made any gifts exceeding $14k, then the first $12.06 million of your estate is not taxed at all, and the remainder is taxed at 40%
It's also why means-testing an end of life program that only looks back X number of years is inevitably not actually testing means.
Every rich person has a guy who will tell them how to avoid it legally. Every poor person never had any money in the first place. It only ever hits middle class and upper-low class people who saved money for some of their life and were never told that they had to disburse their assets at X-1 years before they planned to need care and get hit with a huge penalty to their assistance when they inevitably have to move some of their cash around to pay for some of their expensive care.
If you don't want rich people getting public funds for things, you have to be able to look beyond their money games, which is hard, expensive, often purposely sandbagged, and not usually successful.
So just tax them their whole life instead, and let them get back some of what they put in with every other person.
This isn't an income or gains tax. Not all taxes are about money gained. For example, sales tax when you pay $100 isn't negative $8, it's $8.
When gifting large amounts of money, the IRS gets more money on top (so, if you're super rich, don't gift ALL off your money, and leave some aside for tax season).
FWIW, that law also capped the SALT deduction (a deduction which almost exclusively benefitted the rich), and increased the standard deduction, which was a huge benefit to most normal people.
Say what you will about the other parts of it, but it didn't fall cleanly on party, plutocrat or ideological lines. The fact that the GOP effectively raised taxes for a big chunk of the moderately wealthy was a weird change of pace.
I think it’s not a weird change of pace at all, the SALT deduction was mostly enjoyed by people with high state and local taxes, which are mostly blue states. A policy that gives wealthy people in Texas and Kentucky loopholes while raising taxes on residents of California and New York seems fairly partisan to me.
It didn't raise taxes on people in California and New York - California and New York did that. It's just that until that law passed, those states were able to hide this by cutting into federal tax receipts via the SALT deduction.
Why should the federal government subsidise runaway state taxes though? Which colour states does that advantage? And what kind of incentive does that create for states?
If the residents of California and New York want lower state taxes, I strongly encourage them to lobby / vote for lower state taxes, rather than demanding to be subsidised by poorer states.
Edit: I'm seeing responses to things I'm "suggesting" or "essentially arguing", but which actually appear nowhere in what I wrote. My comment is about the SALT deduction.
I disagree with this bitching that rich states are “subsidizing” the poor “handout” states through federal progressive taxes. This is how progressive taxation is supposed to work, and it would be clearly insensitive and arguably incorrect for a rich individual in the rich state to complain that he is subsidizing the poor person in a poor state. Rich states collect rents from winner-take-all markets that serve the nation, and it is good pro-equality policy to return some of the wealth back with the rest of the country to reduce inequality and promote opportunity.
Edit: to respond to the comment below: I’m not arguing that local taxes should be low; in fact, I think property taxes should be much higher and fairer in California. My point is that the federal government should not provide a federal tax break for local spending e.g. on education. The coasts already do too much opportunity hoarding.
The winner takes all nature is a result of those high taxes and the services they provide. Arguing for lower state taxes in rich states is arguing to destroy the very thing that enables these subsidies in the first place.
NYC for example couldn’t survive without the infrastructure its taxes pay for.
Do you also agree with the assessment that the highest income earners heavily subsidize the poor? Because that's the same reasoning behind the "blue states subsidize red states" trope.
The federal balance of payments with the various states is a function of tax receipts from that state against federal spending in that state. States with lots of high income earners will, by progressive taxation, naturally contribute more to the federal pool. States with lots of recipients of federal benefits, on the flip side of the coin, naturally receive more from the federal pool. There are outlier states on either side.
Looking at 2019 data as the last "normal" year (since post-Covid, every single state received more in federal spending than they gave in taxes), Connecticut, Massaschusetts, and New Jersey (all blue states) are the clear outliers in per-capita balance of payments, where each resident in net gave north of $2000. Among outliers in the receivers, Kentucky, New Mexico, and Virginia (one red state, two blue states) stand out . KY I'm not sure why, but NM and VA are clear destinations for lots and lots of federal spending, with many federal programs being run in those states. California is touted as "paying" for a lot of stuff, but on a per capita basis it was only about $300.
