<story><title>FTX – The fraud was in the code</title><url>https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/the-fraud-was-in-the-code</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bmitc</author><text>Pretty insane that Sam Bankman-Fried decided to plead not-guilty. And it&amp;#x27;s interesting that their defense is an implication that a witness is committing perjury for a lighter sentence without any evidence backing it up.&lt;p&gt;And just what in the world were any of these people thinking? Sam Bankman-Fried isn&amp;#x27;t remotely charismatic, so I just don&amp;#x27;t understand why people would follow his demands and actively participate in such obvious fraud. How do you reason with yourself about &lt;i&gt;randomly generating&lt;/i&gt; an insurance fund&amp;#x27;s balance that has been testified, under oath to Congress and various other binding contracts I&amp;#x27;m sure?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>&amp;gt; Pretty insane that Sam Bankman-Fried decided to plead not-guilty.&lt;p&gt;Would easily bet that was his decision. He&amp;#x27;s obviously made insanely stupid choices already, like leaking Caroline Ellison&amp;#x27;s journal and getting his bail revoked.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m sure he was counseled against it, but his lawyers were probably like &amp;quot;well, he wants to swing the bat, and we get paid more if it goes to trial anyway.&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>FTX – The fraud was in the code</title><url>https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/the-fraud-was-in-the-code</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bmitc</author><text>Pretty insane that Sam Bankman-Fried decided to plead not-guilty. And it&amp;#x27;s interesting that their defense is an implication that a witness is committing perjury for a lighter sentence without any evidence backing it up.&lt;p&gt;And just what in the world were any of these people thinking? Sam Bankman-Fried isn&amp;#x27;t remotely charismatic, so I just don&amp;#x27;t understand why people would follow his demands and actively participate in such obvious fraud. How do you reason with yourself about &lt;i&gt;randomly generating&lt;/i&gt; an insurance fund&amp;#x27;s balance that has been testified, under oath to Congress and various other binding contracts I&amp;#x27;m sure?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chubot</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s also funny to me that they just use Github and Google docs.&lt;p&gt;It seems like if you were committing massive fraud, you&amp;#x27;d want to avoid leaving permanent records of it on someone else&amp;#x27;s systems.&lt;p&gt;But I think this is generational thing.  If you grew up when web browsers were already prevalent, a &amp;quot;text file on your hard drive&amp;quot; probably means almost nothing.  It&amp;#x27;s just not the way you use computers.&lt;p&gt;I also like this bit from the article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Note to self: if you’re going to write code to do fraud, make it messy and unreadable to reduce the chances it’s later put in front of a jury as evidence.&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>