Julian Dorey Podcast - 😳 [VIDEO] - SBF Insider Reveals Details of SECRET House-Arrest Convos | Tiffany Fong • 174

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

(***TIMESTAMPS in Description Below) ~ Tiffany Fong is a journalist who has covered the inside stories behind the Celsius Crash and the downfall of Sam Bankman-Friend (SBF). EPISODE LINKS: - Julian Dorey PODCAST MERCH: https://legacy.23point5.com/creator/Julian-Dorey-9826?tab=Featured  - Support our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey  - Join our DISCORD: https://discord.gg/B4PHFq2u  - SUBSCRIBE to Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@UChs-BsSX71a_leuqUk7vtDg  TIFFANY LINKS: - Tiff YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TiffanyFong  - Tiff Twitter: https://twitter.com/TiffanyFong_  ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Martin Shkreli; Tiff & SBF; Tiff’s Backstory 12:34 - How Tiff made money; getting into Bit 21:30 - Tiffany loses everything; SBF’s unfortunate girlfriend 29:55 - Tiffany DMs FTX CEO Sam Bankman Friend (SBF); Date Night interview story 34:16 - Tiff’s phone interview with SBF; SBF lack of common sense 40:27 - SBF addresses scandalous rumors; Collaborating w/ Coffeezilla; Bahamian Prison 49:22 - Spending hour on phone with SBF 55:23 - Tiff visits & records SBF on house arrest 1:00:04 - SBF reminisces about Prison; SBF’s parents 1:06:12 - Julian on SBF going to prison; Playing Tiff’s SBF Recording 1:13:30 - SBF & FTX Fraud Explained; Alameda Research backstory 1:18:14 - SBF & Caroline Ellison Relationship Controversy 1:22:16 - FTX first signs of Collapse; Binance CZ vs SBF 1:29:37 - SBF’s politics; SBF’s parents’ involvement; Tiff & NY Post 1:35:36 - Tiff returns to SBF’s house; Why judge threw SBF in jail; Caroline cooperates 1:45:45 - Tiffany goes to Trial; The Case against Sam 1:53:07 - First witness vs SBF; Michael Lewis 2:00:12 - Tiff breaks down SBF’s IQ & Mentality; SBF South Park Episode 2:08:42 - Sam’s parents hated Tiffany; Caroline cries on stand; SBF Presidential Ambitions 2:17:44 - Tiffany’s controversial tweet; SBF sentencing; Sam’s failures on the stand 2:31:05 - Why Tiffany wasn’t in courtroom for verdict; Her YouTube video aftermath 2:35:37 - Tiffany’s interaction w/ Sam’s mom at trial 2:42:12 - Tiff predicts outcome of SBF’s second trial; Celsius sues Tiff 2:49:00 - What’s next for Tiffany CREDITS: - Hosted & Produced by Julian D. Dorey - Intro & Episode Edit by Alessi Allaman ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “JULIANDOREY”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Music via Artlist.io ~ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 174 - Tiffany Fong Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How long were you at his house on the 27th? Probably like several hours. I was like shitting my pants the first time I was going to visit him because I was like, I've never visited someone on a house arrest. How the f*** does this work? So I got to his house. There was a f***ing police barricade around his entire street and there were police cars just like sitting in the car.

So I had to like approach the barricade and I was like, Hi, I'm here to see Sam. A policeman escorted me to Sam's door from the barricade and then I just like waited outside, rang the doorbell. And then Sam opens the door in like his little t-shirt and his little shorts and his little ankle monitor. Just looking so nerdy, so small. What does he say? Hi, Tiffany.

Um, well. Matt is such a fascinating character, but he's also like one of the most blunt people ever with his own experiences and some of the stuff not just what he's done but you talk about like prison and everything there i know he was licking his chops looking at this kid who didn't think he was ever going to do prison time being like oh he's not gonna do well oh my god i mean i didn't know too much about him prior but he was good um good person to talk to about Sam in prison. I also – like I'd also talked to Martin Shkreli a few months ago. Oh, shit. Yeah.

Whoa. But yeah, so Martin had a lot to say about that as well. What's Martin like? I mean – are we filming right now? We're filming. We're on. I don't want to start with drama or anything. I think we're already done. Well, I don't want to start with drama or anything. I think we're already done.

I don't know. Martin, he was cool and helpful when I was asking him questions about how Sam might do in prison or in jail. We had a little bit of a little tiff. Ooh. Like my name. Ooh. All right. We'll leave it there.

Nothing that juicy. We're not going to go that deep. Nothing that juicy. Nothing that juicy. Nothing I want to expose or anything like that. Ooh. All right. We'll leave it there. Nothing that juicy. We're not going to go that deep. Nothing that juicy. Nothing that juicy. Nothing I want to expose or anything like that. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah, so I haven't talked to Martin in a couple of weeks, but he had interesting things to

say about how Sam might do in prison. What did he think? I mean, he was basically just like, I mean, look at this guy. He's sort of effeminate. He's a little maybe autistic. He's certainly not going to do so well. Yeah. He's like, this guy's going to get extorted. Yeah. He's sort of effeminate. He's a little maybe autistic. Like he's certainly not going to do so well. Yeah. He's like, this guy's going to get extorted.

Yeah. He's like that. I think that's the least of his worries. I think he could probably afford the extortion, to be honest with you. I know. But yeah, he's just like the most meek, like timid, least manly guy I've ever met. I mean, this guy is not going to do well in prison. We're starting off tough right here.

I know. And I don't even mean these as like, I don't mean to shit on him, but oh, can we curse on him? You can say whatever the fuck you want. Okay, cool. Like, I don't mean to shit on him, but I think Sam would say the same for himself. Like, he knows he's a fucking nerd. He definitely is. He can't beat anyone up. He's not going to do well if anyone approaches him. He's also just not very confrontational. Like, he's not, he doesn't anyone approaches him he's also just not very confrontational

like he's not he doesn't i feel like i've done some things and said some things about him where he has every right to kind of confront me and be like i can't believe you said that about me but i've brought i've brought those things up to his face and been like were you mad when i released that one like that one audio clip of you talking about he made a lot of dark donations to republicans and then it got cited in the Federal Elections Commission complaint against you. And then you got that count from the DOJ about your political donations. Were you mad? And he's like, it's okay.

He's so non-confrontational. He's always been so polite and nice to me, but it's never said anything. Like he's never been aggressive or like been mad at me for anything. So I'm just like this man when he's like actually faced with real, real men. Yeah. It's not gonna- Something like that. I'm a little nervous for him.

Would you, if you were him, would you have talked to you? Probably not. Yeah. I mean, I was surprised he would talk to me in the first place. I mean, first of all, I'm just not some big name journalist. I don't work for the Wall Street Journal. I don't work for the New York Times. So I would just be like, who the fuck is this random chick on social media? And also the only thing I was really known for. What's better than a well marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door.

A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Prior, I guess you said that you followed me for like... I followed you for a while. Yeah. Yeah. And then you ended up in his house. I was like, what the fuck? So like prior to me covering FTX or Sam, the only thing I was covering was Celsius Networks

bankruptcy, which I was particularly upset about because as I guess you might know, covering ftx or sam uh the only thing i was covering was celsius networks bankruptcy which i was particularly upset about because as i guess you might know and maybe most people probably don't know but i lost 3.1 bitcoins 11.6 eth like over 200k at the time i deposited it into another company called celsius network we'll come back to that we'll come back to it yeah yeah um but i most of my coverage on social media was just me shitting on celsius me talking shit about the founder alex mishinsky me being like daily writing him like go fuck yourself alex mishinsky good for you yeah good for me i guess but like sam having like his company collapsed and seeing that on social media i don't know why he was enticed to have a conversation

with me someone who's like notoriously been very hard on another sort of crypto criminal alex mishinsky i would be like this girl it's not gonna she's like notoriously been very hard on another sort of crypto criminal, Alex Mashinsky, I would be like, this girl is not going to, she's not going to like me very much. Why did he reach out to you? And like, when did you first tell that? Like, when did you first connect with him at all? Just like a text or anything? Because you didn't know him long before FTX fell. No, I didn't know Sam. So after I lost money to that Celsius company, I just started covering Celsius's bankruptcy on social media. And employees inside of Celsius apparently began following me on social media and started sending me leaked information. I think one employee just reached out to me and said, hey, I really like your YouTube channel. And I think there's some

information that I think that you should be aware of and that other creditors should be aware of. So someone sent me a leaked audio file of an internal all-hands meeting of Celsius Network, a now bankrupt company, talking about what they wanted to do with everyone's money. So I ended up posting that on Twitter. And I also gave it to the New York Times as well. And they did a story on it. But I posted the actual audio on Twitter. So this was in September 2022. And the day that I posted that, Sam Baikman-Fried just randomly started following me on social media. It was fucking

crazy. I mean, at the time, I had practically no following. I had just started using Twitter like a couple months ago. So I had probably a couple thousand followers. And that was the first like, oh, this is a big shot that followed me. So he was the first noteworthy person, I guess, that followed me. And I wasn't even following him first. I didn't even really know that much about him. I just knew that I'd seen this guy's face on fucking covers of magazines. So he's obviously a big deal. So I think I just messaged him that day, September 13th, 2022. And I was like, hey, thanks for the follow. And he was like, yeah, I just thought it was really interesting that you post that Celsius audio. Where are you working during this time are you still working somewhere oh i wasn't working anywhere i haven't i haven't had like a full-time job since college i just um

after college i got offered a few jobs and i was just having a little existential crisis i was like what i'm gonna take one of these fucking corporate jobs good for you and be someone's bitch for the rest of my life i'm like what i'm gonna get two weeks off a year be someone's bitch for the rest of my life. I'm like, what? I'm going to get two weeks off a year. Be someone's bitch for what? To spend years escalating the corporate ladder. And for like, what's the end goal? Just getting a little bit more money each year. I'm like, I would rather take less money and live like a fucking hobo than be someone's bitch. See, this is why people like you. Because you're real.

You're blunt. You're like very to the point with things. Like, don't care what people think about it. And I agree. Like, there's so many people. I talk with so many friends of mine right now who are still working in corporate you and i were talking before i work there for a while yeah and they're not all of them but many of them are just miserable right even the ones making a lot of money because they're reporting just like you said you you're someone else's bitch and there's rules that make no sense that you have

to follow because some fucking lawyer somewhere said oh someone's gonna get sued for that it's brutal totally it's fucking not worth it i mean i don't i don't even see what everyone's end game is i think most people's end game is just making as much money as possible and they think that once they hit that end goal and they finally hit that i don't know what whatever career their peak of the industry they're they're wanting to hit they think they'll be happy and i'm like i don't think you will be. Hey, guys, I need your help with three quick things. And if you're watching me on Spotify video right now, you can see this timer to my right. It is going to be fast. Number one, if you are not already following the show, please hit that follow button on Spotify or whatever audio platform you're on. Number two, if you're on Spotify right now on our show's

homepage in the description, you will see a link to our Spotify podcast clips channel. That's right. We are posting clips from this podcast every single day on there. There is a whole library. So go over there and follow. And finally, number three, if you are on Spotify or Apple, please leave a five-star review. It is a huge, huge help to the show. Now let's get to the episode. And I feel like when I was getting out of college, I just kind of like looked, I zoomed out and looked at my whole life. And I was like, do you, do I really think I'm going Now, let's get to the episode. did the opposite right after college and i just i had my my family gave me like a like a gift after like some some money as a gift after i graduated college and um i just decided to use that and just go backpacking so i just like set off like solo backpacking whoa where'd you go i went i i think it was like over 50 60 countries but i just went 50 60 countries yeah i think backpacking i'm thinking like

colorado or something oh no no no see and i call it backpacking but i had i had luggage but i'll say that i call it backpacking just because i was staying in like fucking hostels and i was just solo traveling yeah so i booked a one-way ticket to i think i started in paris and it just looked like a cheap ticket i think it was like i think it was like under 300 bucks and i was just staying in hostels that i think at the time were like maybe in Europe actually hostels are maybe in like the $20, $30 range. If you go to fucking Southeast Asia, I was spending like three bucks a night, five bucks a night with a free breakfast. Like fucking Vietnam or Cambodia. Those places like dirt cheap.

And then also in like Morocco, I was staying in hostels for like $3, $5, etc. So I did that and just went all over the fucking world. I think I hit every continent other than antarctica and um yeah so that i did i spent almost three years just doing that um and it was just really aimless i didn't really know what i wanted to do and i was three years though that's like not that's not three weeks that's a long fucking time it was fucking hard like it's it's mentally and emotionally hard because I don't think humans are meant to just be solo. No man's. Yeah, exactly.

Like you're meant to have a community and stable friend groups and stable friendships and family, et cetera. Did you do this with any – like did anyone join you at spurts along the way or was it all just you? I mean I just set off alone and I also think that like most of my L.A. girlfriends – like I went to USC. I was like in a sorority. None of my girlfriends were interested in doing anything like this. So I just set off alone because I knew I went to USC, I was like in a sorority, none of my girlfriends were interested in doing anything like this. So I just set off alone because I knew I wanted to do it. And I just met people along the way. So I like, I don't know, I probably I probably had like little flings with like, an Australian dude, and I would like go to a few countries.

That's right. You gotta ride the wave a little bit. So like, and I've met a couple of my like best girlfriends through like backpacking, but they're all like from Australia or England or whatever the fuck. So yeah, I would have like little spurts with people, but most people didn't have like a year of travel. I feel like most people were kind of traveling for a month or so. Where was your favorite place? I really love South America.

I really love. Where'd you go there? I love Colombia. I mean, I didn't actually do that many countries in South America I've been to Brazil Argentina Colombia I think only those countries

that's three more than me so there you go one day one day one day we'll get out of here Colombia was sick yeah yeah I love Morocco

I feel like I just like the places where it was just so different from what I was used to but there are also countries where I'm like I couldn't see myself moving there

but it was interesting did you get to spend like time with the natives when you were visiting these places too? God, it's so sad because I feel like when I was setting off my travels, I thought I was going to have really like an Anthony Bourdain-esque experience where I'm like hanging out with locals and like understanding their cultures. But honestly, I feel like I was staying in hostels. It was a bunch of like drunk Australian dudes and I would just like go out to bars with them. You know, I feel kind of bad looking back. I didn't really enrich myself culturally.