Among the rest, there are a good mix of red states and blue states that receive more than they pay. Alabama? Red state, net recipient. Maryland? Blue state, net recipient. Utah? Red state, net payer. Washington? Blue state, net payer.
That having been said, the implicit argument behind your point is that blue states are rich because of their blue policies and red states are poor because of their red policies. I have yet to be convinced of this.
Real estate taxes are a necessary expense to earn income in the first place, and therefore make sense as a deduction.
It's the multitude of exceptions that prevent individuals from deducting necessary and customary expenses required to earn their income that are the problem. Glaringly - a W2 employee needs a car to get to work? Or more recently, a W2 employee needs a home office to work remotely? The tax code says fuck em, they can pay for those twice!
The disparity is why the plebs get all uppity when some ragebait article highlights some seemingly-ridiculous expense that businesses write off. When the right answer is to make it so that individuals can deduct expenses the same way businesses do.
I think a more honest take was it leveled the playing field by removing a loophole. I think it's hard to argue that the deduction was anything more than pandering to rich people in blue states...
It always made sense to me as a subsidy to states and local municipalities, who would otherwise might rely on a much more inefficient process of asking for federal funds to make obligations to their citizens like schools and infrastructure a reality. The rich people can (and often do) move for tax reasons, so I don’t see it as a handout to them. I do see it as a subsidy to states who want to run more of their own infrastructure and function as the “laboratories of democracy”
> The fact that the GOP effectively raised taxes for a big chunk of the moderately wealthy was a weird change of pace.
It was a genius political move, because it also mostly only affected rich people in Democrat led states. If Democrats want to get rid of it, they would have to explicitly campaign to lower taxes on the top 20% of income/wealth, which would not be a good look for them.
Democrat led states have higher state and local taxes. Some of it due to policies that redistribute wealth, some of it due to mismanagement of the state.
Edit: also, Democrat led states have higher land prices, so generally, percent based taxes like property tax will be nominally much higher and hit the SALT deduction cap quicker.
It disproportionately punishes richer people in states with higher taxes (usually Democrat led) compared to richer people in states with lower taxes (usually Republican led), giving more incentive for richer people in states with higher taxes to either vote for lower taxes in their own state (i.e. vote Republican), or move to a state with lower taxes (a Republican led state).
> Democrat led states have higher state and local taxes.
“More concentrated on higher-income earners” is both more accurate, and more relevant to the effect of the SALT limit (though having higher average income is also relevant to the SALT limit, overall tax burden and distribution across the income spectrum aside.)
E.g., R-trifecta Iowa has a higher overall tax burden than D-trifecta California, but substantially lower high-end taxes. [0][1]
Do high earners consume progressively more proportion of their income in public resources than the poor? Why would you jack up their tax rate? Also note you picked the literally only one of 11 states in [0] above California that is (R).
Because high earners are rich people but not rich enough to be capitalists. So they get screwed and somehow capital gains isn’t blamed or tax loopholes but poor people.
Edit: my context was about taxes in general not specific enough to SALT
> Because high earners are rich people but not rich enough to be capitalists
“High earners” includes capitalists; one of the reasons the SALT cap hits hard in California is that California not only has the highest high-end income tax rate, it (unlike many states and the federal government) taxes capital gains as normal income, not at a reduced rate. Both parts of this policy are things that the SALT cap is designed to put pressure against.
The SALT cap, not the state and local taxes it targets, is pro-capitalist and anti-worker.
Because instead of eliminating deductibility they capped it, and Democratic states in general have more people with state and local taxes above the cap, because of a combination of higher average income and more progressive state taxes (often characterized as higher, but even when this is true in overall tax burden, its often still lower for same-income taxpayers for low- to moderate-income.)
