SBF’s legal defense is being funded with Alameda money he gave his father
Here are 2 questions I have about this whole FTX saga:<p>1. How is it that a supposed $250 million bond was secured with (according to news articles) significantly less value than that in assets? How does that work? The collateral seems to be his parents&#x27; house, a few hundred thousand in cash assets and little else beyond that. Huh? So what makes this a $250 million bond?<p>2. The government can (and routinely does) seize assets without the owner being convicted of anything. Hell, they do it when the owner never gets even <i>charged</i> with anything. To me, this is a clear 4A violation and should be unconstitutional but the 4A holds no sway over current judicial politics so here we are.<p>In this case we have clear evidence of fraud. Pretty much anything SBF touched with FTX or Alameda money can quite reasonably be presumed to be the proceeds of crime. Why on Earth in this case is the government not seizing, well, everything?<p>Bear in mind that the legal standard for this is quite broad. If you buy a $1 million home with $100,000 of fruad proceeds and $900,000 of your own money, those fraud proceeds taint the entire asset, not just the portion directly tied to fraud. As such, any money given by SBF to anyone poisons pretty much every asset the gift-receiver owns. The government would be well within its right to seize or at least freeze pretty much everything.<p>So how have SBF&#x27;s parents escaped the government&#x27;s seizure net?<p>If you think about it, it&#x27;s the equivalent of robbing a bank and then using those stolen funds to pay for your bond and lawyer. The government wouldn&#x27;t stand for that in the case of armed robbery. Why are they here?