So young though. Like what do we know coming out of college, you know? Exactly. And I was like, hey, this is my time to go drinking with random people. I feel like if I was to do this now, I like I'm not going to drink with like a 20-year-old fucking Australian guy. guy so that was the time to do it i got it out of my system i have no interest in doing it anymore never again never again i mean i'm happy what about if it was nice hotels maybe nice hotels but that's expensive and that's when i need more money right you need that moolah

coming in yeah because it was so fucking cheap it was so cheap but so you didn't you you're saying you really didn't have any jobs along the way here you were doing random things like when you were you finished, were you thinking, as it's coming on, like two years there, and you're like, shit that I met. And I was like, what do you do for work? And I was trying to like get a gauge for what other people did and what they enjoyed. And I met a few people who were, I guess, digital nomads, which sounds so fucking scammy, you know, like the people who like sell their online courses. But a couple of people that I met were doing that stuff. And they kind of showed me the ropes in terms of like different online business models that they had done and they had tried. So, I mean, some of them were doing dropshipping. Some of them were doing Amazon FBA. some of them were doing print on demand. So I ultimately tried out a bunch of those little business models. And I ended up doing pretty

well with making print on demand stores. I don't know, I wonder if I could like start one today, if I would do as well. But I started making those stores like towards the end of my travels. And then I don't know the term print on demand. What do you mean by that? So that's basically, it's basically just like making a bunch of stupid fucking designs on Photoshop, or I guess you could use other, whatever program you want, but I use Photoshop and just make silly designs with sometimes just funny

saying, sometimes just little pictures I drew. Oh my God. Sorry. Something's in my eye. And then you can slap those designs onto whatever product you want. So like a fucking mug like that, you can just put your design on that.

And you don't have to actually print it on. You just upload it onto a website. And then it'll make a mock-up image that'll display on. You can put them on Etsy, eBay, Redbubble, fucking your own Shopify store. And then a customer can buy that item. And then the company will print that item directly or print your design directly on the item and ship to the customer. So you don't have to hold inventory. And there's no upfront cost.

You just have to put time in and make stupid fucking designs and upload them. Wow. So I made a ton of stores like that. I definitely bought some of those. You probably have. You probably have. You might not have even known because it probably doesn't say this is going to be printed on demand. But you probably have.

I feel like a lot of people probably have. Were you operating out of the U. the US doing that? I did that. I think I probably toyed around with making stores as I was on my travels. And then I actually stopped traveling because COVID was starting to hit. Oh, that's right. Yeah, that's that timing. Yeah, totally. So then that made me sort of homebound. And then I cracked down on the print on demand stores. And some of the stores that I had made did super fucking well during the pandemic, I think just because people couldn't shop in in person anymore so i was making a lot of money on some of my stores definitely not making that kind of money now but some of my

stores were doing really really well and um that's the time i think that's around when the fucking last crypto bull market hit so had you been the one that was in like 2017 2018 did you have any awareness of that when it was happening oh the last that bull market the first one oh yeah yeah yeah so i had i had been holding bitcoin i don't know if we got into this but i got my first bitcoin in 2011 when i was still in high school whoa 2011 i know but it's not because i was some fucking fucking whiz kid genius who was like on my laptop that's's where my head was going. I know. That'd be way cooler. But like guys, I'm not – your girl's not that – no, I'm not that stupid either.

But like it's not because I'm like some fucking nerd like that read the Bitcoin white paper. But one of my relatives was a Bitcoin miner when I was in high school. And in 2011, I was I think a junior or senior in high school. And for Christmas, he gave me a Bitcoin. In 2011, he was a Bitcoin miner. Yeah, yeah. That man was early. I know.

Good for him. He's fucking doing fine right now. I was going to say, did he keep it or was he one of those stories they lost in their dumpster somewhere? He's sold along the way. But since he was a Bitcoin miner, I think he's doing just fine. He won't tell me how many Bitcoins he has still, but I think he's fine. He's like, don't worry about it. That's funny.

So you didn't think anything of it, though. You just had it. Yeah. Did he give you it on a hard wallet? He did. He did. many bitcoins he has still but i think he's fine he's like don't worry about it that's funny um so you didn't think anything of it though you just had it yeah so did he give you it on a hard wallet he did he did at the time yeah and he was just trying to explain it to me and i was like i don't know what the fuck this is i'm like i'm like in fucking high school i was like i want like a car or something i'm like what the fuck is a bitcoin and he was like if you hold on to it i promise you'll you won't trust me bro yeah exactly it was like that and i was like all right what the i forgot about it and then in 2017 i remember i was in vietnam i was backpacking in 2017 and then i was just like scrolling on instagram and i was seeing all the

memes about bitcoin and like how it just hit fucking 20k and i was like shit i have one of those oh my god so like yeah that's like when i first began that's when i started getting a little bit interested in crypto like your girl's not in it for the tech. I like the fact that the number went up. Yes. And I think most people just are unwilling to say that out loud that if it's not all of it, it's a big part of it. I mean, like whenever I would talk with people about how I didn't look at my I didn't have any money. Right.

But I didn't look at my balance sheet of like Bitcoin because I viewed it as like a hedge, like maybe it would work. They looked at me like I had 10 heads. I'm like, I can't get caught up in this. We don't even know what it is. But it's still like the concept is very interesting. It's easy now to say, oh, it's all a fraud. You got a lot of arguments there. We're going to talk about that today, right?

But it's interesting how it's born out of, hey, they're printing fucking money around the world. The governments have too much control over stuff. So let's talk about this money on the internet that maybe they can't control. It's an interesting concept. The execution over time, like I've gotten a little bearish on that for obvious reasons but it's i remember back in 20 december 2017 is when i really started look or november i think 2017 is when i really started looking at it and that was when it was like the height of that first bull market i think you just mentioned that but you know it obviously crashed to shit in january but i went to i i had connected with a guy who had been the head of IBM's first global blockchain project at 22.

This was one of those dudes mining Bitcoin in his dorm room at Georgia in like 2017. I'm sorry, 2010. My friend Sloan Brakeville, amazing, amazing guy, very smart. And obviously he sees a lot of the tech behind it. And so he would take me to meetups in New York with some of the guys who were actually building this stuff. And this is during the bear of the market. I'm talking September, October, November 2018. And I looked around and I saw all the talent and I said, whoa, maybe. Like, whoa, this is interesting. And it feels like when we then got that second bull market in like 2021,

as the pandemics raging on on all the guys who might have actually been building things like actual real coders who were in it for that reason they got drowned out by the 99 of people who were like yo bro buy my new coin or nft and it just killed it for everyone totally is that about right i think so too i mean there was just so much like so much hype and i got wrapped up in the hype. I remember seeing, I was holding Bitcoin because my relative had Bitcoin mined and I had Bitcoin. And then I saw everyone buying ETH and buying NFTs. And I was like, oh, maybe this one's better. Maybe this one's better. So fucking stupid. Can you do print on demand for NFTs?

I probably Googled some dumb shit like that. And I was just like, maybe I picked the wrong one. So I started dumping a shit ton of money into ETH like a fucking idiot. And that's some of the money that I ended up leaving in Celsius. But yeah. So you put it into Celsius. And when did you say Celsius crashed again? Celsius halted withdrawals June 2022 and then went bankrupt July 2022. Oh, see, they were early.

They were the first, right? Motherfuckers. Wow. Alessa, you had money in Celsius, right? Yeah. RIP. RIP. Shout out. Yeah, so that, like, I'm just thinking of the chart here.

It started, it was full bull, like, March, April 2022. And then it took a dive, but, like, it wasn't crazy. It really got crazy at FTx but celsius is getting killed long before that so they must have what were they doing with it like how bad were their i'm gonna sound really dumb right now getting the wrong terms but how bad were they with like their ratios on on their balance sheets i think so i honestly think that celsius was worse in some ways than ftx but that alex Mashinsky is just less of a good businessman. So he ultimately ended up stealing less money. But I think that some of the shit

that Celsius was doing was kind of more evil. And it seems like they were actually sort of a fraud for longer than FTX was. But yeah, they were, let's see. I mean, I think there was an examiner's report that looked back at everything that Celsius did. And apparently, like Celsius had long told customers they were paying them 80% of the revenue they were generating. And apparently, at no point in Celsius's history did they ever generate enough revenue to be paying out customers that much money. So it feels like I'm kind of like, so they were paying out customers' yield from maybe other customers' deposits for several years. So it's very Ponzi-esque. Yeah, if you will. Exactly.

So it feels like Celsius was actually sort of a Ponzi and for longer than FTX was. And there's a lot of other shit that Celsius did. Like they were fucking degenning and buying fucking NFTs with some of our crypto and like fucking just gambling. It's nuts. I mean we had a whole financial crisis over this in 2008 with the banks doing similar things that I would argue actually wasn't even as bad, which is crazy to say. But like it's all about proprietary customer funding. Are you allowed to use it to make bets? Totally.

You can't. Like that's, I wasn't as familiar with like what the timeline there was, but when they, when the problem started in June, 2022, did you know right away all my assets in there are gone or was that you didn't find that out till later and you were just worried about it? I had a feeling. I mean, I think that like Terra Luna went down. I honestly like, yeah. So I think that's what spurred went down i honestly like oh yeah yeah so i think that's what spurred a lot of this yes and i honestly wasn't following crypto that much i honestly like plopped a bunch of my crypto in there without having done much research about

celsius but i saw like fucking influencers promoting it and saying that you can earn yield on your crypto and that it's safe and i was like i have some bitcoins i like the sound of that i like your girl loves passive incomes so i was like I'm just putting a shit ton of my money into this. It's fucking stupid. But in June, I remember getting a notification that says that we're pausing withdrawals, quote unquote pausing. Never good. I know. I'm like, you guys aren't fucking pausing withdrawals. You guys are fucking over. This is fucking done. So I think I knew at that moment, I was like, this is not unpausing.

And I was like, once you unpause this, every fucking customer is taking their money out so you guys are fucked anyway so it's like either way this goes you're fucked so was that like all your money in there um i had i had some other crypto on like in like cold storage but it was the majority the lie it was the line share of my crypto and savings so you just had your savings pretty much wiped out yeah you don't have a job yeah you're pissed yeah righteously so yes and you decide i'm gonna start reporting on this well yeah so like june that was that was in june or july 2022 and a couple months prior to that i had just gone through my first real breakup like my first very serious breakup so i was already like in my lowest state so i was like okay lost lost your man and then like a couple months later i'm like lost all my money i literally was i thought i was gonna fucking kill myself like i was so so low like i i was

just like in bed i didn't know what to do with my life and i didn't have an actual like real job and i was just sitting in bed are you in vegas now that was in vegas yeah okay yeah um i forget if this pandemic was still going on around that time but yeah i think i was still in vegas um but yeah i was just like immobile and i was just trying to do new things so that i didn't like fucking off myself so i was like volunteering at random shelters and trying to just keep myself busy and then one of the things i was trying to do just to keep myself busy was just like i guess i'll just make a youtube video and like plop it on youtube and see what happens talking about your whole experience at celsius obviously yeah my youtube video was just i lost i think the title was like i lost over 200k do we have that video can we pull that out oh god it's so fucking it's the very first one you posted right yeah but i won't do

that okay it's gonna make me cringe i remember like there's a line in it that gets quoted a lot when people like do um when people interview me. But I think I was just like, I think I was like, oh, I just got railed by Celsius. And then I wrote on top of it, like tiny Asian girl gets railed by Celsius. It's like fucking ABC news interviewed me and they pulled that clip.

And I was like, this seems like a little inappropriate for you guys, but okay. Hey, look, they got to compete with the internet. That's true. They're stretching the boundaries right there. I was like, I'm surprised you guys use that hey look they gotta compete with the internet that's true they're stretching

the boundaries right there you know like i'm surprised you guys use that but all right especially when they do like social clips now they pick the juiciest stuff for that and i'm like all right you guys are trying to keep up with the internet cool kid yeah that's it so so then the employees in the company i guess this goes a little bit viral right so you're known you're also like relatable yeah because there's a lot of people like you out there who have lost their money so employee starts hitting you up like randomly at that point with anonymous tips like were they giving you i guess it was recordings and stuff like that yeah it just started with one employee and yeah he he just knew that i'd lost

money he knew that i like i had a following of other celsius creditors and i think he just knew that I'd lost money. He knew that I had a following of other Celsius creditors. And I think he just wanted me and other creditors to know what was going on inside the company with all of our fucking money that was trapped there. So it makes sense. So yeah, I posted that. And then I feel like it got other employees who were just sort of disgruntled and angry wanting to share some other leaked bits of information. And they just started reaching out to me.

So it became sort of just an ongoing thing where I was receiving a bunch of leaks from employees at Celsius. So it started with one, and then it became like a lot of employees. But as you said, this was still at a point where it's not like you have a big following. You're really grassroots citizen journalism here, but they're trusting you to send you this stuff, and you're putting out good information. You're getting info that, I mean, when it it comes to spf it literally ended up in court but now we're in i'm guessing this is when we're in like september octoberish so spf randomly follows you you told that story yeah and that was the extent of your back and forth with him basically like thanks for following me

and that was it i mean in september when he followed me it was just a couple messages back and forth and he was like yeah i thought it was interesting that you post that Celsius leak. And yeah, I think the conversation ended there. And I think he had commented on a couple of my posts. Like I would just post something of me kind of talking shit about Celsius and Sam would comment like LOL or whatever. And he also, I remember he also, people thought it was fucking weird that Sam, this fucking big shot. And at the time that he was following me, he was still the golden boy of crypto everyone was still looking up to him so people were like why is sam bakeman freed following this like random tiff i could

think of a reason to can we pull up his girl i'm sorry i gotta do this caroline ellison oh i mean you know you're a good looking girl like this is painfully. You ended up being great at your job though too. So it worked out great. But like imagine if you weren't good at your job. People would be like pissed right now. That's true. So you're like a G at this stuff. So it worked out well.

That's so funny. But I mean. Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. He wasn't. I mean for a billionaire, bro. Come on.

You could look like a trash heap and not. Come on. All right. Get that – I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm going to get canceled. Caroline, if you're out there, I would like to talk to you one day. I don't want to laugh at you because I want to talk to Caroline. All right.