Because blue states have both the highest state/city income taxes, property taxes, and home values. The changes reduced the ability to subtract those things when determining federal taxes.
Cities almost always vote democratic, the bigger they are, the more true it is.
Cities have high cost of living, and also tend to have high income earners. So tax burdens (and incomes, and expenses) tend to be much higher. In some cases, 5-10x higher.
The largest cities in the US are also in democratically controlled states with high taxes.
SALT allowed many of those high earners in those states to offset some of the tax burden by offsetting their federal taxes. Essentially moving tax revenue from the fed to the state.
So the GOP managed to screw over the primary fundraisers of their opponents and increase tax transfers to the federal gov’t at the same time by capping SALT.
Most of their supporters (and all their key votes) are in rural areas with lower cost of living (and often state taxes) which generally fit well under the cap.
> SALT allowed many of those high earners in those states to offset some of the tax burden by offsetting their federal taxes.
More accurately, before the limit, SALT excluded all covered state and local for the purposes of federal income tax, keeping federal tax policy neutral on state tax policy.
With the limit, there is a cap on the absolute amount of state and local taxes per person that get that treatment, creating a federal tax penalty for both strongly progressive taxes (which concentrate tax burden on a smaller number of rich taxpayers) and state economic success (which, for any tax policy less regressive than a straight capitation, increases the absolute tax liability per individual.)
Eh - that’s what we like to say to ourselves, but the first part isn’t true I think.
For instance, for pre-cap SALT to have resulted in a truly neutral federal tax policy, it would have had to not existed at all and have federal taxes be unaffected by state taxes.
Since it did exist, assuming a population has some fixed amount of taxes they consider ‘too much’ and all gov’t actors are looking to maximize towards that limit, it incentivizes states to take as much as they can, since the federal taxes ‘give way’.
The cap basically says ‘eh, we’ll let you do that, but only so much’. The ‘how much’ just so happens to still benefit their constituents while not helping their opponent’s constituents.
Which yes, has those effects you are stating, as their constituents tend to be more rural, which tends to have less economic activity in general, have lower incomes, etc, and hence aren’t hurt in the same way.
Though many of their donors tend to have higher incomes, and I imagine it took some convincing that it was worth taking a potential hit to ‘stick it to the libs’.
The states with the highest local tax burden are the most progressive states. A $180,000 fixer-upper in my town already exceeds $10,000 in property taxes. Like 80% of that is school tax. Rather than beg for federal money to educate our children or shortchange them by cheaping out, we pay for it ourselves. Rather than beg for federal money to fix our pipes, we fix them before they utterly fail.
The lowest tax burden states have the worst schools, poorest health outcomes, crumbling infrastructure, and expect the federal government to bail them out. Forget that, I'm tired of subsidizing the lazy states.
Its a genius political move because you can sell opposing it as serving the rich, while the primary effect (and the entire intent) is to create political pressure on states to transfer tax burden from the rich downward to the less rich.
You can say that, but no, it's for certain parts of those states, and middle class for those parts of California and New York is de facto rich for most of the country.
I say this as someone who would actually benefit from the deduction. Do I swim in my Scrooge McDuck coin vault every evening? No. But I'm not going to pretend that I'm not well-off.
The standard deduction is IMO a load of crap. With a large standard deduction, only high-income people can make tax-deductible charitable contributions.
The right way to do it would be to make the standard and itemized deductions additive.
I make tax-deductible charitable contributions all the time. They're not tax-deductible for me, but I don't judge my charitable giving solely on whether I am able to ultimately deduct that particular donation from my taxes.
Okay, so you can donate $100 to charity, feel warm and fuzzy because it’s tax-free or however you want to think about it, and pay exactly the same amount of tax as if you didn’t give the gift.
Right. You can also create a charity, which you run, and donate millions of dollars to it, and write that off against your taxes as a charitable donation.
Then, because you run that charity, you can still spend the money (mostly) as you please.
