I base that estimation on his offense being entirely reliant on a corporation (whose assets are now frozen), his own personal reputation (which is now destroyed), and his crime not alleged to involve violence in any form.

Morally, I think people like Madoff are worse than many gang members or low-level violent criminals. That doesn't change the fact that they are far less of an immediate threat to the people around them, particularly now that they have been exposed. A confidence scam fraudster who has been exposed is a bit like a paraplegic murderer. They may be morally reprehensible, but they're effectively unlikely to reoffend in a few months awaiting trial.

If you honestly would rather live next to the average person arrested for assault or robbery than Bankman-Fried while both await trial, be my guest, but you can probably understand why others might feel differently.

Like many things, cash bail is effectively "discriminatory" in that it tends to hurt poor criminals more than white collar ones. That still doesn't mean discrimination is the primary reason it exists, or that that somehow negates any of its benefits.

> Morally, I think people like Madoff are worse than many gang members or low-level violent criminals

Out of curiosity, why do you think this? Grand theft of wealth based on fraud doesn't strike me as morally worse than gangbanging, armed robbery, human trafficking, etc.

(To detail my own calibration, I would say someone like Henry Kissinger is morally worse than low-level criminals. Typically I think it goes theft < violence < warmongering, etc.)

Off the top of my head I'd look at who their crime affected and to what degree, why the perpetrator did it, whether it was premeditated or done in the spur of the moment, what other options the perpetrator had, etc.

Someone who is intellectually mediocre, grows up around violent scumbags, and ends up robbing others instead of working a job is reprehensible, but I would say less so than a Bernie Madoff who was already wealthy, highly capable, and decided to defraud people of their life savings over decades. Madoff is not someone like Martin Shkreli bullshitting wealthy investors out of some portion of their wealth, he's someone who ruined people's lives.

People often discount "economic" crimes that they can't directly see the harms of, like insurance fraud, welfare fraud, tax cheating, corruption etc. That's easy to do in places like the US, but becomes more obviously problematic in places like Southern Italy or Argentina whose economies have gradually been destroyed by a widespread acceptance of corruption, cheating and "economic" crimes.

Not GP but I might throw in my opinion. While you focused on the crime itself GP focused on the person committing the crime. That way I can agree to both of you. While the crime of fraud is less morally wrong than armed robbery to me, the person committing the robbery very likely has a very different background and less choices. It might seem to be the only way to feed their family or a very natural way as they were grown up with it. While for fraud its about having more and more money, mostly for living a luxury life.

Rationally, this all ought to make sense. But, somehow, people still flock back to the confident fraudsters, even when they know they're fraudsters.

There was a guy in Russia who became famous as the organizer of the largest financial pyramid in the country's history; it all fell apart very publicly, with many people losing their savings, and the guy was on the run for years until finally caught and convicted in yet another highly publicized court. That's it, right?

But literally as soon as he was out of prison, he starts a new company. Same exact name as before. And he openly advertised it as a financial pyramid this time! One year later, he walked away with millions more. And they couldn't even sue him for it because he was completely honest about the finances!

Then he went on to do the same shit but with crypto in other countries: India, China, Nigeria, Peru, Ghana, Thailand...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company)

Even if he could find victims gullible enough to trust him, he’s under too much scrutiny from other less gullible people. Reoffending is impossible.

Agreed on the basic point that he won't win any more confidence games.

I think the main thing is that we haven't seen what he might do now that he knows for sure that he's (by default) headed for a lifetime in jail.

It seems that before the arrest, he was pretty delusional / "high on his own supply" and believed he was going to somehow talk his way out of trouble, as he'd ostensibly been doing for so long.

So the thought experiment now is: do we believe that there's anything nefarious that he could do now, that he'd stopped himself from doing back when he was still trying to maintain an illusion?

For example, he could have various wallet private keys (secretly?) memorized [1], and could take steps to move the funds to new wallets.

TBH the idea that his (fiat) transactions are limited to $1k is a little laughable for someone who until recently, and perhaps still, has access to billions in crypto.

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Brainwallet

Don't the bail conditions forbid all financial transactions, even if they are in some shitcoin? Touching his wallets would violate that. So he could move funds around, but risk bankrupting his parents in doing so. The ultra-high bail means it would be hard for him to compensate them.

I wouldn't be surprised if he had access to wallets nobody else knows about with some of the customer money stashed away

It's a possibility. But the way I understand it, he thought he was somehow above board with what he was doing. At least recoverable, eventually above board. Having dark wallets would not have been consistent with that.

Of course, that's what he wants me to think. I'm ready to learn that my take is too naive. But so far, evidence of a bigger plot is missing for me.

In case this concern seemed theoretical: https://twitter.com/wizardofsoho/status/1606610665795379201

What about Jordan Belfort? He had an entire movie named after him and he’s still pulling scams https://youtu.be/RZOHYm2TpVM

Or, Jack Abramoff[1]? History suggests that fraudsters and conmen are more likely than not to re-offend. There is no shortage of people who are more eager to be marks than they would have been before the convictions, because now that they can be part of the redemption story of someone who has high status with their well-known name.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Post-release_act...

It wouldnt surprise me if somehow a substantial part of the population is convinced he did nothing wrong, is being prosecuted by the reptiles/deepstate/etc, and would gladly hand him over more money. The past years have shown that we cant rely on common sense.