You're there for the record. Like, come on. For billionaire energy, come on, man. Dude, that's why, like – that's why – so Sam, we've talked about not not necessarily like about caroline but obviously like both of us are aware that people have brought up like are we dating or are we yeah but i've talked yeah i never thought that i'll put it that way well so like i've asked and i've talked to sam about his past relationships and he's like oh i i literally don't even care i don't care what a girl looks like at all and i was like really and i feel like with any other guy who's

like any other fucking guy who said that to me i'd be like you're fucking lying you're fucking full of shit but with sam sam i'm like i actually fucking believe you i wholeheartedly believe that man because that's this is one of the things i wholeheartedly believe that sam has told me and he was being honest but i'm like when you're a fucking multi-billionaire he had like what 32 billion dollars at some point and um he told me at one point his net worth reached 100 billion dollars mark to market and he was told me at one point his net worth reached 100 billion dollars mark to market and he was dating caroline i'm like you know what also i'm not trying to shoot on caroline's appearance because one day i'd love to talk to caroline further you're on

the record i'm good yeah you can you can say whatever you want but i am like i don't think he cares about looks he's he's not superficial real quick to all my discord people out there the julian dory Discord is officially live. I put the link down in the description below. So go hit that. Join the community and say what's up. There's all kinds of features in there, and I look forward to hearing from you guys. Let's get it popping.

Oh, shit. I forgot how we got to that point. What were we talking about? We were talking about how you ended up talking with him, and it was only like a text back and forth. And then literally less than two months later, I think it was like November 9th or something like that, somewhere in there, 2022. Yeah, November. FTX, kaboom.

So, yeah, so we hadn't talked since September. It won't take long to tell you Neutral's ingredients. Vodka, soda, natural flavors so what should we talk about no sugar added neutral refreshingly simple. A couple of my posts, he also commented like, oh, I'm following Tiffany Fong for her Celsius leaks because people were asking, why is Sam Bickman-Fried following Tiffany Fong? And so in November, November 11th is the day that FTX actually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after, you know, all the drama with CZ and everything like that. I don't know if everyone's familiar with all that, but we all know that FT actually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after all the drama with CZ and everything like that.

I don't know if everyone's familiar with all that, but we all know that FTX filed for Chapter 11. We're going to talk about that. Okay. It's not – okay. So that day, November 11th, I was like, okay, I have that guy. We've DM'd before. We have that guy.

We have that guy. We've talked before. I'm the biggest name in the world right now. I was like, we have a line of communication open. This man is not going to fucking respond to me. I swear, I was like, this guy's not going to fucking respond to me. When someone's company goes down and they're being potentially like maybe might be indicted for a lot of fraud, I'm like, they shouldn't be talking to fucking anyone in the first place.

And I was also like, dude, who the fuck am I? There's probably Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, New York Times reporters trying to talk to him. Why the fuck am i there's probably wall street journal bloomberg new york times reporters trying to talk to him why the fuck would he talk to me so i but i just messaged him i was like shooting my shot and i was like hey sam there's obviously a lot in the news right now about ftm i was like would you be willing to chat with me and tell me your side of the story do you have that dm still i've just yours okay so honestly his answer so i think i have it screenshotted if i find it somewhere but i actually remember i was kind of embarrassed by i was embarrassed uh by sending it because i was

like he's not gonna fucking respond to me it's kind of like when you send a drunk text and you like are embarrassed by it you delete it i think i like felt cringe that i sent him a message that like got rejected so like I think I have it screenshotted like I didn't delete it for like some weird reason but I feel like I was just like oh he that was cringe I shouldn't have sent him that so I think I deleted it but so and it I went but like five days went by without him responding to me I was like oh I shouldn't have sent him that but um then on November 16th uh at 12 30 am., I'm on a fucking date in Brooklyn. I'm at a dive bar.

Oh, man. Bad timing. Dude, I'm drunk. And I look at my phone. Message from Sam Bankman Freed. And it was like – You showed that to your date? Dude, I did.

I did. Well, it's even funnier. So, okay. Message from Sam Bankman Freed. It's one of those like side hearts, like an arrow and a three. And then he was like, hey, happy to chat, free for the next hour or so for what it's worth. So I'm like,

holy shit. For what it's worth. I'm like, Sam wants to talk right fucking now. I showed my date and my date is actually someone who lost a fucking shit ton of money to FTX. Oh no. I actually met him like through crypto shit and he didn't give me the exact amount but he said that he lost

in the millions of dollars so good for you still going on a date with him I know don't call your money brother exactly Sam doesn't care about looks I don't care about money there you go oh my god so he was just like

I was like what do I do what do I do and he was like go go fucking talk to him and I was like what should I ask him and he was just like i was like what do i do what do i do and he's like go go fucking talk to him and i was like what should i ask him he was like ask him where my fucking so what's that what's that you're a little drunk you're in the bar do you like walk outside i like i think i i like ran home i like ran home kind of drunk and on my way home i'm like texting everyone in my phone book that has anything to do with crypto or even knows what crypto is. I'm like, what would you ask Sam Baikman-Fried? What would you ask Sam Baikman-Fried? And it was like 1230.

So I was like, no one's going to respond to me. I think I got like one or two responses of like some random questions. And I also just started scrolling on Google and just looking at headlines and like seeing random headlines and not actually reading full articles. And I just wrote little notes about like little things maybe I could ask Sam because I wasn't really I wasn't expecting him to respond. So I didn't have like questions prepared. So, yeah, I drunkenly ran home and hopped on the phone with Sam. And that was my first interview with him. And that's the one that recorded.

Yes, it was recorded. And it's the one that he admitted to me that he donated a lot of money dark to Republicans. And that ended up being a very big deal because that yeah, that ended up in. Wow. I also was very respectful in that call because I removed every single thing Sam said was off the record. Do we have any of that call? Can we pull that up? Is that on your YouTube?

It is on YouTube. All right, let's pull that up. Sure. And then on this one, Alessi, I'll have you turn on your, we have to figure this out with the ATEM with Danny later, but I'll have you turn on your volume on the computer, and we'll work in the volume later on the post edit. Okay. So we've got to go all the way down, right? This is the oldest right here. I'm going to see what the name is.

Let's see. The name is – Is it the most popular, you think? I think it is the most popular video. Which, by the way, at Tiffany Fong on YouTube, everyone go follow. Aw, thanks. And go follow you on Twitter, too. It's at Tiffany Fong on Twitter. At Tiffany Fong with one underscore on Twitter.

Hopefully I can knock out – I hit you with the underscore. I know. I need to knock out tiffany fong who the fuck she is so tough it's over for you tiffany fong all right maybe that one yeah okay cool all right let's turn this on can you just pump the volume up oh we got you on the wrong account we got you on the ads account like we obviously don't have to listen to the entire thing but i don't think that the worst things that are said are true but like you can probably hear that you don't get in the situation that we got in if you like are uh if you make all the right decisions like if i you know like i hadn't if i'd been more careful i there's a billion things i could have done

there was something about a backdoor that allowed you to execute commands that could alter the company's financial records without alerting others. This was put in place. I think that was a Reuters article, which made it seem like you secretly were moving money in the background. Wait, and this is something that I would be doing? It kind of said that SBF put, like, a secret backdoor so that he was moving funds to Alameda, and it was undetected. Good question. Like, this is something that you put in place, potentially? I mean, that's how it read.

Well, that's interesting, because that, I can tell you, is definitely not true. I don't even know how to code, is the honest, embarrassing answer. I certainly wasn't, like, building some backdoor in the system. I could barely use the system. I'm not sure. I used the system in general, It's long, so we could probably jump to the best bits. Which bit do you want? There might be timestamps.

Oh yeah, read the timestamps. The part that everyone really thought was a big deal was the political donations one. So I think it's called, like, Donations to Democrats. Oh, that one I also thought was interesting, too. Wait, we're on it. 1254, right? Donations to Democrats?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I donated to both parties. I donated about the same amount to both parties this year. That was not generally known because this point, Citizens Unite being literally the highest profile Supreme Court case of the decade and the thing everyone talks about when they talk about campaign finance, for some reason, in practice, no one can possibly fathom the idea that someone in practice actually gave dark. What the fuck was he doing in the Bahamas? I think he was walking around on the beach in the Bahamas.

Oh, my gosh. didn't want to have that fight, so I made all the Republican ones dark. But, we're stepping near third biggest Republican donors here as well. It's all for the primary. They didn't give anything to general elections. They don't give a shit about general elections. It's all what matters. It's the primaries where you can't do anything bad, can you?

So that was the one that everyone freaked out about. I honestly, at the time he was telling me that, because I didn't know that much about Sam Baikman Freed. I didn't know what things were public and weren't public. I was like, I don't know if this is public or not. I didn't think that much of it. So you didn't realize, like, got him! I didn't know that was like a big fucking scoop.

I was like, maybe this is already public. Oh my gosh. But this got cited in the fucking FEC complaint against him. It got cited in like tons of publications. I was like, oh shit. That was wild because he was so public about like oh he's this huge democratic donor and everything and he would be pictured with them in public but then you see him he's making friends with all these major people in society and you know he's making friends with republicans and democrats and you're like wait a minute how's that if he's this like they were

calling they were putting him in like a label with like george soros and i'm like last i checked george soros saying running around with everybody right there's some people they don't fuck with him but everyone loves this guy it's gotta be a logic there it is got him great it wasn't even on purpose sorry sam didn't mean to do that to you i i don't know if people... I mean, we were talking in the mics when it was happening, but the fact that those are waves in the background is the most perfect fucking thing I have ever heard in my life.

Like, this is the thing about this guy. The lack, the utter complete disregard of self-awareness. He has to come by it, honestly. I mean, when you look... look again you know this guy can do a math problem or two i'll bet he can calculus his ass right the fuck up out of there but when you listen to him talk your thought goes to he's not all there you i'm sorry you do like there's you can't tell me and we'll i don't want to skip ahead i want to stay with this but you can't tell me for example that this was all like he definitely did a lot wrong.

Let's be very clear about that. But like he came up with all this. He did all this. Get the fuck out of here. That guy, he gets a flat tire. He's dying on the side of the road. Oh, yeah. Like he's going to die there.

He's going to be like, well, I guess it's over. I guess. You know. 100%. 100%. 100%. But you get this done. This is November 16th now, right? Yes, November 16th.

And I actually sat on this because I was like, hmm, do I do this like a normal journalist does and I write an article about it? Sam kind of gave me free reign. He was like, okay. So he didn't say exactly what I should or shouldn't do with it or whatever. So I was like, oh, do I write an article? So I was sitting on this for several days. Then on November 20th, I actually just messaged him again. And I was like, hey, would you be willing to chat again?

So it was four days later. You still haven't put it anywhere. I haven't put it out. And he was like, yeah, let's hop on the phone. So I have a second phone call with Sam on November 20th. And that one I actually haven't posted the majority of it because I did like a normal interview with Sam. And then we just talked on the phone for like three or four hours. Off the record?

So he was going on and off the record during the interview. And then we just sort of started talking about our lives. He started talking about like his depression and I was talking about my depression. And then we were talking about relationships and what it's like to date in the Bahamas and you know things like that Alessi's fucking crying over here I'm for the record I was good on that one I stayed quiet on that one I did what would I say I mean we read the stories about dating in the Bahamas I don't know if that's what I would call it the poly shit yeah dude oh no that man was not having orgies you don't think so no i've asked him about that you know what all right go with

this yeah yeah let's hear it no he wasn't having orgies i mean so he was like he was like okay there were there were a couple of us that were in like the bahamas penthouse that were previously polyamorous like in our prior dating history to Can you define that for people? Well, that's the thing. I've been like, Sam, what is polyamory to you? So I was like, I was like, okay, so orgies? And he was like, oh, no, no, no, not orgies. And I was like, so what, what does polyamory mean to you? And he was like, so, you know, like when you're dating one person and then you're also dating another person. And I was like, all right, so you're, are you all dating in a triangle you're all dating each other and he was like no no no no and i was like so what um what else did i ask him i

was like okay so is that like what you when you were dating caroline ellison were you guys like dating other people and he was like oh no not when not when you're in a relationship no and i was like so that's just fucking dating like so you're going on dates with one person you're also going on dates with another person they were going anywhere i'm getting some images in my head i'm never gonna get out right now you just see like sam bankman like hey you want to do an eiffel tower oh my god oh my god see he He could not. No, he said that he's never had an orgy. Where did the, in fairness, Sam, let's be fair, where did that orgy rumor start? It started-

Because that had to be right after this all broke, and obviously you have no good press. No, so Tracy Wing is actually, like, she wrote an article, and she wrote an article about how there was a cabal of, like, roommates living in the Bahamas. And I think that the way it was worded made it sound like they were having orgies. And she even like feels guilty because she actually did a Rolling Stone profile on me because she's at Rolling Stone now. But so we talked about this and she was like, I feel bad about that article because it started all those like polyamory rumors.

I think she also noted in that article or maybe someone else noted that Caroline Ellison had written about polyamory before. So Caroline was definitely polyamorous beforehand. And Sam said that like a couple of the other people that were living in that Bahamas penthouse were historically polyamorous, but he was like, there were no orgies at the Bahamas penthouse.

Who is she polyamorous with? Caroline gets laid more than I do, man. Caroline already has a fucking boyfriend. Caroline and Sam are over. She was a witness at his trial. She goes on the stand. She talks about her fucking new boyfriend. She has a new fucking boyfriend. I'm like, I haven't been dating. the stand she talks about her fucking new boyfriend she has a new fucking boyfriend i'm like i i

haven't been dating i'm like how is she doing well there's hope out there for everybody there's hope out there for i guess so she's got a new boyfriend i'm gonna get in so much trouble if i keep going on that i gotta stop i gotta stop oh it's easier because they're like criminals so you can kind of that's true that's why i'm like so loose with it but that's true okay so you talk with them on november 20th now it's four days later you are sitting on a bomb do you have you shown this to anyone in your life at this point no i was like shitting myself i was like what do i do what do i do oh so you don't even you still don't know you have a bomb yeah i actually didn't i didn't know that that audio was a bomb i would i knew that this was an important interview because at the time sam Sam had not done his media tour yet.

