Being not from the US, when I first heard about Blizerian and did a quick search on him, it kind of became clear that his fortune came from the money his father stole and that the poker story is total BS. But my question is why is the SEC/FBI letting it slide? Too much time has passed?

Obviously, they don't have a solid case against the father.

In general, the FBI doesn't let criminals just slide when the scumbags steal a bunch of money and then launder it in the open if they have enough hard evidence to convict them.

They had a great case against Paul Bilzerian - he was convicted and the government got a $60+ million judgment against him. It seems he is just exceptionally good at hiding his money during the bankruptcy processes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bilzerian

In a linked article it’s mentioned that the son’s money is from a trust, so I wonder if there’s some kind of loophole like the Florida principal residence exception.

They should have debtor’s prison at some point. Obviously going bankrupt from medical debt should not send you to prison but running a $60 million fraud should.

It's funny how death sentence exists in some countries, but I've never heard of a total property nullification sentence anywhere. The tools are right there, it would just be plain old bankruptcy (with all its known loopholes and weaknesses) preceded by an "infinite fine". Historical societies had banishment which I suppose was similar in effect, "you may live but that's it".

But "we take every amount of money of which we can prove beyond doubt that it was illegitimately acquired" is like trying to deal with theft by forcing the thief to give back the goods when caught and nothing more.

Exactly. A convicted megafraudster should be living in a studio apartment eating Hamburger Helper and driving a 2005 Kia.

> They should have debtor’s prison at some point. Obviously going bankrupt from medical debt should not send you to prison but running a $60 million fraud should.

Humans are creative; at that point money will be laundered through various overbilled (or even outright fabricated) medical procedures, paid for in cash.

Just because something will be fought doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tried.

I did not mean to imply that it must not be tried :-/

We frequently don't catch murderers; this does not mean we should not investigate new methods of catching them.

Money his father hasn't paid to the government 30 years ago?

You really think they couldnt think of anything lucrative over the last 30 years with completely new and separate money?

People that understand capital markets dont just have 1 lucrative idea their whole life.

The 2014 service providing in St Kitts and Nevis and parlaying that into Bitcoin and Ether would easily have earned them billions by now on its own. So it is impossible to assume anything.

You are referring to the $62 million judgement from 30 years ago that the government had issues collecting due to the bankruptcy and trusts?

Hm

My thoughts on that are “hostile corporate takeovers” are completely drama free “Mergers & Acquisitions” now, compared to when they were novel in the 1980s, they perturb no-one and nowadays founders do not start acquirable companies to get married to their company, they start companies to sell the shares they created at a cost basis of $0.00 for billions of dollars. So that specific money would have never had zealous prosecutors looking, and subsequent Supreme Court cases would have made the whole judgement invalid, if there was any due process path remaining for addressing old judgements. But okay, I can play along with the idea that he owes the government what is asked. Which moves me to my next point:

You dont think billions of new money could have been made over the last 30 years that had nothing to do with the 1980s M&A activity?

People that understand capital markets don't just have 1 idea lucrative their whole life.

Its odd to assume its related money, forever.

One factor here may be that due to Sarbanes-Oxley companies aren’t IPOing at small market caps anymore.

Sadly, and they should go public earlier.

I’m not sure how that dictates the change in founder behavior. Unless you mean that it self selects for moonshot founders who don't conflate their business and passions - or founders that form businesses for exits, than the business.

Do you think if smaller companies were publicly traded more often that there would be headline grabbing poison pill discussions? Small companies getting tricked into buying up their own shares at a premium to fend off a large shareholder’s takeover bid - and people calling the large shareholder’s failed takeover a trick, theft, controversial at all?

I really just think the culture has changed and all of this has been normalized. Nobody is incorporating in irrelevant states anymore for protections against takeovers, the entire universe of eligible businesses is in Delaware now.

So many things are different in the minds of individual humans involved that none of this would be controversial.

The culture may have changed, but the way I meant was first, with small IPOs is that the founders may expect exponential growth post-IPO, and that gets cut short, and second, it’s much easier to hostile takeover small companies. Whether it’s Amazon or Dunkin Donuts. Instead the company’s older, founders are more tired, the payout’s higher, and (I assume) being more expensive, they’re less common.

I would guess companies now keep voting power among insiders after IPO with special share classes instead of incorporating in odd states, if they’re inclined to avoid a takeover.

When it comes to the modern day version of this sort of drama, the first thing that comes to mind is pre-exit startup founders losing control. That’s still a thing.