You can’t deduct charitable donations unless you don’t take the standard deduction. Instead, you must itemize your deductions. In practice this means you take the standard deduction because most people don’t total more than the standard deduction when they itemize (you have to be decently rich to afford to donate that much!).
Last year you could deduct up to $300 in donations on top of the standard deduction, but I didn’t see it this year.
> In practice this means you take the standard deduction because most people don’t total more than the standard deduction when they itemize (you have to be decently rich to afford to donate that much!).
Charitable donations aren’t the only itemizable deductions.
Ok, I’m sorry for not enumerating all possible itemized deductions when we’re talking about charity specifically.
However, charity is probably the most well-known deduction that you can control (in contrast to stuff like state taxes, which are more or less predetermined). And even among the deductions you control, those deductions require some spending. Can a non-rich person really spend enough to itemize beyond the standardized deduction? If you know how, please let me know because I’ve never gotten close to the standard by itemizing! Even when I’ve had large purchases to compute sales tax for I’m still far away.
Otherwise, it’s pretty clear that, generally speaking, charitable donations aren’t helpful for reducing one’s taxes. I’m sure people donate because they want to, but the tax benefits are not part of the calculus.
If we look at the amount of money people earn, pay taxes on, and how wealthy they are, many patterns show up. Including rich people donating to avoid taxes and poor people without much income not being able to deduct $1K. Or $2K. Pick any number. $100 is the unimportant part.
I changed the number to $2500 if that makes it easier. That does dilute the importance because a lot if not majority of the country can’t donate $2500 extra a year from their current budget and income.
Turns out there's a workaround for people who have pass through companies (LLCs and S-Corps). If you pre-pay your state taxes from your company those will be excluded from the new, lower deduction cap.
Fuck that noise about capping the SALT deduction. Seriously. I live in a place that has high property and state taxes because we pay our fair share to give residents of my state a decent life. Property taxes for fixer-upper starter homes in my area exceed the SALT deduction cap. The cap hits people who are "moderately wealthy", but that definition of moderately wealthy cuts into what is decidedly the middle class.
You can try to twist it like it was some win for the working class, but it was aimed smack at blue states as a punishment for doing the right thing.
Good schools, effective municipal services, and so on. The bullshit federal money sucking states, with their lower property and state taxes, discovered it's easier to just get the federal government to pay for your stuff. Poor people do worse, rich people do better.
> I live in a place that has high property and state taxes because we pay our fair share to give residents of my state a decent life.
What if the high taxes are because politicians and union leaders from decades ago promised lavish post retirement benefits to government employees in exchange for low taxes, then underfunded the savings and/or made corrupt investments, and now find themselves taking taxes from taxpayers today to pay for labor performed decades ago?
See IL/NJ/CT.
Also, in NJ’s case, high taxes because of 500 different governments with redundant police/schools/fire/other government employees.
The SALT deduction cap definitely raised taxes for me and I wouldn't call myself any kind of rich. As a Massachusetts resident I took it for what it is, an attack on people that live in blue states. I am sure it gave D.T. a deep sadistic pleasure to claim "I lowered your taxes" knowing he raised them for millions of people.
The cap is fundamentally unjust since I am paying Federal Tax on money that I use to pay taxes to city, state etc.
Careful now. "Intellectuals" don't tend to do very well when things go that way. A heck of a lot of them will wind up losing their heads along with the elite. Techies, journalists, and other well-ish off white collar cogs in the machine would do well to think a little more about what people outside their bubble think about their profession's effect on society.
It's OK, the TCJA was from the party they oppose, so they don't mind you bad-mouthing that law. You had better not question the ACA or the "inflation reduction act."
Slow your roll. You have no idea who I am or what I stand for - and I'd bet we're more aligned than you think.
I'm of the opinion that both parties have been captured by criminals, so even if you fall on partisan lines, we agree on at least half. The ACA was a distraction tactic so the banks could rob us blind and the inflation reduction act isn't a lot better - so great, the top 1% are gonna pay 0.2% more in taxes. Whee.