So this was November 16th, November 20th. Sam started his media tour. He went to the New York Times Dealbook Summit on the 29th. So there was a whole like a week and a half in between my interviews with Sam and him going off on that media tour where I was just sitting on these fucking interviews. Like I had done them already and I just was like, I don't know how to put these out. Like I was like, do I put these on fucking YouTube? That feels like stupid. No, that's a good call.

Yeah, but I didn't know what to do and I had like no following at the time. I was like, no one's going to even listen to this. That's how you start though. That's true. You post something. I mean, that was the one where he was like, yeah, I've had a really bad week with the deal book summit. That was like, oof.

Yeah. Oof. So you, what date did you put up this? I didn't look at the stamp. Okay, so the thing is that I heard he was going to do the New York Times Dealbook Summit, and I was like, nope. I was like, I'm putting it out the day before the fucking New York Times Dealbook Summit. Got it.

So I just posted it the day before he did the New York Times. And how fast did this get picked up? So I actually let CoffeeZilla post some of it in unison with me because he he and i had been talking and he knew that i had some interviews so he was like i'd really love to like um when did you start talking with him after november 20th he i had sort of been on coffee zilla's radar for the celsius leaks and then he was aware that i had talked to sam because i think i tweeted that i had had a conversation about sam and i tweeted a couple bits from our conversation but not any of the audio yet so coffee knew that we'd spoken so he was kind of reaching out to me within that

week that I was sitting on it and he was like hey like I'd love to get like listen to that audio when you're talking with him on the phone do you call him coffee is that like the proper way okay I think some people I don't know I don't know him so I want to know the proper way to address him coffee but I think I've been calling you Steven okay Okay. Yeah, so I was like, okay, sure. Like if I'm going to post it, I might as well like let you post it as well. Yeah, because he started – maybe my timeline is a little off, but around that time, I think ahead of the Dealbook Summit, he started – Sam Bankman-Fried started doing all these Twitter spaces, at least a few. And Coffee cooked them on one of them. Like I mean it was – I don't know if we have that.

No, yeah. But that was – that was bad. Yeah, those were after the New York Times Dealbook Summit. He did New York Times Dealbook Summit. Yeah, and then Good Morning America and then started doing the fucking weird-ass like Twitter spaces. I was like, what the fuck is this guy doing right now? Like my interviews, I thought it was like, hmm, surprised that you're talking to me. And then doing a couple of big interviews, I was like like seems like a weird move for someone in your position, but then like going on random fucking Twitter spaces

I was like you this is a lot Sam like this is kind of you're feeling unhinged right now I would have paid to see be a fly on the wall for his conversations with his lawyers During that time. I know I mean they must have like I have a clip of Sam actually have you heard the clip that I have of Sam being like, I told my lawyers to go fuck themselves? I think I did. You put that on Twitter, right? Yeah, I think I put it on both. Do we have that?

It's a short on my YouTube channel and it's on Twitter. That's a really bad start. When you're telling your lawyers, they're looking out for you, pal. I know. You're like so nice that you're like, I know. It's so sad. Post it, YouTube. Because I'm just kind of like, Sam, you did all right so but that was the i don't know i don't know if it's on my twitter

it might be on my it's on my youtube as a short i think oh is it short all right he'll try to pull it up there's a lot on your youtube but so he said when did he say that to you was that the november 20th conversation 16th conversation or maybe it was the 20th i forget I think that was in the 16th conversation. Oh, we said that in that one. Or maybe it was the 20th. I forget. But yeah, so I posted those. And I – like after those came out on the 20th – I did – I put them out the day before the New York Times Dealbook Summit because I was just like – Yeah. So I was like – I'm going to front run them. Good for you.

Good for me. Good call. I sat on them for a long time. I should have just posted them earlier. But yeah, I was like – after I saw the response to that, after I saw it get cited in like all these publications as well as in the FEC complaint against him, I was like after i saw the response to that after i saw it get cited in like all these publications as well as the fec complaint against him i was like oh shit i didn't know that i didn't know that he gave me like a really big scoop i didn't know that i was like he's probably fucking mad at me i was like he's probably mad at me i don't think he's happy with me like he's

getting a lot of trouble for my interview he's recorded i know and like yeah i felt bad though but he didn't because he hit you up. I know. Well, so I thought he was never going to speak with me again. So I was just moving on with my life. I was like, all right. Cool that I got those interviews. Yeah, good to know you. Cool that you gave me those interviews.

Thank you, Sam. And then he went on his media tour. He got arrested in the Bahamas. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember that. I don't know if we have a picture of that. That was the scariest look I've seen on a person in a long time. time i know i felt there was a little part of me i felt a little bad

because like this was like a bahamas prison i know it's fucking rough man like bahamas prison was rough so he was extradited or he was in the bahamas for eight days he was in a prison in the bahamas foxhill prison and then he was extradited to the united states after eight days and released onto house arrest on a 250250 million personal recognizance bond. And I think that like $250 million is like one of the highest bail amounts. I had Raj Rajaratnam in here who I've become good friends with. Now it's almost a couple of years ago. And he had – he was the big Wall Street case in 2011 it was 09 to 11 and his bail had been the

biggest ever because he was a billionaire but which was it i was it 100 billion i'm sorry i'm sorry 100 million i can't remember i should remember that but it was a lot and say i'm pretty sure sam was there's been a few that have beat it i think in the last couple years and i think sam's one of them damn check me on that in the comments because i'm just trying to remember that i remember sam telling me that it was like the highest in the u.s yeah that that look right there we'll put that picture on the corner of the screen that is uh that is that is a look of my decisions have gotten me to a bad place right now. This man did not ever expect to be in a prison.

So he, but that's the thing. You didn't get any sense from him in those two. How long were both conversations? 16th and 20th? First one was maybe an hour to second conversation, maybe three or four hours. Wow.

Okay. So you're on the phone with him and that's like a podcast. That's like what we do here. It really was. It felt like a podcast.'s like what we do here sitting for three hours like a podcast yeah i mean and the second conversation i think that like we really did build rapport in terms of just a interpersonal relationship just because we were just talking about like shooting the shit and we were talking about like depression and our both our experiences so i feel like we built some rapport but um i didn't think that he would contact me again um so but he didn't in that in that point, it didn't come across to you that he thought in any way he was going to end up in jail? He seemed nervous, but he didn't, I think he, yeah, he didn't mention that he might, oh.

I think we actually probably talked about the prospect of him potentially getting arrested. But it didn't seem to be like a real worry. Yeah, it didn't seem impending i think i when i brought those things up he was like well that's a thought i might have to deal with one day one day yeah exactly like i don't think he's coming buddy yeah i don't think he thought it was going to be in the immediate future which granted comparing him his try and how quickly it moved they the government moved on sam to like alex mishinsky for example they took over a year to indict alex mishinsky so it kind of makes sense why sam was like i'm probably fine for right now but yeah

then he went to prison once he got extradited and he got back to his parents house he fucking i he texted me at 3 a.m the night that he landed back at his parents house and was like hey finally back online that was a a, hey, you up text? 100%. It felt like that because I saw the timestamp at 3 a.m. and I was like, what the fuck? Pull up, fam. I was just like, what the fuck?

So I woke up to that text. What day is this? This was... 23rd, something like that? Probably around that because I ended up visiting him on the 27th. So it was within probably a week of that. So maybe 23rd could be fair. Are you... Because you were on a date in Brooklyn. Are you living in New York by this time?

I was in New York, but I had moved back to Las Vegas at that time when I, when I got this, this text of him saying finally back online. Got it. Yeah. And it was right, it was before Christmas and I, my sister and her family actually lives in San Francisco and Sam was in house arrest in Stanford, California. So, okay. So the thing that actually happened, I don't know if I've told this story, but the thing that actually happened was that Sam texted me and I was, I woke up to that message and I was like, what the fuck, Sam Bigman-Fried just texted me. And I screenshotted that text. And I was like, I wanted to send it to

like a friend of mine and be like, what the fuck, Sam Bigman-Fried just texted me. And I accidentally sent, my friend that I meant to send it to was also named Sam. I sent it directly back to Sam Bigman-Fried. All right. I'm going to teach you a trick right now, okay? Whenever there's someone you're worried about accidentally texting, you go into the contacts and you change the front of their name to all caps, DO NOT TEXT. Right? Because then it won't populate right away.

That's good. That's good. That's good. Yeah. I've done that before. You know how many – I'm so bad with this. I send – like you know how many random texts people will get from me still to this day that don't actually matter where I'm like talking in another – because I'm like looking over here fast. And then later they're like, what the fuck is that? I'm like, oh, I'm so – fuck.

But when it's someone serious like that, that trick changed my life. I think I've done that with ex-boyfriends and just been like, do not text this fucking asshole. There you go. She just treat everyone like an ex-boyfriend. Treat Sam like an ex-boyfriend. God. So I was just fucking mortified. Like I sent the screenshot directly back to Sam and then I was like, oh shit.

Got to change the subject. Got to change the subject. So I was just like, so anyway, are you allowed visitors? I just was like trying to think of the next thing i could logically ask him so so it was actually with no and i didn't actually think he was going to say yes to that i literally was just trying to think of something to say that would change the subject and like it was a question that he'd answer you want to visit buddy and he just completely ignored the fact that i sent him a fucking screenshot of our text like he's he's so like he really is not fully there

like i would have been like what the fuck did you just do but he was just like yeah i'm allowed visitors happy to see you so are you the only reporter that visited him no so i mean michael lewis visited that well yeah that doesn't count he was literally living with him but like besides that um no there's a handful of like one-off sort of reporters. But you were the first. I was the first other than Michael Lewis. Michael Lewis was right there when Sam landed. He was waiting right in the fucking book while he landed on the plane. Sam, how are you, buddy?

Exactly. We'll talk about Michael later. So I was the first besides Michael. I actually haven't read the book, but I was the first besides Michael. And I think I was probably the most regular. But I also don't know like every single person that visited. But I know that there was a couple of one-offs, journalists or people who visited maybe twice or three times maybe. Yeah, because like we said, you're not from the Wall Street Journal. You're not from the New York Times.

You're not from all the places that this guy had a rapport and relationship with. But he picks you out and lands and the first thing he thinks is, I got to get fong in here she'll tell the truth which actually you do and that's the biggest problem i have told the truth i don't know that it necessarily helps him it does that's the problem and then i do feel kind of bad sometimes like i did actually feel bad about like what happened with that donations thing i really didn't know it was gonna get like fucking cited in the fec complaint i'm like shit i'm sorry like i'm if I actually ended, if you talking to me ended up getting you more years in prison, I just would feel bad about that. When you, when you released that though, on the 29th, did you get contacted by law enforcement?

No, not that day. I did get contacted later. More recently. Like, oh, more recent. More recently. So they didn't reach out like at all back then. Surprisingly, they didn't reach out to me. That's why this whole time I was like, I'm probably in the clear.

They haven't reached out this entire fucking time. That's fascinating. And they reached out to me a couple weeks before the trial began. That's weird. That's really weird. Yes. Is it normal? Yeah, if I had Jim here right now, he'd be like, what the fuck?

My guy Jim was a former FBI special agent. Oh. Yeah, that's, I mean, I'm not – I don't know how that stuff works, but common sense tells me that someone gets someone on – not on camera, but on recording saying these things. And then God forbid – like you went and visited him. I know. And how much of that – so how long were you at his house on the 27th? Probably like several hours. Wow.

Yeah. All right. What happens when you go – like do you just show up? Do they like – does he open the door like, hours. Wow. Yeah. All right. What happens when you go, like, do you just show up? Do they like, does he open the door? Like, hey. Yeah. Well, I was like shitting my pants the first time I was going to visit him. Cause I was like, I've never visited someone on a house arrest.

How the fuck does this work? And like, so, and it's a long fucking Uber drive. It was a long Uber. Every time I visited Sam, it fucking cost me so much money. Cause I was in San Francisco, Uber to Stanford. Worth it. Worth it. Worth it. I haven't actually monetized it, but worth it.

But I need – okay. So I got to his house. There was a fucking police barricade around his entire street. And there were police cars just like sitting in the car. Just like sitting in the car. Yes. So I had to like approach the barricade. And I was like, hi, I'm here to see Sam.

They were like, name? We got one. Exactly. Exactly. And then like, I gave them my ID and, um,

they like someone, a policeman escorted me to Sam's door from the barricade. And then I just like waited outside, rang the doorbell. And then Sam opens the door and like his little, his little t-shirt, his little shorts and his little ankle monitor just looking so nerdy.

So small. I didn't know he was so small. He's like pretty small. He's not a tall guy. Maybe like 5'9". Okay. Being optimistic. Maybe 5'8". Very short. Not very menacing at all. Well, I definitely didn't think that. Mm-hmm.

What does he say? Like, hi, Tiffany. Yeah, pretty all. Well, I definitely didn't think that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What does he say? Like, hi, Tiffany. Yeah, pretty much. That was a good impersonation. Okay. It was going to be right around his vocal tone. I worked on it a little bit. Yeah, yeah.

It's pretty good. It's pretty good. You're like, I did this in the mirror. I was like, 20 times. Yeah. Yeah. And then we just, we talked for a really long time. And I also was trying to make it last as long as possible because I was like, I spent

$100 to get here. You better fucking talk to me. I'm not going home. That's so Sam. Tell me a couple. I know. Can you cover my Uber? Is that cool?

I can't hear for you. He never once offered to even call my Uber back to my apartment. I'm like, fucking drunk men I meet at bars offer to fucking pay for my Uber. Well, at this point, does he have any funds available? That's the thing. He says he doesn't. That's actually fair. He actually sent me a screenshot of his

bank account along with his Amazon purchase history and wrote me a... What? He wrote a document. It wasn't like written for me, but he sent me a document he wrote. When did he send you his Amazon purchase history? June... January 27th, I believe. I have sent some regrettable texts in my life and sent information that I have no

idea why I did. I can assure you I've never sent someone my Amazon purchase history. Make an Excel document of your Amazon purchase history. Oh, he made an Excel document of it. What was he trying to prove? He did just send me, in January, he just sent me a lot of his personal writings and he was just basically trying to retell the story

of everything that happened. The documents started from him being in high school at math camp and went all the way through FTX, Alameda, and The Collapse. And there were a bunch of little side documents attached that some of them were sort of comical. I was just like, you fucking included your Amazon purchase history. And yeah, they were just a bunch of other documents. So it was probably close to 300 pages of writing. 300?

