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Sam Bankman-Fried Faces Potential Sentencing of Over 100 Years in Prison

(CTN News) – A jury of twelve found FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried guilty of all seven criminal charges presented against him. Judge Lewis Kaplan will spend the next few months thinking about how long he should keep him locked up.
The 78-year-old judge has ruled over some of the most high-profile cases through the courthouse on 500 Pearl Street in the heart of Manhattan.
Kaplan is a no-nonsense judge who won’t stand for any showmanship. Judge Kaplan is quick to scold the offending party and bring the discourse back on track if a witness is purposefully evading a question or if a counsel is being repetitious and sloppy in his cross-examination. He is not beyond reprimanding gallery spectators who chew gum in his courtroom.
It was clear to anyone in the courtroom (or who read the transcript) that the judge had little patience with Bankman-Fried throughout the four days the defendant testified.
The 31-year-old MIT alumnus commanded attention on the witness stand. When questioned directly, he often spoke in a jumbled, inconsistent, and rapid fashion.
Sam Bankman-Fried began one response to a question with, “So I should preface this by saying I’m not a lawyer.”
I’m not trying to provide a legal interpretation. I’m only relaying what I can remember. Also, the parts of this consistent with that are not me trying to rule on the legality of anything.
The – I’m not sure I’d give a definitive yes to the question in its current form. As best as I can recall, without FTX as an intermediary, customers’ fiat funds would be sent to Alameda bank accounts, and FTX would retain a — effectively a debt from Alameda for those and a — in the lien section here, a lien on Alameda’s assets as security for that ongoing liability, which would be repaid in full when the time came.

UNITED STATES – DECEMBER 8: Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of FTX, testifies during the House Financial Services Committee hearing titled
In subsequent cross-examination, Bankman-Fried suddenly became reticent, answering hundreds of questions with “Yup” and “I don’t recall.” It took dozens of these instances for the government to finally submit evidence that either directly contradicted Bankman-Fried’s testimony or provided an answer to the subject he had avoided.
Multiple litigators told CNBC that Bankman-Fried’s aggressive approach towards Assistant U.S. attorney Danielle Sassoon wasn’t a good look for the jury or judge either.
Judge Kaplan will now decide on a sentence of imprisonment. On March 28 at 9:30 AM ET, the sentence will be handed down.
Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud against FTX customers and Alameda Research lenders, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and commodities fraud against FTX investors, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Yesha Yadav, a law professor and Associate Dean at Vanderbilt University, told CNBC that the jury’s ability to reach a unanimous conviction in a matter of hours implies that they were fully convinced and that there were no holdouts that needed to be coaxed.
“This overwhelming consensus should give the judge confidence to follow the jury’s decisiveness by imposing a more severe sentence than a lighter one,” Yadav elaborated.
While the offender might face up to 115 years in prison under current law, that number could go up or down depending on the severity of the crimes and the defendant’s prior record.
Renato Mariotti, a veteran prosecutor in the Securities and Commodities Fraud Section of the United States Department of Justice, told CNBC, “I wouldn’t be surprised if SBF spends the next 20 or 25 years of his life in prison.”
Judge Kaplan had little sympathy for his shenanigans while on bond because “the sheer scale of his fraud was enormous, he was defiant and lied on the witness stand.” Mariotti continued, “He will feel more compassion for the victims than he does for Bankman-Fried.”
Sam Bankman-Fried had his bail revoked and was returned to jail in August after Judge Kaplan found evidence that he had tampered with a witness.
According to Mariotti, “the federal sentencing guidelines will likely be sky high, but they are just that — guidelines,” and a court must take into account “all the circumstances surrounding SBF and his offence.”
Yadav elaborated by saying that sentencing guidelines consider not only the number of victims but also the total monetary value of the harm the defendant has caused.
According to Yadav, “here there are some factors that could push the judge towards a very lengthy prison term, perhaps close to the 110 years that the sentencing guidelines suggest.”
The judge will hand down a punishment he or she deems is appropriate to punish Sam Bankman-Fried, deter future offences, and encourage a healthy respect for the law.
New York City white-collar criminal defence attorney and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin J. O’Brien concurs, adding, “Since judges have discretion even under the Guidelines, I believe his sentence will be in the 15 to 20 year range.”
O’Brien noted that the judge will likely offer Sam Bankman Fried a second chance at life because of his advanced age.
Some have drawn parallels between the Sam Bankman-Fried case and that of Elizabeth Holmes, who founded the defunct medical technology firm Theranos in 2018.
In early 2022, after Holmes, then 39, testified in her own defence, she was found guilty on four counts of cheating investors in Theranos. She received a sentence of over 11 years in jail and has been incarcerated since May in a Bryan, Texas minimum-security facility.
Ex-federal prosecutor Paul Tuchmann tells CNBC that he anticipates tougher penalties for the former FTX CEO since “the amount of losses that were suffered is simply staggering.”
Tuchmann saw parallels between Sam Bankman-Fried and Bernie Madoff, who received a sentence of 150 years in prison.
“Small investors suffered heavily, as they did in the Madoff case. Tuchmann remarked that the fact that they weren’t all major universities seemed to increase the pressure to hand down a severe punishment.
Yes, there could be a moderating factor in this case. Very little time has passed for Sam Bankman-Fried. The court could take that into account. Bernie Madoff went to jail for 150 years when he was plainly much older – with limited productive years left,” Yadav remarked of the Madoff parallel.
There is still time for Sam Bankman-Fried to make a difference in the world. The nature of his crimes is not violent either,” Yadav elaborated.
There is also the possibility that in March of 2024, the Department of Justice will file a second lawsuit against Sam Bankman-Fried with wholly new allegations. If it intends to continue with the case, the government must notify the court by February 1.
Another problem, according to Yadav, is that Sam Bankman-Fried’s sentencing is scheduled for March 2024, just before the second criminal trial against him for violations of campaign finance laws and bribery of foreign officials. The prosecution is expected to enter the upcoming trial with a high degree of confidence.
This means that he faces the possibility of a sentence that is even greater than the decades-long one he is already facing if he is found guilty on these additional charges.

News
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.
According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.
Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.
Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.
Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.
To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.
Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.
On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.
In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.
Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

Pixa Bay
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.
TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.
When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.
And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.
Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.
A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.
Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.
But today, it feels more like reality.
Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.
SOURCE | CNN
News
2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Washington — Trump Media, The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.
The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.
The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.
The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case
Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.
Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.
Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.
The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case
That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.
The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.
SOURCE | AP
News
The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.
The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.
Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.
This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.
In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.
The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.
This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.
The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.
In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.
According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.
Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.
The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.
Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.
For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.
Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.
As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.
As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.
The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.
SOURCE: AP
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