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A comment on SEC Charges Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang with Defrauding Investors. Parent comment

Re:SEC Charges Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang with Defraudin... by ALittleLight on Thursday December 22, 2022 @01:28AM (#34090457)
How many deals do they need? I'm afraid of prosecutors cutting too many deals, being too lenient on the guilty, just to make their jobs easier - making practically certain cases 1% more certain in exchange for not punishing appropriately.

I think it's good to get one or two insiders - Ellison and Wang seem ideal. Why does the state need more?

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Re:SEC Charges Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang with Defraudin... by HWR_14 on Thursday December 22, 2022 @01:47AM (#34090568)
It depends on how lenient they are. Many times, deals just for pleading guilty are a thing, leaving conspiracies aside.
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Re:SEC Charges Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang with Defraudin... by ALittleLight on Thursday December 22, 2022 @01:55AM (#34090615)
That's also bad. Prosecutors hold a huge sentence over people and compel them to confess - it's a kind of hypothetical torture, forcing you to confess by the bad stuff they'll probably do to you.

Prosecutors, along with their investigators, should come to a position on whether a party is guilty and if so what punishment they deserve. They should then make that case in court. Courts would need much greater throughput to handle this, but the current method seems much worse.

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Re:SEC Charges Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang with Defraudin... by dragonwriter on Thursday December 22, 2022 @03:55AM (#34091236)
> How many deals do they need? I'm afraid of prosecutors cutting too many deals, being too lenient on the guilty, just to make their jobs easier

Saving taxpayer money, too.

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Re:SEC Charges Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang with Defraudin... by qeternity on Thursday December 22, 2022 @09:04AM (#34093315)
I think that's hugely dependent on whether you believe the cost function for prison is linear? I would expect most people to say no. The difference between 0 and 10 years is much greater than 10 and 20 years.

If that is the case, then putting 10 people away for 10 years due to greater certainty of conviction, but also more lenient sentences, has greater social utility (as a detterrent) than only putting one person behind bars for 100 years, with 9 others getting off scot-free.

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