Yeah. How many people you think got that besides you? I know that I'm not the only person that he sent it to. Like I'm sure he didn't say that

Mike Lewis got it by assuming. Well, he definitely got it. He said he sent it to like a couple of people but he said he didn't say how many. But most of the journalists

I've spoken with who have visited Sam said they didn't get all of those documents. Whoa. I think he passed a couple of journalists like one or two of the little side documents that were like a few pages long or whatever but but you're there on the 27th you walk in are his parents home um his parents were home we just went and sat in his I called it a library last time but that

makes it sound a little bit more ostentatious than I think it really was their house isn't super palatious or luxurious. It's like pretty modest. Yeah, you were telling me that before. That's not how I pictured it. Yeah, it feels like a modest family home, just one story. When you were saying library, I was picturing like Oakwood, like those New York City penthouse things.

I'm like, goddamn. Yeah, that word was probably not the best descriptor. It's just that it was a room with like a couple computers. I have four books in there. Oh my God. Yeah, like there's like a whole – one of the walls was just completely lined with books. So I just was like, library, I guess. We'll call it a study or an office.

Okay. But yeah, we were just sitting in there. Sam was showing me some of the documents that he was trying to write. So he ended up sending those to me the next month. He was just like saying that he had just gone out of prison. He had so many thoughts and emotions sort of pent up from being in prison and not being able to sort of type things out and not being able to express anything or communicate with the outside world at all.

So I feel like he was just kind of in his parents' house just like trying to get everything out. What did he say about prison or jail, I guess? Yeah. It was in the Bah bahamas so he said that um first of all i think he was in their medical wing so he wasn't sort of with the general population oh they got let off easy yeah but um he was like it was disgusting but that's something i could get used to like he's really not um super prissy about things like he fucking like sleeps

on his couch and stuff like that all the time and obviously i guess everyone knows he slept on beanbags but um he was like i didn't mind the fact that it was disgusting he was like there was like mold on the ground and it was like whatever but he was like the thing that was hardest for me was um not being able to put my thoughts into words that other people could listen to which sort of makes sense i mean how he said it i think that's how he said it yeah not being put my thoughts into words other people yeah yeah i think that's how he said it um so i guess part of that is like not being able to communicate with people and also like not being able to tell your side of the story and also he was like i wasn't able to have any input on like

my bail conditions or like the extradition etc so i. So I'm sure that was frustrating. But he just seemed like he had gone fucking – he was saying I was going mad there. Because he's someone who's just a super ADHD guy. Getting to know him, you'll see he's always doing like fucking eight things at the same time. He's having a conversation with me while also playing League of Legends. He's also – Oh, no. He's playing League of Legends. Sometimes I was like –

Sam, I'm here like there's a girl there's a girl in your fucking study right now and you're playing fucking legal legends you want to try to get lucky buddy come on i'm like come on sam pay attention to me but um did his parents ever come in so his parents would i think it only happened maybe three or four times that his parents, like one of them would pop their head into the room and try to say something to Sam. And then they'd see that I was in there and then just immediately shut the door. And like, I think once or twice I tried being like, hi, I'm Tiffany. Nice to meet you. And they were just shut the door in my face.

And I wasn't ultra offended by that because I was like, okay, sure. They're lawyers. I'm sure they don't want Sam talking to anybody. But like later I found out that his parents was like, okay, sure, they're lawyers. I'm sure they don't want Sam talking to anybody. But later I found out that his parents were happy to include Michael Lewis in their family dinners and they were happy to have a couple of other journalists come by and would sign on to Sam being interviewed by specific people. They would

give their thumbs up. Very, very choreographed in a way. Totally. I think the mom was very involved in Sam's PR of PR strategy on house arrest. What's her background again? She was a law professor at Stanford. She also wrote quite a bit about ethics, but she wasn't an ethics professor. She wrote a couple of well-known essays, Beyond Blame and The Limits of Personal Responsibility.

Well titled. I know. Very interesting. Now they're obviously coming up a lot. Well-known essays, Beyond Blame and the Limits of Personal Responsibility. Oh. Yeah. Well-titled. I know. Very interesting. And now they're obviously coming up a lot. Yeah, that's tough. Yeah. And the dad's, is he a civil or a criminal guy?

They're both doing tax law, I believe, at Stanford. So he was also a tax law professor at Stanford and also a clinical psychologist. Interesting backgrounds, for sure interesting so you're in there you don't really like meet them it's not like you're talking with them or anything yeah but they're they obviously know you're there they may not have liked it but like they didn't stop it from happening which they kind of could i mean he at that point he's like their kid again he's on there's cops around the whole property they They can be like, fuck that. No one's coming in my house.

So they didn't stop it. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, he said that they kind of tried to stay out of his business. So they didn't stop it. Might have been nice if they stayed in a little more. Okay. So you're talking with him.

He's playing League of Legends sometimes. You're there for a few hours. Did you – how much of it was unrecorded i feel like it varied depending on like what the conversation was about or whatever but i i have like quite a few recordings okay yeah i'm also like it because you were a citizen journalist and just getting into this and stuff you had you seem to have had a very good feel for journalistic integrity in doing this because you did do things off the record. You were ready.

Even when you were drunk on a date in Brooklyn, you were ready to go home, be prepared to record, let them know you're recording. None of it ever came up as like a problem. Like that's impressive. You're doing this all yourself and you're in the middle of this like cyclone story that you're actually breaking news on and you played up to the level that all the other people that would be doing that did.

I'm trying. I do feel like bad at sometimes. Like sometimes I'm just like I don't – I felt bad like I said about that one where Sam – I'm like if I got you more prison time, I'd feel kind of bad about it. So yeah, I've been trying to navigate how to talk about all these things. It's like even talking about the trial, I'm like, it seemed clear to me that Sam was guilty, but also I feel bad talking about him in a really negative way, but also he's, I think he's fucking guilty. So I don't know. It's all been kind of hard. When you were interviewing the people outside, we'll get to the trial, but when you were doing that and like they're saying, so he's going to prison for life.

Like in the camera, I'm like, oh my God. It's funny, but I appreciate that you feel bad. But, you know, the guy. I know. He's the head of a very good fraud here. Showing any sort of empathy or sympathy does not go over well publicly. It's just like I spent a lot of time talking to Sam. Yeah, he's a human. he i do seem as a human i don't i like yeah i don't seem as like a two-dimensional

like evil super villain and it is like a sad thought to know that someone that you like got to know pretty well is might never leave prison it almost feels like having a friend die like i've actually had a couple of people close to me die and it sort of feels like that sort of loss of like i guess i don't know i might not ever speak to you again every once in a while i like think of something that might want to text sam and i'm like i guess i can never do that again it's ominous i a friend of mine tyree wallace is in prison life without parole right now and he's innocent he didn't do it we actually did a podcast on it he was he's 46 now she was put in there when he was 19 and like i get to talk with

tyree if not once a week it's once every other week on the phone and you get the collect you gotta answer it if you miss it like you can't get back you get the collect call there's the message on there and says you are about to speak to a federal prisoner on do you accept this call and then it comes on every he'll be talking it'll come on five minutes later you're limited in time when we do the zooms he has more time on that oh so he can use zoom they do have like because they have to for the courtroom so they let some it's also i i'm guessing now i think it's easier for the prisons to not always have to have physical visitors so they're like all right well we can give them some zoom too and then maybe some of these people won't show up so when we're on there it's longer and it's a little less but like i think about him a lot i'm going to see him soon because it's it's near and dear to my heart

obviously but in a way like he's very much alive and he's doing great things because he took initiative on this when when he was young and found himself in this predicament, but You're half dead when you're in there yeah, and a lot of people who aren't like him and don't have the unbelievable attitude that he does and Work around the clock on things that have nothing to do with this case by the way as well They're really dead because they don't there's no real contact. Okay, maybe if you're a family member you can go visit them, but if Sam goes away, you know, maybe you're going to go visit

him in prison once. He is going away. But like, if he goes away for life or something, maybe you go visit him once. Maybe, you know, 20 years from now, oh yeah, I remember he's still in there, maybe I'll go see him. That's it. You know, there's no text, there's no nothing. And like I see, obviously you're feeling like a human about this.

I understand that. And I do. I will give the guy this. Similar to what I said earlier, I don't think he's all there and I don't think he knew all of what was going down. I would guess with being a total idiot on this case, you're going to teach me all about the case and the charges because like, I'm so out of the loop with it. But from the outside, I would guess there are some things that let's say if there's one charge that counts for something, maybe he's guilty of 25% of what happened there and not a hundred and maybe another it's 75 and not a hundred. And maybe it really is just negligence in most cases but like that's not

you can't steal everyone's money like negligence is not an excuse it's not like oh shit i'm i didn't mean to hold a gun and rob this bank oh my god bro like i was oh dude yeah don't send me like you can't do that you know we do live in a society of laws. Yeah, totally, completely agree. Fuck. I forgot how we got here. I forget too, but I think we were talking about when you were going to visit him on the 27th. We were going through all that. And I'll probably ask you more about all that, your friend.

Yeah, yeah. We'll get to that later. Absolutely. But how did it end? Did you just say, all right, I'm going to turn off the phone, like I got to go now? How did it end? Did you just say, all right, I'm going to turn off the phone. I got to go now. I'm just so curious about this back and forth because you had such a unique front row seat that few people had. I think we had sort of emotional conversations. I think that even on our first visits, I was asking him, what are your thoughts on the prospect of going to prison for life? I actually posted some of that audio.

But I feel like that's one of the bits where I think you can actually hear him feel a bit of remorse. Can we pull that up? Yeah. That was the December. What did you save that as? That's actually on my Twitter. So if you just go to my media. Do you have it pinned?

It's not pinned, but if you go to my media do you have it pinned? it's not pinned but if you go to my media it should be one of the more on her twitter and she's like Sam Baikman Freeds right there boom alright go down good pictures good stuff good food

love it me taking a shot with Vasco this is why your Twitter's great. You are real. Thank you. What's that? That looks good. Oh, shit. God, this is so embarrassing.

Okay, keep going. Oh, God, holy shit. Oh, Burt Kreischer. Look at that. Fucking hell, I wasn't expecting to go through all this. I think I posted it like the day after his verdict came out. So shit, I don't, I, fucking, there, there. Right there, okay. Turn the, hit the volume button on there.

And I think this is somewhere you can hear a bit of humanity. We might have missed a bit. Oh, is it? Go to the front. If you hypothetically were in prison for life? I'm trying not to think about it. I don't think it's helpful to think about it. But when I do roommate, I tend to not...

I tend to focus even in my ruminations on, what the short like what the pathways will have are and what the like um like my ruminations are half ruminations half daydreams and they always have some component of like ways that i can make things ways that i can make things better ways that i can do something for the world ways that I can make things... ways that I can make things better, ways that I can do something for the world, ways that I can, like, have some impact. If my life ended now, I would almost certainly have done that harm to the world. And... it's hard to spend that. How does that thought weigh on you?

Sorry, it doesn't weigh on me that people think I've done that harm. The fact that I have done that harm weighs enormously on me. That's a wild clip. I know. I mean, he said ruminations a lot, but you can see. I haven't heard that word in a while. But you can see, without seeing his face, you can hear it in his voice. There is a massive, like, to me at least what I got is, there is a denial that has been shattered.

And it's at least, it has to be a thought now. And he's trying to avoid it, just like he was on an island. He was in the Bahamas living in this mansion when all this shit broke. Yes, he's this persona non grata on the internet, but he's separated from it before he gets arrested, obviously. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So this was one of our earlier conversations on house arrest, actually.

So it wasn't even like that close to the trial. And that's the thing i think that some people think that sam feels zero remorse or anything i think that he does feel bad for hurting people like i do think that he really does feel remorse around that i think it's more that he is unwilling to admit that he ever you know knowingly was using customer funds or knowingly did anything inappropriate he's unwilling to admit that he ever knowingly was using customer funds or knowingly did anything inappropriate. He's unwilling to admit to those things legally. But he's expressed quite a bit of remorse for hurting people, actually. So I think that's sort of a misconception in the public, but that doesn't mean that I think he's innocent.

But I think he does feel. Yeah, there's a difference. Big difference. But for people out there obviously almost everyone listening to this is familiar with the name ftx they're familiar it's like enron they're familiar with something that went wrong they're probably familiar with him too and they know that it was fraud but a lot of us have been passive viewers of this thing i looked at it a little more because I was more in the space. But my friends who didn't have anything to do with crypto or anything like that, they're not paying attention to this. So if you had to explain the high level, the basics simply of what FTX, we can now say because it was proven in court, did.

Right. Like what was their fraud? How did it work? I've never tried to distill this into like a quick explanation because I've just made it doesn't have to be quick we got all day oh lord well Sam started this exchange called FT or actually no I guess we have to start with Alameda he started Alameda Research in I believe 2017 maybe it was 2018 but 2017 I think and that was a quant trading firm

I suppose so they were doing a lot of crypto trading. They initially started with this Bitcoin arbitrage. So this is how Sam initially made a ton of money. Sam had just left a job at Jane Street Capital where he was making quite a bit of money, but wanted to try his own thing and discovered Bitcoin and saw that there was a discrepancy in the price of Bitcoin in Japan versus in the United States. And he started doing, I don't know, I guess just buying Bitcoin. Arbitrage. Yes, yes, yes.

So people know that. And then he apparently was making a lot of money. I guess, okay, we don't need to get into all of this. Ultimately, he ended up starting FTX a couple years later in 2019. And FTX was actually international. So there was an FTX US and FTX international. And Sam claims that all the issues were in FTX international and that none of these issues happened in FTX US, but ultimately both were put into bankruptcy. So they're separate exchanges, if you will?

