EA - List of past fraudsters similar to SBF by NunoSempere

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: List of past fraudsters similar to SBF, published by NunoSempere on November 28, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum.To inform my forecasting around FTX events, I looked at the Wikipedia list of fraudsters and selected those I subjectively found similar—you can see a spreadsheet with my selection here. For each of the similar fraudsters, I present some common basic details below together with some notes.My main takeaway is that many salient aspects of FTX have precedents: the incestuous relationship between an exchange and a trading house (Bernie Madoff, Richard Whitney), a philosophical or philanthropic component (Enric Duran, Tom Petters, etc.), embroiling friends and families in the scheme (Charles Ponzi), or multi-billion fraud not getting found out for years (Elizabeth Holmes, many others).Fraud with a philosophical, philanthropic or religious componentBernard EbbersPrison: YesJurisdiction: USAmount: $18BI find the section on his faith most informative:While CEO of WorldCom, he was a member of the Easthaven Baptist Church in Brookhaven, Mississippi. As a high-profile member of the congregation, Ebbers regularly taught Sunday school and attended the morning church service with his family. His faith was overt, and he often started corporate meetings with prayer. When the allegations of conspiracy and fraud were first brought to light in 2002, Ebbers addressed the congregation and insisted on his innocence. "I just want you to know you aren't going to church with a crook," he said. "No one will find me to have knowingly committed fraud."Also note that eventually, $8B was restored to investors.Enric DuránPrison: No, life in hidingJurisdiction: SpainAmount: ~$700k (all amounts are inflation approximate and adjusted using in2013dollars.com)During the 2008 crisis, he robbed Spanish banks by taking out spurious loans, and donated the amounts to anticapitalist causes. He wrote a guide about how to do this, and widely distributed it: an online version in Spanish and English can be found here.Personal takeaway: Stealing money for altruistic causes is not unprecedented. And if you are going to cross that line, it can be done with much more style. It will also be viewed much more sympathetically if you steal from organizations perceived to be corrupt.Tom PettersPrison: YesJurisdiction: USAmount: ~$5BSome of his donations were later returned (bold emphasis my own):Petters was appointed to the board of trustees for the College of St. Benedict in 2002; his mother had attended the school. In 2006 he gave $2 million for improvements to St. John's Abbey on the campus of adjacent Saint John's University. In light of the criminal prosecution, St. John's Abbey arranged to return the $2 million gift to the court-appointed receiver for the Petters bankruptcy. In October 2007, Petters made a $5.3 million gift to the College of St. Benedict to create the Thomas J. Petters Center for Global Education. In 2006, he served as a co-chairman of a capital campaign at his high school, Cathedral High School, and offered to match donations up to $750,000.Petters formed the John T. Petters Foundation to provide gifts and endowments at select universities to benefit future college students. The foundation was formed to honor his son, John Thomas Petters, who was killed on a visit in 2004 to Florence, Italy. The college student inadvertently wandered onto private property where the owner, Alfio Raugei, mistook him for an intruder and stabbed him to death." In response, in September 2004, Tom Petters pledged $10 million to his late son's college, Miami University. He later promised an additional $4 million, with the total to support two professorships and the John T. Petters Center for Leadership, Ethics and Skills Development within the Farmer School of Business. Miami Univers...