Re:Bankman-Fried, others made 300 illegal political donation...
by dragonwriter on Thursday February 23, 2023 @01:43PM
(#34914629)
> The real question is, why weren’t these illegal donations found and red flagged well before he blew up so publicly and the feds started picking through his financial life with a fine toothed comb?
Because what was illegal was (1) that the money was stolen from firms SBF had essentially absolute control over, and (2) that the money was channeled through straw donors to maintain SBFs desired political image. Neither of those are obvious without tracing money flows.
And even with the investigation it may not have been obvious as soon, except that SBF personally bragged about doing straw donations to Republicans to maintain his preferred image in his post-bankruptcy “fire your attorneys and tweet out a litany of crimes no one has even accused you of yet” phase, which kind of pointed investigators at what to look for.
Because what was illegal was (1) that the money was stolen from firms SBF had essentially absolute control over, and (2) that the money was channeled through straw donors to maintain SBFs desired political image. Neither of those are obvious without tracing money flows.
And even with the investigation it may not have been obvious as soon, except that SBF personally bragged about doing straw donations to Republicans to maintain his preferred image in his post-bankruptcy “fire your attorneys and tweet out a litany of crimes no one has even accused you of yet” phase, which kind of pointed investigators at what to look for.