Yeah, they basically are separate exchanges, if you will? Unfortunately, his claims don't really add up with the numbers. So Sam has sort of claimed that the – okay, so I don't know where to begin with all this. So FTX customer funds ended up being sort of funneled to Alameda Research and used for multiple things, making illiquid venture investments, purchasing real estate, making political donations. A lot of things that obviously FTX customers didn't necessarily agree to or know was happening. Because when you get custody, if you're – I've never worked on that end of the business. Like when I was on Wall Street, this is a whole different world. But when you get custody of assets, there's some of of that that will i guess depending on what it is but there's some of that that will be used in the course of operating the business but what you're saying is that he was taking it from that company literally putting it into another company

like crazy people's funds that are promised meaning they're just numbers on a page. And if they go to withdraw, they're expected to receive their withdrawal. And he was putting it towards things that in many cases had nothing to do with the operation of the business. Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. And I think that's – and I think the main way that customer funds ended up getting used was that Alameda Research took a lot of third-party loans, or they had a lot of open-term third-party loans. And in June or July last summer in 2022, a lot of these third-party lenders were recalling their loans, and they didn't have enough liquid funds because they had used so much of their capital on these illiquid investments. So I think that was when a decision, I guess, was made to sort of use a lot of these FTX customer funds to repay these third-party lenders. And that sounds like when the majority of the problems sort of began.

And who talked about that decision? Was that just the senior team at FTX, like living in the mansion? It sounds like that decision was basically between Sam Bank senior team at FTX, like living in the mansion? It sounds like that decision was basically between Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, the CEO of Alameda Research. Also his girlfriend. Yeah. And Caroline Ellison was actually the one who directed the settlement team to actually repay the third party lenders. But she claims that she did that under Sam Bankman-Fried's direction. And Sam has denied that to me personally. I mean, he's denied that in my conversations with him how does he talk about her um because they did date they did date he has he's

just not the most sentimental person he does seem sort of like he's not the most emotional sentimental person but um he he does sort of feel bad for her he's sort of like tried to walk me through where he thinks her head is at at given moments. He's told me that apparently she is actually quite religious for a lot of her life. And he was like, I don't know if she just feels a need to sort of like, I don't know, come to sort of confess everything she's done. That's interesting. Yeah. So he's tried to walk me through a lot of that. But he said their relationship didn't end necessarily well. so they weren't on the best of terms afterwards.

Yeah, no kidding. Yep. I don't think this is – I don't think like international fraud on a scale we've never seen is a good way to end a relationship. That's just me. Exactly, right? Yeah, so apparently they weren't on speaking terms for a lot of this and they were just like yeah so it didn't end too well oh but i guess i guess going back to the explanation well sam claims that he um he felt that the customer funds that they were using were uh sort of allowed they were allowed to use those

funds because because he claims that well FTX International had a margin trading facility and Alameda Research was a customer of FTX. Granted, no other customers were allowed to use that amount of money, billions and billions of dollars, without posting collateral or enough collateral. I think the collateral they were posting was like FTT token. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. But Sam basically has said, I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. I didn't think I was doing anything improper. I thought that like Alameda is a customer of FTX, so we got to like borrow money on margin.

I'm kind of fucking stupid. No, you're doing a great job. This is really good because you're keeping it high level. That's what I want. Okay. If we're going into the, on this part of the balance sheet, no one's going to follow, including me. Okay. So this is good.

Well, I guess that's been Sam's main excuse was that he said that Alameda is a customer of FTX. They had a right to borrow some of the money. But just the thing is that at the end of the day, through a lot of the witnesses that came up in trial and people who just analyzed the finances, were like the numbers don't add up like you used way more money than the people who actually agreed to have their funds being lent be lent out etc so obviously his excuse didn't turn out to be true and i don't know at the end of the day like i think i kind of get the sense that in sam's mind he probably just looked at he probably just felt that they had infinite money like i don't even know if he was being careful about how much money they were using. No, he definitely – if you look at the contracts, he's throwing $15 million to Kevin O'Leary for like three hours.

Exactly. Which turned out to be a good investment because the guy said like after he's arrested, like, I might still invest in them. So I guess money buys some loyalty. This is true. But he's throwing – and people like to get on all these celebrities and athletes who took it. Listen, they were, it's hindsight. They were the biggest company in the world for the biggest thing. There are agents coming to them and saying, this guy wants to offer you $20 million.

They feel bad for him. He's like a little nerd, but they're like, wow, he's a billionaire too. And he's like, nice. So they're like, all right, you're paying. I'll take it. There's no, like, if we end up finding out that some of these guys like knew it and started doing something that's different yeah but that's they didn't fucking know yeah that's that's not the vibe i get yeah i personally don't have any anger towards those people who promoted it i'm like you guys didn't fucking know it was a scam

a lot of them lost a shit ton of money because they left money in ftx right and and even like we got some good ads out of it, too. Yeah. The Larry David ad is one of the best things I've ever seen. Like, they're creative over at FTX. Good job. I know they did. They did a great job in marketing. Good job, Sam. But what ended up causing because I'm trying to remember this and piece it together. We'll get to in a minute, CZ and Binance and how it collapsed on November 11th because he couldn't save it. But what was the initial thing that caused the panic before all that conversation happened?

What was the first thing? I don't know if it's October 30th, November 2nd. I don't remember. But what happened? Early November, a balance sheet was leaked to actually one of my friends, Ian Allison at Coindesk. He's a great reporter. But Alameda's balance sheet was leaked to Coindesk, a little crypto news publication.

And that sort of started some suspicions because their balance sheet was made up predominantly of FTT, which is a token that Sam basically made up. And other Sam tokens or Sam coins, we've been calling them in court, like Serum and Max, which are coins that he just made up and other sam tokens like um or sam coins we've been calling them in court like serum and maps which are coins that he just made up and um paid zero money for so um that kind of made people a bit suspicious but at the end of the day alameda and ftx were supposed to be completely separate entities so even if there were problems at alameda there shouldn't necessarily that didn't mean that there had to be problems at FTX. Because Sam, in the public eye, had said that these companies are at arm's length, they are completely separate. So there didn't necessarily have to be fear about FTX because an Alameda balance sheet looked a little bit fishy. But I think that because of the leaked

balance sheet, people were a little bit suspicious. And then I think CZ's tweet did make people sort of panic. Yeah. So they had been enemies though. Yes. Sam and CZ didn't. CZ is the founder of Binance. And they – wasn't it that like CZ was an early investor in FTX or something? Is that right?

And then where did they go wrong? CZ was an early investor in FTX or something. Is that right? And then where did they go wrong? CZ was an early investor of FTX. And I think that as FTX began to grow bigger and bigger, then CZ began to see FTX and Sam Bankman Freed as like an actual competitor to Binance. So their relationship ended up becoming slightly more competitive and their little rivalry began to grow.

So they were making kind of snide comments at each other publicly. For example, I think that Sam asked once, is CZ even allowed in the United States? Is he allowed to go to D.C.? Apparently that's something that pissed CZ off quite a bit. You don't say. Yeah.

So it started with sort of like snarky comments at one another and they just had a bit of a rivalry. But yeah, CZ – so Binance had stake in FTX and then Sam decided he wanted to buy back all of that stock or whatever. And that was I think the first time that customer funds actually ended up getting used. I think they spent about two billion dollars buying up finance well so it was two billion dollars um i think that was that might have been 2021 but i could be wrong i could be wrong they use customer funds to do so it wasn't all customer funds apparently it was like i think it was 1.2 billion dollars was not customer funds and then

1 billion dollars was customer funds yeah so i think that's when this problem sort of began, but then obviously there were bigger ways that customer funds ended up getting used. And so now they have, after that, you have regular people in the months and over a year after that who occasionally want to take out money, and I'm guessing they're looking on the back end

and they're like, oh, we're getting a little close to that line. And so they start doing more of it and he starts basically running some of this through Alameda thinking it's going to be the same company. Did he discuss with you or have you heard him discuss through other journalists at this point or at the trial about people who may have advised him on this stuff even unknowingly like i'm talking people outside the company like this guy had access to some of

the he had access to the best people in the world did he ever talk about someone at goldman sachs or something like that who may have said oh not saying they knew a crime was going to happen, but you may be able if you can't cover this, make sure you have money here to cover that or that kind of thing that maybe gave him this idea? Or was this just pure panic on his end at all times? Just I'll fix it by putting it here. No problem. Yeah, he never really brought up anyone having it as like an idea or anything like that. He did say that they had like – he claimed that he had his legal counsel's blessing on everything they did. But the thing is like it's like, yeah, your legal counsel helped you write up contracts and like helped you facilitate loans and things like that.

But your legal counsel didn't know that you were stealing customers' loans. Yeah, they're not there watching you hit the enter button and move it over. Exactly. I mean it is – and I always try to remind myself of that. It's very obvious after the fact. It wasn't obvious to people during it. I mean I'm friends with Anthony Pappaliano who's been in the space forever. I've known him for a long time, really good guy, very smart about this stuff, right?

Now you can go make fun of tweets he made about this two years ago and have a fucking day. But they didn't know, man. Yeah. People didn't – he really – I remember Pomp had him on his podcast. I want to say this was it was either september 2019 or september 2020 i think it was september 2020 and it couldn't have been more than a couple months before ftx collapsed and obviously i didn't see it coming i had come across i said oh pomp had him on and i got through maybe i don't know 20-25 minutes of it

and I stopped it because I said okay either I'm really dumb or this guy's full of shit and immediately my decision was I'm just really dumb I don't know this guy's great that was exactly what I said I was like this guy knows what he's doing he's got it

like I'm just not going to listen to the rest of this it's too much for me right now I'm busy that was my thought what he's doing. He's got it. Like, I'm just not going to listen to the rest of this. It's too much for me right now. I'm busy. That was my thought. So it's not like I sat there and said, it's definitely that. Now it's obvious. I mean, that's how I felt when Sam, when I first started talking to Sam, I actually went into those conversations with an open mind because we didn't have any other evidence. And Sam was giving me his excuses and explanations for how everything happened.

And he was giving me this really convoluted excuse about, well, you know, FTX International is a derivatives exchange. So obviously we had margin trades. And then he was going into how margin, like he was going into their margin trading facility. And this is all like, I've never fucking margin traded in my life. Even as I'm trying to explain it to you, I'm kind of like, did I say that? Is that the right way how it all works? Okay. Because I've never even fucking margin traded, but Sam was trying to give me this really convoluted excuse. And at the time I was like, is this even like plausible? Maybe it is plausible. Maybe this is a plausible excuse and I'm just too fucking stupid.

Because he was just giving me something really long winded. And he probably was somewhat intentionally like trying to obfuscate and make it confusing for someone else to listen to. But yeah, I had the same sort of reaction when he was giving me his excuses about how customer funds were used. I was like, eh, I'm just too stupid to understand this. How much did he talk about, I mean, we know he gave you the viral moment with mentioning that he donated to both parties, but then when you went to talk to him more,

how much did he talk about the strategy there and how he felt for real politically versus just what the money was flowing to for perhaps power? He told me he was center left. So he's not like crazy, crazy left wing. He said that like he kind of listened to political advisors, like he wasn't the one who was sort of making the decisions about who should donate what to and how much that's kind of what he said and he also has said that like he was mostly focused on donating to um politicians who were in support of pandemic prevention so i don't know if he was being completely forthcoming about all of that but um i also think that one of his sort of political advisors was his mom because his mom has come out in trial and uh she was sort of political advisors was his mom, because his mom has come out in trial, and she was sort of directing

who should give which donations so that it looked best for her little super pack or whatever called Mind the Gap. So she was sort of directing like, hey, this donation might look, it might look better if Nishad gave this donation so that it doesn't look like this is such a family affair. If Sam Bateman Freed gave us,

gave our super pack a donation, it might look like too much of a family affair god there's no money in politics that doesn't look dirty as hell i know it never looks good in the courtroom if it gets there too god help you yeah you can make you can make some innocuous look dirty there and it probably is yeah i mean that's that's that's bizarre like his parents you're talking about the political side now but in some of the stuff I've read too, his parents were also, they had some knowledge of what's going on at the company. Do you think they knew he was fucking some shit up here? Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

His dad was quite involved at the company. They also made quite a bit of money. Yes. Yeah. But I feel uncomfortable to bring around an accusation about what exactly they knew because I read the entire lawsuit against them and there wasn't like a smoking gun where they were ever having like an explicit conversation about the use of customer funds, for example. So, you know, a lot of employees at FTX and Alameda didn't know what was going on. I've talked to a few employees and they really had no idea. It seems like most of the customer fund conversations were sort of very

exclusively between Sam Baikman-Fried, Caroline Ellison, Gary Wong, and later on Nishad Singh. So his dad could have known. His dad obviously was quite involved with the company. He was obviously very close to Sam. I'm sure they had lots of conversations behind closed doors. But there wasn't smoking gun evidence in the lawsuit, so I can't really throw around accusations and say that he should be indicted or anything like that. Yeah, I think you already put enough indictments on there for him. But what's the, so you leave him on the 27th, you ended up going back, right? When was that?

When was our next visit okay oh okay so after the 27th i told you i had to give my id to the guards and everything like that so i didn't actually tell anyone about that conversation afterwards um i wasn't sure if i was going to post about it or not um and then the next day i woke up to a fucking message from the new york post or an email from the new york post, we're going to run an article about your visit to Sam's. Oh, they had a cop. Yeah. I think they must have fucking had a cop.

Yeah, they had a cop. I swear on my life that I did not leak that to the New York Post. Swear on my life. I believe you. Okay. Because, yeah, I woke up to that message, and they left a phone number, and I just called. I was so so sleep deprived. I just called them because I was going to be like, how the fuck do you know I went to Sam's house?

Because I hadn't posted about it or anything like that. And they're like, we have our sources. So, like, so, spend any time in his bedroom? They literally went fucking straight to that. I was like, what the fuck? We were in his, I said library. I was like, we're in his library. So they kind of were just fucking goading me for a quote.

And I didn't even know that they were going to use the quote. But they were kind of pushing me because I just initially just called to be like, how do you even know about this? So those quotes ended up getting used in an article. And they also pulled an old bikini photo of me from like fucking college. And then so they put me next to Sam Baikman Freed, me in an old bikini photo from so many years ago. Oh, that's fucked up. Sexy crypto influencer pays a late night visit to FTX bad boy. It's because they got beat on their scoop and they're just salty about it. Fucking bitches.