The solution isn't to back the lesser evil, it's to stop backing evils altogether.
The interesting history is people will behead even themselves to get at the elite. See everyone in Zim / Rhodesia driving out the farmers that they surely knew they needed to eat, followed by utter destruction of their foodstocks and hyperinflation.
Er, there have been several elections since 2017, when that bill was passed. The Republicans had control of the Presidency, House, and Senate in 2017. They eventually lost all three, but recently gained back the House. Locked up the Supreme Court though.
>That atleast makes it harder for FTX to claw back that money.
The 'Madoff Recovery Initiative' was incredibly aggressive in going after all of Madoff's family and acquaintances. SBF's family and acquaintances are going to be fighting lawsuits for years and will lose millions.
>> Atleast SBF took the extra step of first funneling money to Alameda and then directing Alameda to send it back to him and then send it to his dad as a tax free gift.
I am pretty sure it's the source of the money that matters more (legal vs. illegal) than whether the accounting tricks are legally sound.
What you're saying sounds like "at least he wasn't a complete numb-nuts", but that's not much of an "at least" in this scenario.
I am pretty sure the courts will be looking for an "at least he wasn't stealing from his customers".
> One interesting thing a lawyer pointed out to me is that a lawyer has a duty to ensure that the money used to pay them wasn't from the proceeds of a crime.
I don't think this is true in the US. Lawyers do not have any obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act or laws that would require this and there are other things like the text below that would make prosecuting a lawyer for this very difficult,
> (1)the term “monetary transaction” means the deposit, withdrawal, transfer, or exchange, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, of funds or a monetary instrument (as defined in section 1956(c)(5) of this title) by, through, or to a financial institution (as defined in section 1956 of this title), including any transaction that would be a financial transaction under section 1956(c)(4)(B) of this title, but such term *does not include any transaction necessary to preserve a person’s right to representation as guaranteed by the sixth amendment to the Constitution;*
> Because the Department firmly believes that attorneys representing clients in criminal matters must not be hampered in their ability to effectively and ethically represent their clients within the bounds of the law, the Department, as a matter of policy, will not prosecute attorneys under § 1957 based upon the receipt of property constituting bona fide fees for the legitimate representation in a criminal matter, except if (1) *there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the attorney had actual knowledge of the illegal origin of the specific property received (prosecution is not permitted if the only proof of knowledge is evidence of willful blindness);* and (2) such evidence does not consist of (a) confidential communications made by the client preliminary to and with regard to undertaking representation in the criminal matter; or (b) confidential communications made during the course of representation in the criminal matter; or (c) other information obtained by the attorney during the course of the representation and in furtherance of the obligation to effectively represent the client.
Turns out its not black and white as people expect
- lawyers fees can be clawed back due to asset forfeiture.
> Federal forfeiture laws, on the other hand, pose a different kind of risk for lawyers — one that the Safe Harbor Provision does not protect against. Forfeiture laws are premised, in part, on the notion that tainted assets belong to the government as of the date the underlying offense was committed
- while its true that courts have decided that taking all of a persons money so they can't pay for their defense has been ruled illegal by the courts the amount of money that lawyers think the client has can be significantly reduced by the courts. So if SBF has say $20M now, the courts can claw back 75% of that leaving the client with far less to pay than the lawyers originally though.
Or put another way, you are entitled to a defense, you are not entitled to have unlimited funds to pay for your defense.
Also given that the money is coming from SBF' dad( a third party) and not SBF this seems to be relevant.
> Moreover, the Fourth Circuit has held in a divided decision that the Safe Harbor Provision does not apply in instances whereupon an attorney “receives and deposits” tainted funds from a third-party payer.
Yes that's true, in fact they can freeze some of your untainted money pending trial in order to preserve it for forfeiture. I just don't think the lawyer would get in trouble for it and in the worst case would have to give back some of the money. If you read the Blair decision it is way different than this case because he was laundering money on behalf of his narcotics trafficking clients through real estate.
