That's what's possible if sentencing guidelines weren't a thing.
Jeff Skilling (Enron) was convicted on more counts and ended up serving 14 of a 24-year sentence. Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos got 11 years and 3 months.
> That's what's possible if sentencing guidelines weren't a thing.
It's what possible given the facts in this case under the guidelines, too.
> Jeff Skilling (Enron) was convicted on more counts and ended up serving 14 of a 24-year sentence.
The number of charges isn't the driving factor in calculating total punishment under the sentencing guidelines.
The Wire Fraud charge alone, looks like it gets a Offense Level of:
7 (base) + 30 (amount of loss over $550 million) + (breadth of victim impact between 2 [more than 10 victims, irrespective of degree of hardship] and 6 [caused substantial financial hardship to at least 25 victims]) + (2 for a substantial amount of the fraudulent scheme conducted outside of the US) for a total of 41 to 45.
The maximum level in the guidelines, calling for a life sentence (but limited by the aggregate total maximum sentence of the charged offenses if none support a life sentence), regardless of criminal history category, is 43.
I feel like the zeitgeist was "the world economy got cratered by these assholes in NYC, and we need an easy guy to convict" and Madoff was just _there_. Not that he didn't deserve it, but I still don't see SBF getting Madoff-level time.
He was worse than Sam Bankman-Fried. First, his scam lasted decades. Second, he was much better at hiding his crime. Third, he destroyed his family (one of his sons committed suicide, and because of this, his wife ended up destitute and alone).
Madoff was way worse than SBF, but for other reasons IMHO. Madoff was a pure scam, it was a complete lie from the start.
In the case of SBF, it was indeed fraud: he was lying to his clients about what he did with their money. But there was another level to this, because he was also, I think, lying to himself and thinking he would make them whole in the end.
Therefore the intent is different. Culpability is not just about scale or harm to victims, it's always about intent.
I reply to my own comment because I can't edit it anymore, just to say that in fact there are many more similarities between Madoff and SBF than I first thought.
Madoff also had a legitimate business, the Ponzi was on the side; he was very generous to his employees, donated a lot to charities, gave/lent lots of money to his children; he liked to commute on private planes (at a time when this was quite uncommon); he was at the forefront of technology innovation and the software his legitimate firm developed, helped build NASDAQ; he was a prominent member of his community, testified to Congress, was a proponent of regulation", and an important political donor.
But in the end, he pleaded guilty and confessed, contrary to SBF.
So I don't think anymore that Madoff was "way worse" than SBF; in fact I think it's the opposite.