That's really fucked up. Fucking bitches. I'm sorry that happened. It's okay. It was kind of funny. It was upsetting at the time, but it's kind of funny now. But yeah'm sorry that happened. It's okay. It was kind of funny. It was upsetting at the time, but it's kind of funny now. Yeah, so that happened. So I

actually just didn't want to go back to Sam's house for a while afterwards because I was like, if it gets leaked again, I don't want to fucking deal with this shit again. So I didn't go back to his house for probably a couple weeks, and I think that we had our second visit in January. Maybe two weeks later. So that story comes out

though the next day that is at least alleging you went there so people are picking it up what's your contact with him between then like are you texting him regularly i i was worried that he thought that i like wanted that story out so i like i think i messaged sam i was like hey i didn't tell uh the new york post about this like i wouldn't i obviously wouldn't want like a salacious article about that out but um i was like nervous if he'd want to talk to me again uh and then i think he was he responded to me a couple days after that and uh yeah we had our next visit in january you know what i'll bet he might have liked that story no i, I'm serious.

Because he's at the low of the low right now. He just lost all his leverage. He has no access to his bank accounts. His internet is fucking monitored. He's got cops around his house. He's the punchline of the world. He probably likes it. He's probably like, oh yeah, look at me on page six.

I don't know the guy. You know him. I don't know. I didn't get the sense that he was necessarily excited by it. But I guess he wasn't look at me on page six. I don't know the guy. You know him. I don't know. I didn't get the sense that he was necessarily excited by it, but I guess he wasn't mad at me. But Sam's never fucking mad at me. I mean, maybe he is now.

I have no idea. I haven't talked to him since he went to prison or went to jail. Which was like fucking, what, four weeks ago? Whatever. He got thrown in jail

after he leaked Caroline Ellison's diary to the New York Times. Oh, right, right. So you haven't talked to him since that. I was thinking the same. I think July.

August, maybe? July or August. Okay. But you, diary to the near oh right right so you haven't talked to him since that that was like i was thinking i think july august maybe july july or august okay but um but you so he still invites you back you go back in january yeah what happens this time just more conversations god it's all kind of a blur because yeah i did visit him i think for a while i went over like once a week for like a couple months. Whoa. Yeah. I didn't realize you were there that much. Yeah.

So you were hanging out in Vegas at this time, I guess, and popping out to Stanford? No. Like I said, I was like in New York for a while. I had a sublet in New York when I did my first phone calls with Sam. That sublet ended. And like I actually have never signed like a year-long lease anywhere. So I was trying to figure out where I wanted to move next and just do a sublet. So since I had just started talking to Sam, I was like, you know what?

I'm not going to make a sublet in San Francisco. I'm like, this is – I can chill here. I know. I'm like, this is kind of like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Sam's not going to be in house arrest forever. I'm going to talk to the guy. Yeah, so I got a fucking sub latin san francisco and that's

like he's like right there right yeah well he's in stanford so it was like a fucking oh i haven't been out there so it all sounds close to me okay it was like uh probably an hour to get to his house or something like that it's not too bad yeah it's an expensive uber i was gonna say he's still not covering the ubers not covering the ubers your girl's down bad that's tough from fucking visiting but you're getting these scoops you're recording some of these combos still right some of them yeah okay and what did he give you anything that was close to what you got on the first one with the with the politics donations i'm reluctant to talk about them because i'm worried about the doj reaching out to me again oh because there's technically

a second trial in march right what's the second trial for the second trial is for um five different five additional charges that came in superseding indictments after sam bigman freed was initially extradited to the united states for his original eight charges so he got five additional charges in superseding diamonds and so the second trial they were all initially supposed to be part of the first trial but sam and his lawyers were arguing that um it was improper for the u.s to bring additional charges because it's sort of apparently it legally does um go against the u.s bahamian extradition treaty apparently the the bahamas would have to like agree to the charges that he

was being extradited for. So they didn't agree to those superseding ones. So apparently those were kind of improperly brought. So I guess the U.S. found like a loophole and just put him into a second trial. Wow. Okay. So we're going to start getting to the trial now. As it's leading up, you're, I guess, like in the winter spring, you're meeting with him a bunch. It was very interesting to me how he was the biggest name in the winter spring you're meeting with him a bunch it was very interesting to me how he was the biggest name in the world and then around this time it just faded away and you you heard very little and even when his trial finished you know coffee zilla obviously is on the ball he's great he's covering it on the internet people are talking about on

twitter but not a ton you know gets one quick story in the news and it's gone. Very, very odd. And then you remember he donated to every politician ever and you're like, okay, not so odd. But it was very – it was a little eerie that you had this guy perpetuating the biggest fraud since Enron awaiting trial effectively over a little less than a year period and it went quiet but then as you alluded to a few minutes ago he ends up getting jailed because he did some things what how did that all go down and was that that was in the summer when that happened he was jailed yeah i think it was in the summer um yeah i mean i don't know if we were talking about this on camera or off the off camera but he did push the boundaries of his bail conditions multiple times while he was on house arrest.

I think that was off camera. Okay. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. So as soon as he got onto house arrest, within weeks, he contacted former FTX employees, such as the former general counsel, Ryan Miller. And Ryan Miller immediately brought this to the government and screenshots are now public but um I think the message was like reconnecting Sam was reconnecting he's like I know we didn't leave off on the best foot and I was like this sounds like a fucking message that you'd send to like a fucking ex ex-boyfriend I have a hard stop at three o'clock so let me know oh my god whoa right so um so that was a strike but that didn't jail, but that didn't jail him.

Yeah, that didn't jail him because the judge was like, this is potentially witness tampering. But also it's not like, Sam was like, I wasn't trying to witness tamper. I was just trying to. Please, Sam. I'm just trying to reconnect. So, okay, it was like one strike. Then a couple of weeks later, or in February, he got caught using a VPN. Oh, that's not good.

He claims it was to watch the Super Bowl. Well, so Sam says that he has this... His parents don't have a TV in their house? They actually don't have a TV, but also I'm sure there's other ways to watch the Super Bowl. But Sam said that he has this international game pass that he bought in the Bahamas to watch sports. And he said that he needed to use a VPN to say that he was in the Bahamas to use his

international game pass. Don't know if that's true or not, but that was his second strike. Because they obviously didn't have, since he was using a VPN, they didn't have evidence of what he was doing on there. So it obviously looks sketchy. But even using it at all is against the conditions. It apparently wasn't specifically or explicitly in the conditions that he can't use a VPN. But to me, I was like, Sam, it seems like it'd be pretty common sense

that you probably shouldn't use a VPN when you're on house arrest. Yeah, I'll say. Yeah. All right. So that's second strike, but he doesn't go to jail. And then the third strike had something to do with Ellison, right? Third strike was him sharing Caroline Ellison's sort of, I guess it's been called the diary, but it was her personal writings with the New York Times. And he actually showed me those in like January or something.

Wait, what was that? Her personal writings with the new york times so sam and caroline are absolute fucking nerds and they talk to each other in google docs oftentimes they'd write each other google docs come on sam showed this to me like when i went to his house one time and he was like yeah so i have like some google docs between he was like i have some google docs with caroline and i was like what do you mean you have google docs with caroline he's like you know when you when you write with someone oh yeah you know yeah i do that i was like what i was like i've never ever start doing that on google docs not good let me go yeah yeah i'll

just jump out the window i know he's saying this like this is a normal thing that couples do i was like i've never had a boy like write me a google doc and like send me like a link to a google doc yeah that's a new one so it's kind of and like send me like a link to a google yeah that's a new one so it's kind of i was just like oh you're such a fucking nerd oh i was just like i think i didn't i was just like oh right yeah no i do when the google the google that's with your boyfriend oh my god so yeah he shared some of those so they weren't like necessarily her diary it was sort of caroline venting about how their relationship was going and her saying like i don't remember the exact things she said but yeah her kind of talking about their relationship

and he literally emailed the new york times that he had a new york times reporter over to the house to show him in person and i believe like let the new york times reporter sort of take notes on the document and ultimately didn't want it to look like it was coming from him yeah where the fuck else is it because i'm friends with the new york times reporter as well and i obviously was talking to sam about the those documents so uh yeah he didn't want it to seem like it was coming from him exactly i was like who else would it be coming from yeah and he was like well the government also has them so someone from the government could have leaked them and i'm like why would the government leak i don't know crazy i don't know he's he's he's sound yeah i know sometimes i'm like for someone who was known for being so smart and intelligent allegedly i'm sometimes just

like what this is just this defies logic like what the fuck are you talking about god his lawyer is just sitting in the back room like oh my god i know ultimately even like him doing that whole thing he knew that he was taking a risk doing that and i'm like what was your end goal what did you think you were going to get out of leaking these diaries like i think he ultimately obviously was hoping that maybe caroline would be painted in a somewhat negative light but i was just like these if anything this is somewhat sympathetic to caroline she's sort of like sad about your guys relationship like i don't think it's do it i don't think it's painting the picture you think it's painting well she also had a weird arc with this though too because right when this drops within a few days we hear apparently

caroline ellison is cooperating with the feds there was then the pic i don't know if we can find this alessi but i'll find it after if we need to put in the corner screen there was a picture of her and starbucks and i think five eye Eye by the Southern District of New York offices. Taking people, Twitter shows were like, oh shit, she's here meeting with them, looking fine. And she becomes the main, one of the main witnesses along with Gary Wang or Wong? Yeah, Gary Wong. Wong on the indictment. I think there were a couple others.

But then there was a report. I don't, I'm losing my timeline now, but somewhere between then and the trial, there was a report that apparently she had rescinded on her deal with the government and was now no longer a cooperating witness. And then I don't remember,

I must've just missed it, but I don't remember the story that suddenly said, oh, it's back on. What happened there? Yeah, Sam and I actually talked about that because that had just come out in the news. Yeah, that's it. There's the picture right there. Yeah, I think it was just – the story that she had rescinded I think was just false.

I think that there was some – like it sounded like the FTX Chapter 11 team had requested some documents from her and that she just hadn't responded to that or something like that. But she hadn't rescinded her cooperation with the government. So it was something that was I, misinterpreted in the press. Got it. But yeah. So she had failed on some cooperative thing. Yeah, yeah. But it didn't – yeah.

But she didn't rescind her cooperation. Okay. So she was on Team USA the whole way. Team USA. All right. Got it. So let's get to the trial. Okay.

So you – I would imagine you're spending so much time with the guy and everything. At some point there, you're kind of like, I'm definitely going to be covering this trial, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. How many days was it? The trial? I think it lasted around four weeks. And it started like October 3rd, something like that?

Okay. So you come to New York for this? Mm-hmm. Sublet in somewhere in New York now? Mm-hmm. Back here? Mm-hmm. You're in the courtroom every day every day

sometimes i had to wake up at 1 a.m to make it into the because i wanted to be in the main courtroom there's main courtroom where you can actually be in the room with sam bakeman freed his parents his lawyers the judge and there's only 21 spots in that court that's how small it in the sdny i mean because there's other seating for his family. There's other seating for lawyers. But for the public and press, both mixed together, there's only 21 seats. So like every fucking morning, there's New York Times reporter like sitting outside, you know. So they don't get any special treatment, actually. So I was lining up at 1 a.m. with like fucking other reporters from reputable publications.

So how close to you're in the courtroom then literally like in the main one how close are you to him he's probably like four or five rows of people away um it's pretty close and he's facing the judge though so that's the annoying part like he's not we don't get to see his reaction and we're not like making explicit eye contact during the breaks i would try to like i can't apparently i can't wave at him i asked one of the court officials i was like can i wave at sam he was like no what the fuck why would you ask me he was like you obviously can't fucking wave at him he was like i would throw you out immediately hi sam i just want to be like i was like can i do

like explicit gestures at him oh my god i just had to be funny i was like i'll just be like well the most aware of the rumors before i forget though the most important question here is though did you get a good look at the sketch artist in there yeah i could see you did but no that that one that makes sam like look like a hot guy that's not real right all right thank god because that that was being passed around his realm like there's no way no that wasn't real there's no way he looked like a fucking tiktoker you can watch them from behind drawing the sketches bro all right so it didn't look like that okay good but he's in there you're in there with some other reporters and a few other random people and how this is a thing as someone who's not a lawyer i get confused with this sometimes when they're like oh oh, they expect the trial to last X number of days.

How do you know that, though, when you don't know what the witnesses are going to say or what they're going to be asked? Totally. And like when the prosecution rested, we didn't even know if Sam would actually bring his case or bring his side. Like apparently they can decide not to, which I don't know why anyone would go through all this and decide not to. But like there was a day where they were like, okay, come back to us with your anyone would go through all this and decide not to. But, um, like there was, there were like a, there was a day where they were like,

okay, come back to us with your decision about whether or not you're going to bring your case. So I guess just going through all this, there's a lot of uncertainty. So they didn't actually give us an exact timeframe that the trial would last. They actually originally gave us four to six week timeframe and it ended up being four.

It went really fast. Yeah. And what, how was the jury selection on that? Were you in there for that i was and it was so boring so those days they're just like strike ask them a random question we're hearing random people giving excuses for why they couldn't be there they were like i have a trip to hawaii like things like that all right we'll get to the jury later by the end but because i have some

questions on that but what how obviously you thought Sam was guilty and so does everyone else. And he was definitely guilty of stuff. But how strong and aggressive was the government's case versus your expectations? Oh my God. The government's case was like airtight. Like they had so many examples. They obviously had his best friends cooperating against him. Yeah.

It was airtight like i i didn't think that i never really thought sam had a chance because i think that the conviction rate is in the over 98 97 98 insane and i remember on house arrest i would ask sam like what do you think your odds are of getting out of this scot-free and there were multiple times in which he said like 50 this is what goes this goes to show just like how i think that sam is genuinely delusional i like i think he's more delusional than he is like an actually evil malicious person i think he genuinely like thought that everything that he did was just gonna work out just fine not saying that it's okay to ever use customer funds

without their consent i don't think he yeah i don't think he like ever thought that he was ever going to actually hurt another person in this because he's just fucking delusional yeah i don't think i i don't to this day think he's an evil guy yeah i think he's an idiot oh completely and i think he's delusional i think that's spot on exactly i think he just doesn't have a grasp of reality reckless like he he admits to me that he has a really high risk tolerance i've been like do you have a high risk tolerance he's like yeah well i think everyone else's risk tolerance is just too low like he says things like that we're just like oh this is a little delusional um overconfident obviously reckless really high risk tolerance and delusional so i just i think he's a lot of

negative things but i don't think he's like an actually malicious evil person like i don't think he set out to do this so he could like run away on a fucking super yacht the crazy thing is though there's no way 50 50 there's no way his lawyers are telling him that there's no way i know and he would say like well i think i'm more bullish on my odds than other people but i think i'm like maybe you should be less bullish on things. Take your deal, Sam. Yeah. And what was, was he offered deals along the way? He wasn't offered a plea deal.

