2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 get rich, quick schemes are common place in the united states with a blind trust in barely regulated capitalism. everybody, regardless of economic background, education level, age or anything else, believes that they have the ability to become welfare. then in their wildest dreams, if they just choose the right opportunity, we said see that with frequency here in the united states, just look at the scandal surrounding serrato's. the runners this founders claimed that they had revolutionize the way the blood tests were done. and that their new technology could detect diseases earlier than any existing blood tests, without any proof that the technology even existed. the company reached evaluation of tens of billions of dollars, only to collapse. all of the companies founders are now in prison. and even more recent examples include that of crypto currency exchange f t x. and if it's founder

sam bagman freed, how great would it be to be a billionaire in your twenties? and if you're not saying bagman freed, how great would it be to latch on to someone like him and make millions of dollars for an investment of a fraction of that amount. but that's not real life. the kind of strategy will always catch up to you. bill black is an associate professor of economics and law at the university of missouri at kansas city where he teaches white collar crime, public finance, anti trust law and economics, as well as latin american development. he's a former executive director of the institute for fraud prevention. he has taught at the lyndon b johnson school of public affairs at the university of texas at austin as well as at santa clara university. professor black was litigation director at the federal home loan bank board, deputy director of the savings and loan oversight body, the ssl, i see general counsel of the federal home loan bank of san francisco, and senior deputy chief council at the office of thrift supervision. he's the

author of a lot of books and his book, the best way to rob a bank is to own one, which was published in 2005 is considered to be a classic in this genre. professor black, welcome to the show. we're very happy to have you. thank you. it's a, it's an honor to actually meet you. i have to admit that i am fascinated by the case of sam bagman fried the founder of f t x and the co founder of alameda research a year ago. forms rank to this 31 year old. as the 41st richest american, and the 60th richest person in the world, with a net worth of some $26000000000.00. that's at the age of $31.00. the conventional wisdom was that he had earned every dollar on his own son called him a genius. and many analysts lauded his abilities in quantitative research. but it turns out that it was all just a fraud. many banking in investment professionals were taken in by sam bank,

been freed, who's also known as s b. s. many politicians were taken in by him too. so when didn't you realize that something was amiss? what was it that triggered your interest? low salary was always too good to be true and the man was incapable of explaining anything in finance. so anything and everything he said demonstrated that it was there was no there, there. this was a scam. and yes, it's easy, easy. it's not genius, it's a dash of the on that part of these kind of criminals to get the financial people in the world to stay in your praises. even though you're actually an arrogant, more on a s b s, founded f t x, which was known as the crypto currency derivatives exchange in april, 2019 it began operating a month later, he immediately became

a washington darling. he testified before congress about regulating the crypto currency industry. he attracted investments from long standing and completely legitimate wall street firms can even offer a 6000000000 dollar investment to rely on mosque to help with this purchase of twitter, that investment was declined. a major investment firm called sequoia capital even lauded s b f in a glowing profile, which it later had to take down. so i guess my question is pretty simple. how did he full so many people? or was it their own greed that allowed them to be full credit? so again, it's really easy to fool people in finance. and that's why you see so many of the fraud occur in finance. so let's say burn beta off or any made of never invested in anything in the scam period, right?

the running apache skiing and really prominent people came to the sea and explained in chapter and verse, why this was the ponzi scheme. and the lawyers who dominate the see what we don't understand, finance the type of thing. and everyone saying the price is why did they sing the praises? because most of them were paid to say the same. the praises and the others were purportedly getting really, really rich from singing the praises and f. anybody told the cruise, the whole thing collapsed and you lost all your money. so nobody involved has much of incentive to tell the truth, and that's why was only a couple of whistle blowers that provided that unique benefit and should have led to it being shut down, you know, but decade earlier. but the whistle blowers were ignored. invocation sam banking

free. right? it's nothing. it's a, it's a nothing built on nothing. so the crypt apparently is nothing. you know, it's the old joke about the oakland when you get there there's no there there. and then you create an exchange of this. nothing. now how do you suppose to make money on this? well, you can only make money if you can create a bubble within crypto. but here comes to the moronic art in terms of sandbag vent, free combined with the arrogance. right? so i'm not think about normal banker, you have to pay interest to get people to give you money, right? it's all deposits. and then you have brick and mortar expenses, running buildings and all them. there are types of banks, the credit doors changes or nothing, right? it's, it's just basically a software app. you have virtually no expenses. and this has

go, hey i to be a banker. why just have them exchange, why don't i take the money to invest? and i'll have this mass of advantage over all other bankers. i get my money free, they have to pay in the way of deposits, and i got no brick and mortar expenses and they got very large, brick and mortar expenses. this is a se, i'll make a ton of money. it's up there more rugs, right? they know nothing about making real low. plus, they're not interested in making real loans because the only non moronic part is, hey, i don't actually have to make money or just debit claim i'm making money. right. and now this is the modern era where we're seeing these incredibly crude, a sophisticated, broad serrano elizabeth holmes, never produces a product, a gets valued at $7000000000.00. and there's a whistle blower. his name is tyler, right? schultz, kind of a famous name and i are, you know,

