White-collar crime

Compare these two sentences, as tests used to say. First, Sam Bankman-Fried, the thirty-two-year-old American founder of the collapsed FTX crypto exchange, who has been sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for a fraud that cost customers and investors $11 billion and for which, according to the New York judge, he uttered “never a word of remorse.” The jail term may look long but experts say he could be out in eighteen and at least Bankman-Fried has a prospect of sunshine before he’s old — unlike other US fraudsters such as Bernie Madoff and the Ponzi-scheme operator Allan Stanford, whose century-plus sentences ensured they would never be out at all.

Alvin Bragg has made good on his campaign promise to hold former president Donald J. Trump “accountable” by indicting him under New York law for thirty-four felony counts of falsifying business records. For seven years, Bragg’s predecessor and numerous federal entities considered the same facts and declined to pursue charges. Given Bragg’s well documented leniency toward the violent criminals currently terrorizing New York, it’s difficult to imagine this case would have been brought against anyone but Trump.