“I’ll give my ill gotten gains to someone who technically wasn’t involved (until they accepted my money)” couldn’t possibly be a new trick. (Hypothetically that is, if SBF actually did a crime; I’m not following the case).
> One interesting thing a lawyer pointed out to me is that a lawyer has a duty to ensure that the money used to pay them wasn't from the proceeds of a crime.
If that's true, it seems a bit ridiculous. SBF is pleading not guilty. Are his lawyers supposed to do their own little investigation to figure out whether their client is actually guilty?
> Are his lawyers supposed to do their own little investigation to figure out whether their client is actually guilty?
Umm, yes? Not because of the money thing, but in order to do their job properly.
I'd think that if they were doing their job properly, it would be pretty clear pretty quickly whether or not their client is guilty. And whether or not their client is guilty is important for them to know, because it will definitely affect how they proceed with defending their client.
You are a lawyer. Your client is accused of robbing a bank. The bank has the serial numbers of the bills taken. Your client pays you in cash and the serial numbers match the stolen ones.
if you agree that you are being paid by the proceeds of a crime, then congrats you agree with the law and now all you are figuring out is where the line is.
Turns out its somewhere between a forensic audit of your client and 100% certainty that you're being paid with stolen funds.
The government or prosecution claiming the funds you're being paid with are from the proceeds of crime is well within the ethical and legal bounds that lawyers are held to.
Like many issues when it comes to professionals, there is often a burden on the professional to make sure they are acting ethically. Engineers can't build a building to a clients spec if it would be dangerous. Doctors have a duty of care to not harm a patient even if the patient wants to be harmed and lawyers have a duty of care to know the origins of the funds paying them.
That's one of the burdens of being a professional
Courts are more than happy to adjudicate if there is a gray area.
Also if that doesn't convince you then remember, people can be forced to hand back assets that were stolen even if the owner had no way of knowing ti was stolen. The lawyers don't want to spend all that time defending SBF and be paid with stolen funds, just to have the courts come and tell them to pay back the money as it never belonged to SBF at all.
It's in their own best interests to know and vet where the money came from.
In the sense of whether their client has committed the underlying acts they are accused of, yes, this is something a lawyer would definitely want to know, and try to find out, as it effects what legal defenses can actually work vs. are likely to be swiftly rebutted.
(I realize there a much broader claims being made in this thread, like about where the payment money is bad and what obligations that prompts. I'm not attempting to address issues such as those, just the narrower topic above.)
That's besides the point though. Consider the legal principle of "innocent until proven guilty" - a fundamental pillar of the justice system. It is not the job of a lawyer to determine whether a defendant is guilty or innocent; they are only responsible for presenting evidence and arguments to support their client's case. Ultimately, it is the judge or jury who must decide whether to convict or acquit. The whole process is designed to determine guilt. Requiring a lawyer to know whether their client is guilty in advance amounts to asking them to predict the outcome of that process, to foresee the future.
PS: I am not trying to defend SBF here and I hope that that any money linked to Alameda/FTX, including the money he sent to friends and family, is clawed back. But that's a separate issue.
> Consider the legal principle of "innocent until proven guilty" - a fundamental pillar of the justice system.
It's "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law". Not necessarily in your lawyer's office.
> Requiring a lawyer to know whether their client is guilty in advance amounts to asking them to predict the outcome of that process, to foresee the future.
No, that's a different thing. Requiring a lawyer to know the facts is not requiring the lawyer to know how the court will rule in the case.
Well, sure they can, unless you mean "guilty" in the sense of a court finding them guilty rather than in the sense that they actually committed the crime.
>Consider the legal principle of "innocent until proven guilty" - a fundamental pillar of the justice system.
Let's not put the cart before the horse. It's the law firms obligations to make sure they aren't participating in a crime, it has nothing to do with assuming someone's guilt.