national security route. right. and so tyler goes to work and tell you what, actually a biologist with substantial lab experience. and he comes and he tells his grandfather who's the, you know, a key board member at toronto's. hey, it's a complete scale and explains to him in detail. and his grandfather who loves him, chooses to believe, elizabeth holmes, who is a freshman, that's her education. a freshman college, she took a year of college, she was actually in the air and tried to explain scientifically, this device because it was about them getting a device right. made up, there was never a penny of profit earn and he got $50000000000.00. some bank, my free had nothing burgers on top of nothing burgers and went on programs in which

he was asked by bloomberg. how does this work? and he explained it was a black box. and then his explanation was a pure ponzi scheme. you're going to hear the bloomberg reporters erupt into laughter. and by the way, that's the problem with the modern media. they don't erupt into outrage this. it has ripped up all these people to import those. wow. i really think of myself as cynical, but boy, you are really over the top describing this ponzi scheme. and again, there is nothing there and he's so incompetent that even though he has free money to invest healthy, just put it in the vanguard. he would be a real billionaire to things began falling apart for f t x. after only 3 and a half years in business. in november 2020 to finance ceo chang ping. chow tweeted that his firm would sell its holdings of f t t, which was f t x is token. this kicked off a twitter storm between chang and s b f. that force the price of not just f t t,

but all other crypto currencies down. and within days f t x had a cash prices, so in response financed announced that it would buy f t x. but the value of the token continued to crash. so finance dropped out and when they dropped out, they criticized f t. x is handling of investors money that lead to something akin to an old fashion run on the back. and within 48 hours, sam bagman freed was no longer a billionaire. it turned out that f t x had loaned billions of dollars to alameda to cover its liabilities. and in the end, f t x, alameda, and get this 180 associated entities, all declared bankruptcy. how in the world could something like this happened, was there are no oversights, no regulation. and if there was, and then why not. okay,

so this has existed for centuries. the famous explanation of this earliest and time is bossed yet a sort of protocol economist. and in france, centuries ago, when plunder becomes a way of life for men and society, they create a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. so they hired folks in your case, they didn't just, you know, work on key politicians. they worked on low scientology profession and the law profession, and you got the use of the world doing these preposterous memos that purported that, oh, it's not really torture unless you cause pain equivalent to the destruction of the human oregon. like what is it that there's just

a completely made up uh no legal basis, but the it's the same, right. it's just absolutely a theme. and then you've got a cottage younger jury, a industry of psychologists that want to torture. right. they gonna call it non torture, but they're going to market themselves as we will train you on these enhanced interrogation methods. right. in the case of sam bakeman fried, you got all these clowns saying, oh this is new, this is innovative and you go, well, what is this? so for example, the most famous of the crypto currencies. do you see big kline, you know, can you go and use bit coined to buy your sandwich? of course not. you can't because it's

a 100000 times more expensive. mm hm. for them to do a single transaction like that, then it is for visa to do it. and by the way, that happens to show up the way up the pollution mass of the use of electrical generation. so these are con stories, but then they get to know if you're going to live. right? and you've seen this all these abuses that we've talked about, whether they're in finance, whether they're in torturing people, etc. they are all based on the necessity of life. and they've got to get some people, not every body, some people believe those lies and it is easy to hire. in essence politicians, the are firms. this is what's different when the c e. o is the truck decision,

create this bass predatory network, and he can use the funds of the firm to rip off the firm. thank you. bill. we're speaking with bill black, a law professor and banking whistleblower about the scandal it f t x. the crypto currency trading house that was very recently the darling of wall street and official washington only to implode under the weight of its own apparent corruption . stay tune. when we come back we'll talk about what to expect in the trial of f t x founder sam bagman for the. 2 the

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the motion of the nuclear love, seeing the muscles do if you look on the visual, do want to pull up significantly post on zillow, while it be almost getting used to put value, what do you do origin by the office, the rest of the done, the newest frame on the belief systems to good lou do what i see these the buses, the little gear limitations as this to the, to the most of the

welcome back to the whistle blowers. i'm john kerry onto we're speaking with professor bill black about the scandal at the crypto currency trading house f t x. good to have you with this bill? bill sam, thank been freed, was arrested in the bahamas on december 12th 2022. the day before he was scheduled to testify on capitol hill and he was extradited to the united states. he was charged with wire fraud conspiracy to commit wire fraud securities fraud. conspiracy to commit securities, fraud, and money laundering. he currently faces up to 115 years in prison. to make matters worse for s b s, his fiance and his best friend who had both been executives at f t x. have agreed to testify against him at trial. you've had a lot of experience in these kinds of criminal prosecutions. how does this play out?

