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by johnloeber 991 days ago
SBF down, Do Kwon down, Su Zhu down, many many more to go... I've been amazed at how slow the law seems to be in apprehending the most egregious scammers from that era.
5 comments

“The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind finely”
Indeed. "Egregious" in the court of public opinion isn't the same thing as a legal case put together rigorously by prosecutors arguing against the finest defense lawyers that scammers' money can buy.
Here's a rebel idea: In court cases, have the scoreboard weighted by the AGI of the lawyers.

define pro = accuser, con = accused

If the "pro" side has 10 points and the "con" side has 5 points, and the con side's lawyer makes 1/3 the salary of the pro side's lawyer, the con side wins the case.

Another rebel idea: If either side chooses to not use lawyers, the other side is also not allowed to use lawyers. If either side uses ChatGPT in the courtroom, the other side is also allowed to use ChatGPT.

Yet another rebel idea: The lawyer budgets of both sides must be equal. If you have more money to spend on lawyers you are required by law to give some money to the other side for their lawyers to make the budgets equal.

Let's say I have something like $1M to my name (total assets) and I'm accused of a serious crime. I'm ready to spend it all to not go to prison for decades, but the AGI of the prosecutor is like 1/3 of my respectable private attorney. State prosecutors make garbage so this isn't far fetched. I now have to fund the government and give a significant percent of my assets just to defend myself?

Making somebody fund their own prosecution during trial is probably the least rebel thing I've ever heard.

> I'm ready to spend it all to not go to prison

You said you were ready

> give a significant percent of my assets just to defend myself

So why not? Or get a cheaper lawyer yourself that's more fair to the other side.

There's a lot of rich people out there who get away with some really bad crimes just because they have really clever private attorneys.

> So why not? Or get a cheaper lawyer yourself that's more fair to the other side.

Because that is money I could and should be able to use to defend myself. And should my defense be successful that's my retirement money and financial security. I don't care about fair for the government, they accused me of something I didn't do. There is a 0% chance that a states attorneys salary will get me a private attorney of the same caliber. That's just not how it works.

> There's a lot of rich people out there who get away with some really bad crimes just because they have really clever private attorneys.

So what? Why should my ability to defend myself be compromised because someone with more money could afford a better lawyer?

The presumption of innocence is one of the fundamental building blocks of our justice system. Prosecuting someone and making them fund their prosecution is a terrible idea, not a "rebel" one. The government already holds most of the cards here, this idea only cripples middle class and lower-end rich folks while not doing anything against the billionaires.

We've seen in just recent years so very clearly that if the government wants to get you, they will spend nearly unlimited resources to do so. It doesn't matter how big or small the individual prosecutor's salaries might be - they can outlast you and outspend you every single time.

The deck is already stacked against most defendants.

It is more effective to fund death angels like Mexican cartels and Clintons. In many countries in Asia, a lot of rich people take these route. You can also routinely find prosecutors and some other businessmen killed in region coubtries in ASEAN. Most countries especially the richer one in ASEAN have government orders to media not to report these kind of news. Even if needs to, they will put in inner less critical media page and as non desceiptive as possible. The going rate is aroun 5000 usd...and that is market rate for amateur level death angels. It is incredibily effective sometime even CIA are scared to retaliate (remember many law enforcers have family members and near impossible to protect them). Philipines previous president actually use this method to tame the crooks there. In Asia, there is a saying where bigger dog eat smaller dog. And that is why China governance employ this. Look up their Jin dynasty and Ming dynasty assassinations histories. GoT is a pale fictional rewrite of those real history. Even Saudi's Khosoggi incident is too amaterish. The closest best implementation was probably Putin's. The west make such a big deal of it. If you got the time read up how entire family or just the childrens getting "sent off" by death angels years later. Heck even Goujin king in ancient China demonstrated how to do revenge in the most gentleman way. Moral of the story, if you are rich always groom your own death angels. Prosecutors may be fearless but they do care of their children and grandchildren untimely deaths decades later.
Adjusted gross income?

Also, what are "points"? There's no scoreboard in a courtroom...

> There's no scoreboard in a courtroom

There could be ... in terms of form it's not that different from a glorified high school debate with some silly outfits and exccessive use of SAT vocabulary.

Your high school debates were judged by a jury of your peers?

We had a bored teacher on their day off. (Or sometimes a parent, or an alumni.)

It does seem to grind poor or poor-adjacent people faster and more finely still.
And then, sentence all the criminals who've been long dead. Justice: served.
I wish they jail all the celebrities and influences peddling crypto and NFTs. Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Stephen Curry, Naomi Osaka, David “Big Papi” Ortiz, Kevin O'Leary and thousands of influencers.
Waiting for Tether
And Binance's CZ.
Unfortunately, Tether now operates as one of the single greatest businesses of all time and is probably (from now) operating completely legitimately. No one is happy to hear this except for Tether themselves.
Highly improbable.

While in theory they could be earning billions in interest just sitting on all that cash, there’s very little reason to believe the billions they claim to have exist. Do they seriously expect people to believe that they have more assets under management than at peak crypto in 2021, with billions more pouring in regularly?

Yeah there’s tons of demand for offshore dollars. It’s a great product.
Hi, Craig.
To be fair, "era" usually means "hundreds or thousands" of years ago, or millions.

Not just a year or two.

Justice, especially for complex things, which require investigation, is seldom fast. It probably wouldn't be fair otherwise.

Era is commonly used to refer to much shorter periods than that. The “post-War era” was a few decades, not millions of years