That's different from "has a duty to ensure that the money used to pay them wasn't from the proceeds of a crime" though. If their client claims they're innocent, would they be clear because they don't know that their client is guilty?
the issue might be not the lawyers getting into trouble necessarily but for those fees to be confiscated. Why would you as a lawyer sign up to do all this work when there is a chance your fees will evaporate?
Sorry, do you think ignorance is an excuse for a crime? I don't believe there is an intent requirement, so their mental state at the time of receiving the money is of no consequence.
Yes, it ought to be. Otherwise, you would be taking a big gamble anytime you accepted money from strangers. It would be quite impractical. Also, it goes beyond mere ignorance, it's unknowable. SBF's lawyers will find out whether he is guilty on the day that the verdict is pronounced.
Lol, since when? Oh, your honor, I didn't know murder was BAD!
> Otherwise, you would be taking a big gamble anytime you accepted money from strangers.
Really? Hasn't been an issue for me at all. Are you sure it's that big of a gamble? Maybe you should think about the kind of people you are accepting money from?
> It would be quite impractical.
As I said, hasn't been a problem for me. And I'm an attorney too! I get paid!
> Also, it goes beyond mere ignorance, it's unknowable. SBF's lawyers will find out whether he is guilty on the day that the verdict is pronounced.
This is literally the opposite of what you described. They are lawyers with expertise in this exact kind of crime and they are well aware of the risk presented by taking money from him. They know he stole money. They know he stole money and saved it for himself.
I was not talking about murder, I was talking about receiving money. It has to be the least enforced law ever... Because the chances of breaking that law as a phone company, or as a taxi driver are close to 100%.
It's a bit sad that you are an attorney and don't seem to believe in due process. If his lawyers "know" that he is guilty, I hope for his sake that he finds lawyers that don't "know" it, given that he is pleading not guilty.
>I was not talking about murder, I was talking about receiving money.
Well, when should it be an excuse? You didn't really seem to offer any bounds, and I put it as "a crime".
>It has to be the least enforced law ever... Because the chances of breaking that law as a phone company, or as a taxi driver are close to 100%.
I don't think the law is really targeting taxi companies or phone companies. It's targeting people who abet criminals by taking their money in exchange for services or goods.
>It's a bit sad that you are an attorney and don't seem to believe in due process.
It's not a surprise that you think that considering you clearly have no idea what due process is.
>If his lawyers "know" that he is guilty, I hope for his sake that he finds lawyers that don't "know" it, given that he is pleading not guilty.
Geez, I can't state it enough for you, huh? "Knowledge" is not an element of the crime. So everytime you say they "know" something, it's completely irrelevant to the issue and only reflects your willful misunderstanding of this entire conversation.
> Atleast SBF took the extra step of first funneling money to Alameda and then directing Alameda to send it back to him and then send it to his dad as a tax free gift.
Isn't this worse for him in the long run if he's found guilty though? Words like "structuring", "posturing", "evasion" come to mind...
As much as I want to see that scammer and his family rot in jail , as much as I find "structuring" totally unfair.
If you set the limit to, say "$1 K / day" and then someone does "$1 K / day, everyday", it's not doing anything wrong. Instead of inventing the concept of "structuring", instead write the actual limits more clearly: "$1 K / day, $10 K / year max" (for example). Then it's clear that the limit is $1 K / day max and that you can only do it up to 10 times a year.
For otherwise it's just one of the oh-so-many arbitrary rules invented so that even honest people may be, unknowingly, doing something illegal.
Laws against structuring makes me think of this: "The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state".
The state should make the law clear or go fuck itself.
Atleast SBF took the extra step of first funneling money to Alameda and then directing Alameda to send it back to him and then send it to his dad as a tax free gift.
That way he could honestly say he personally has no money left.
That atleast makes it harder for FTX to claw back that money.
One interesting thing a lawyer pointed out to me is that a lawyer has a duty to ensure that the money used to pay them wasn't from the proceeds of a crime.
I wonder how SBF's lawyers have done thier diligence in this case and satisified themselves that this wont' get them into trouble with the state bar.