does this be a, have any reason at all to be optimistic? no, and then that's why, oh, it's not just to i, i think at this point it's at least by of all the entire senior leadership, other than sam bank been free as but guilty to multiple felonies and they had them dead to rights. really be the surprising thing is that they were expedited because their where they were doing business was chosen because the country is normally very unwilling to expedite s b f got himself in even more trouble in early 20, $23.00 when he was charged with 4 additional criminal charges focused on what the justice department called more than $300.00 illegal political donations. can you explain that to us who received these donations and where the donations ever returned? so this was very time in the savings and lo debacle. as i explained,

this is what the police control frauds do when they create their predatory network, sit there from the private sector, they're going to make sure that they have a public sector component that's going to demand things be done. right? and, and you've seen this in your own like where the justice department said no, we should not prosecute him. and then the obama administration comes in and people have been lobbied and such and boom, criminal prosecution gets created again. and by the way, in the savings alone debacle, as i said, we had over 1700 convictions. so these leads how many in the great financial crisis which use the same fraud mechanism? 0. well, that doesn't happen accidentally. we created this occurred criminal referral system . and they live in, they did it, we talked to the top,

the f, b i person in this area. he believes that in the entire great financial crisis, the entire one from all the federal banking, regulatory agencies. there were 6 criminal referrals. just our little agency, dealing with savings and loans made over 30000 criminal referrals. so why is it super valuable to have politicians in your pocket? because they don't want to go to prison. you know, so you know, we had the eating fights famously, the 5 us senators and to speak for the house that was all about political contributions. and it was, and this a key thing for people to understand whenever your politics are, it is both parties that this is done to. right. so there was some publicity about sam bagman free, gave overwhelmingly the democrats. yeah,

it's true, but is confederates gave overwhelming liter above a certain make sure that everybody got a taste and it showed, remember i emphasized that there in the shadow financial sector. well folks that the c c and the commodity futures trading commission, have many folks and been pushing to get some regulation. but 2 things are happening. uh, 3 things are happening. one, they're making the same basement for each of the world are using these political contributions to make sure that the leadership of the c c, includes many people who are their central tasks they feel is protecting the crypto crowd. right? so that's the regulator component. and also their hope is to prevent the

prosecute shifts by getting iris hostile. so for example, the fcc of the house. this one is partisan, the house republicans for 30 years. we waged a war to make sure the fcc doesn't have enough resources to deal with modern up in technology type stuff. so they go after them in that regard. but the, the 3rd thing is the judiciary. and there's been a lot of emphasis on the, the trump a point he's there should be. but the biggest thing is in many ways i understand why inversion is an incredibly important issue. but for every abortion decision, there are 20 decisions on business and almost all of them go in the same direction to make it much, much, much more difficult to can that 2 groups of people in america,

ceos and prominent politicians on corruption charges. and this is corrupting our ability, even our willingness, even our understanding because if there's no regulator, the facts don't come out. all you get is this modern stuff for the business shows that are yahoo ish. i don't, i'm not trying to pick on yahoo. but you know that that's the is the kind of the phrase, right? yeah. who is the big business people? wonderful. they must be doing isn't to. and yet more trouble followed same sam bank than freed. he was finally jailed on august 11th because he was attempting to tamper with witnesses repeatedly contacting people who are likely to testify against him, even after being warned about doing so by the judge. so now he sits in a terrible prison in brooklyn, new york awaiting trial,

which is scheduled to begin on october. second, this is all very news were the stuff. and we know that sam bagman fried is not the only crooked money man out there. so why is it so and usual, why is it so rare for a billionaire money person to be prosecuted? why don't we see more price occasions like this? this is really important selection bias. don't assume that the be the tiny number of these folks you see prosecuted, represent the universe of the people doing the scale, right? the people that do it through more sophisticated beings, accounting. last by top tier audit firms and by the credit rating agencies. so in look, great financial crisis, the toxic waste in jargon cdls that shouldn't have gotten even a single c rating,

which means basically you're bankrupt every single time, i don't mean almost every single time every single time. got a triple a rate, which is a top rate credit rating in the world. they're going to 0 risk of default. right? it pays and in sophisticated folks are still using those tactics and we don't see them at all. only release the dynamic regulators working with the best f b i. agents and prosecutors can deal with those folks and it, and it needs to come as a presidential emphasis. eventually, none of those things are happening, as you can see. and you have all the politicians which and then it's not all, but it's, you know, hundreds of them have taken this money from the

thieves. are they going to be eager to hold of your and in a savings alone debacle. henry b gonzalez who held the key hearings they tried, even though he had seen yardi, they being the democrats in this case to prevent him from becoming chairman of the agency because they knew he might actually investigate the fraud and embarrassed. so thanks so much for being with us bill. we appreciate you taking the time indian entrepreneur shift not or ask rhetorically, what happens to a private company that comes out with a quarterly report and an annual report. it gives transparency. it talks of basic issues of governance and transactions with related parties. that's the opposite of what happened did f t x and the comparison brings us back to the basics. truth, honesty and transparency always try and sometimes it takes time. sometimes investors lose their money. but the truth always comes out just asks them bank vent

free. thanks for joining us for another episode of the whistle blowers, i'm john to reaku and we'll see you next time. 2 2 2 2 2 the nightmare boss and said 3400000. so if you don't visit to vehicle code, you have an old list assess that was sort of be fissions and so just appear to me. i don't know if you let us, but that's our growth in this. but i'm not fit the show. mean is me a one on the desktop or joseph this alex is low to me on i was

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