And I had asked him that during house arrest, and it was announced on the first day of trial that he wasn't offered a plea deal. And Sam was like, yeah, I wasn't offered one, but he was like, I don't think they'd offer me anything reasonable. He was like, I wouldn't, I think he said something like, I wouldn't take anything below a few years on house arrest. Another moment where I'm like, that's delusional, Sam. If I were you, I would take 10, 15 years if I was offered it. Done. And he's like, I'd take like a few years on house arrest. I mean, that's the thing.

I think that Sam genuinely feels he's innocent because I think he is like, well, I didn't mean to hurt these people. But I'm like, yeah, but you did the things you're being accused of i don't think your intent was to literally harm people or to i really don't think his intent was to just buy a bunch of luxurious shit he obviously had a really nice apartment a 35 million dollar penthouse in the bahamas but i've been to his house a bunch of times he's not someone who like cares about fancy things at all uh he's always wearing like a fucking t-shirt with like food stains on them and like yeah so i um but they were hitting him over the head with the private jet shit right oh yeah the private jets oh it's not good 15 million private jets there's nothing people dislike more in a courtroom than a rich guy on a private jet oh yeah they use

the picture of him in a private jet a lot no one on that jury panel rich guy on a private jet. Oh, yeah. They use the picture of him in a private jet a lot. No one on that jury panel has been on a private jet. True. Yeah. Like, fuck this guy. Guilty. Guilty. They picture like the worst people on Instagram. Very true.

Right? That's so true. That is so true. So, yeah, I think it's delusional. How does it, like, they start off with the opening statements, though, obviously. And then did they go right to the key witnesses or did they go to experts first? I was actually surprised. Yeah, they had.

So the first witness was a customer, but he wasn't even that impactful a customer. It was like it wasn't someone who lost his entire life savings and was crying on the stand or anything. So that one we can skip. I think the first not to be insensitive to the customers i'm just saying that i even some of the journalists we were talking about like you guys could have gotten more emotionally impactful customers i'm sure there's someone who's gotten their life savings ruined maybe like a little old lady something a little more emotionally impactful like i think the first guy was like yeah i'm a commodities trader like he didn't lose like his life oh my god so yeah i mean i think me and some of the other

people that were in court were like yeah i could have gotten a better customer um but yeah the first real one was adam yadidia who is sam one of sam's i think childhood friends that he'd known since math camp how did he react to that i mean he knew it was not very reactive like he didn't really emotion emotionally react to anyone although the prosecutors accused him of apparently like sort of laughing and making snide looks at caroline ellison during her testimony but since he's facing forward we can't actually see yeah um his his lawyers obviously denied it um yeah so adam and didia so they kind of did just start off with the key witnesses they didn't have experts in the beginning

adam and didia gary wong caroline ellison nishad singh i think it kind of went did they bring in the guy who came i forget his name the guy who came in to clean it up and was put in charge yeah they didn't bring him and And Sam mentioned that to me. Well, because there was a point at which I was asking Sam like, Sam, am I going to get subpoenaed? And he was like, well, John J. Ray hasn't been subpoenaed

and he's obviously at the helm of FTX now. But he was like, it basically seems like they're not trying to subpoena people who came in after FTX and Alameda is actually running time. That's fascinating. Which kind of makes sense though because it's like if they subpoenaed me, I'd be like, guys, I wasn't actually there during FTX and Alameda.

Yeah, you I could see them not subpoenaing. That makes sense. But that guy was a superstar in front of Congress when Ray was going in there within the month after it was gone. True. The clips from Congress are wild. I'm just thinking as an attorney, I would want that guy on the screen. congress when when ray was going in there within the month after it was gone like true the clips from congress are wild i'm just thinking as an attorney i would want that guy i'm actually very surprised actually that he did i don't know enough about like who they can and can't bring in but i he actually would have been a really good witness against that's some the the line about the quick books yeah going back and forth with the senator and they're like quick books quick books like

exactly we both remember it so fucking good that's all you need is those little moments in court someone doesn't get that out of their mind he was he's a great performer yeah and he had expert he was the guy who cleaned up enron i think right yes he was so this dude's been around he's seen this shit and that was so compelling it was what did you see michael lewis in the courtroom he did come to the courtroom but he actually showed his face he did oh my god i haven't actually read the book so i can't like pretend that i know everything he wrote but um i did watch the 60 minutes interview but he did come to the courtroom so for most of us like i'm i'm gonna call myself a journalist

for this because i would go in with the journalists but the journalist you are a journalist on this i'll call it thank you thank you and for legal reasons i need to be a journalist for this because i would go in with the journalists but the journalists you are a journalist on this i'll call it thank you thank you and for legal reasons i need to be a journalist yes so um we'd all have to line up and i'd fucking wake up at 1 a i'd wake up at 1 a.m and line up outside the courtroom and michael lewis didn't do that but got let into the courtroom and was sitting on the friends and family section so that must have been said that okay i don't know if like he had a different plug or if his family like literally wanted to fucking bring him in with them but different plug different like it literally felt like this is the fucking hottest nightclub i'm like this is the hardest nightclub i've ever tried to get into i'm like i have to line up

outside like a bitch so sad like i'm from vegas i'm like text the fucking promoter get get you inside i'm like into the best nightclubs in vegas and here i'm like i have to fucking line up at 1 a.m this is bullshit beck lover would say he would have gotten people in that courtroom 100 like i'd get you in i'd julian i'd get you in there no problem brother you talk to me you get in the courtroom you'd be second row oh my god tyler just um had us. Oh, he just connected. He was like, I got a good nightclub to go to on Saturday. No, that's my guy. He is so funny. I haven't met him yet, but I was like, I honestly don't do nightclubs anymore.

And he's like, trust me. He's like, if you pay for a drink in New York, I'll jump off a fucking building. He's like, he is so funny. That's fucking funny. Should we go out with Beck Lover? Honestly, maybe we should. It's okay. I haven't, I actually haven't done that yet.

We're getting a little ambulance outside. Someone, hopefully they're not dying. God bless. But anyway, I haven't gone out with Beck yet. I've known Beck now for almost a couple years, but he is. Is he crazy? No, no. Well, he's, he's, he's definitely like, Beck's a lot. Like he's, he's, he's like a really energetic guy at all times, at all times.

So if you want to call that crazy, then he's crazy. But he's demonstrated. He will take people to like some of the best places in New York. And they're in. They don't pay. They're actually really good? Yeah. The Albanians run New York.

Oh, he's Albanian. When it comes to the nightlife. He's like Shkreli. Shkreli, Albanian? Shkreli's Albanian. Oh, I didn the nightlife. He's like Shkreli. Shkreli Albanian? Shkreli's Albanian. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. That's interesting.

The Albanians really do have a... Damn. They have that on lock in New York. It's really almost odd. If you want to go out with him, I'll go out. Okay. Do you want to go out with him? I do.

Yeah. Beck's cool. Okay. This is my last weekend in New York. All right. I'll talk to Beck after this. Do you go out? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I'm starting to go out more now being up here yeah for three years it was like when i was building down there i mean this guy knows it was just seven days it's still seven days a week but at least like i'm here now so i go out every now and then like actually get the social life going again yeah i need to start socializing again because i didn't go out at all during trial because it was like all consuming yeah all the time 100 so michael lewis is sitting with the friends and families though did his 60 minutes

drop i can't remember during the trial it was like the day before so i actually they asked the jury they were like did anyone see the 60 minutes episode so they actually asked that to the jury so it dropped like i think the day before the jury selection. If people didn't see that, that's tough to watch. I know. I mean... What do you think happened? Do you think he just got... I mean, you've been close to Sam, so you would know what can happen.

It's kind of hard for me because I would say that I... I don't know if this will be a positive thing for me to say, but I also think that I'm slightly more empathetic to Sam than the general public. You are. Yeah. also think that i'm slightly more empathetic to sam than the general public because i do see yeah so i can't say that i'm like completely like disgusted by michael lewis feeling empathy for sam but i also am just like some of the things he said i'm just like he was in denial about his culpability like even being like if if cc had never cast dispersions on ftx then they would still be a thriving company i'm like i don't think that's what the problem was.

I think it's like the fact that, you know, it was, FTX was kind of like a house of cards built on tokens that Sam created himself. And also there was like a lot of use of customer funds. If the financial crisis hadn't happened, Bernie Madoff would still be running a thriving Ponzi scheme. Well, because the thing is, Sam to his very last days still was like, yeah, he still feels that if CZ hadn't done that, FTX would still be running. And that he thinks that he could have gotten enough funding to plug the hole, etc.

And you know what? Now that we're back in a bull market, I actually am kind of like, you're probably right in that if you didn't file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and somehow managed to hold over up until like, I don't know if we're actually in a full on bull market. If you managed to hold off, your company might actually still be running. But obviously that's not what the actual criminal charges are for. It's not like the fact that you collapsed. It's like the fact that you had taken the money in the first place is why you're being charged. Exactly. So I actually think he's probably correct in that the company might still be running. But it's just kind of like, yeah, we would have sort of covered it up longer is how I kind of read it.

Do you find it odd that a guy like Sam took the reins to start something like this and was able to actually do it? I'm surprised that people thought he was as smart as they thought he was. But I think that he's so self-confident and so sure of himself that it takes that kind of person who is that sure of themselves to actually go through with starting a company like this. And I think that's the thing about – well, first of all, I don't want to diagnose him with any personality disorder. But apparently a higher percentage of CEOs are psychopaths or sociopaths or have these – I think I've heard that. Yeah, that's a statistic. And I'm not trying toopaths or have like these. I think I've heard that. Yeah, that's like a statistic. And I'm not trying to diagnose Sam or anything like that. But I think that people with those sort of qualities where they're so sort of unfeeling and sure of themselves

and maybe have some narcissistic traits are like the kinds of people who probably make the, I don't know about the best CEOs, but are probably people who just aren't, seem so confident in themselves. And that's probably something you need if you want to start a company. You have to. Yeah.

But there's a line. Yeah. There's a line between being sociopathic about it and being more of, this is a bad term to use around Sam Bankman, but like an eternal optimist in your abilities. Maybe not. You have to be realistic about your business. I mean the guys that I've all talked to who did this because I never run a company like that to be clear.

But like you have to be a dog. You have to have all the other things though too. Like to be a good long-term leader. Now are there people who have rose up the ranks, climbing on everyone's back and nothing ever happened to them. They became billionaires and they lived and died. Yes, there's been a lot of people like that. But all the people you see who get caught for stuff or who blow up their company, it's that ego that does that.

That guy Adam Neumann with WeWork. Oh, yeah. Great example of that. And he is, I got to gotta tell you as a communicator that guy is so interesting he is a fucking sam should have taken some classes really i actually haven't watched a lot of like his you believe him i know he follows me on something oh he does we might have messaged before yeah dude it's so funny i feel like all of the like sort of white color or like everyone whose company has gone down they want to know

if they hear from you they got a problem Zach Prince the CEO of BlockFi like followed me a couple of days before BlockFi filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy Suzu or Zuzu he followed me was that 3AC I think it might be 3AC

3 arrows capital he followed me it's been funny you're the stock picker I think it might be 3AC. Three arrows capital. He followed me. Yeah, a lot of those guys get funny. It's been like I've been collecting them. You're the stock picker. I'm collecting them. Yeah, if I see someone follow you, sell the stock. Inverse me.

That's it. Inverse Tiff. Wow. Yeah, I mean, that guy, if you've ever, you should sit down and watch him. I should. He did one with Andrew Ross Sorkin like two years after it happened. He avoided talking to the media during all that time. And he was with him for 35 minutes.

And, like, I know the guy is bullshitting me, but I believe him. Really? He's got the Bill Clinton thing, bro. Damn. You're just like, I did not have sex with that woman. You're like, you know what, Bill? I know you did, but I fucking believe you. Because I think you believe it.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Some of those guys, they're like that. I should watch them. Yeah. That's a good point you have believe it. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Some of those guys, they're like that. I should watch them. Yeah. That's a good point you have, though. Yeah.

So he doesn't, but he's not, you wouldn't call, we certainly all day haven't called Sam like the dog, but I guess what you're getting at is that when it comes to crunching the numbers and doing the things that require running like a financial house like this since he has some of those abilities albeit not cleanly he has irrational confidence in his ability to do that yeah and that's where it comes out yeah totally and i feel like he probably it almost makes sense why he's so overconfident just as someone who's in their 20s and was able to just like get so much billions of dollars in funding from investors so quickly at such a young age in like, I don't know, a couple of years. It kind of makes sense why he was just like, yeah, everything I fucking do, fucking everything turns to gold. Like it kind of makes sense why he has like a bit of a cocky attitude.

I wonder how much his parents fed into that, though. Probably. Just kind of giving him everything. Totally. I wonder how much his parents fed into that though just kind of giving him everything totally well I feel like I've personally never talked to the parents but I've read a couple interviews of the parents it's not what I heard they don't want to talk to me

they don't love me but it sounds like they kind of always treated Sam as if he was sort of intellectually special and superior and they probably sort of fed into that mindset that he's kind of smarter than his peers. Well, to be fair, fair to him for a second. And I mean this seriously, not with any type of shot at him. Yeah.

He's got to be a little autistic, right? Yeah. I mean, I think so. I've asked Sam that and he's been like, he thinks he must be on the spectrum somewhere. I wasn't laughing before you did. I think he's a little auteur. He's definitely. And that actually is some points in his favor there because there are a there are natural medical disassociative i think

so yeah completely that's why sometimes when people ask me if i think he's a sociopath or something i'm kind of like there's actually quite a few like similarities between sociopathy and autism and i can't like i think he has some interesting traits like he struggles to empathize with people sometimes and i'm kind of like, so is he empathy or autism? I can't tell the difference. I really don't know. You ever see the South Park episode right after this dropped? Oh.

Where they had the cameo. Is it the one where he was like, sorry. I'm sorry. I asked Sam if he watched it. Oh, what did he say? Okay. I brought it up. I brought it up and i was just like sam

have you watched it and he was like oh i haven't should i and i was like it's kind of funny sam and i was like i was like sam you want to watch it together i was like sam you want to watch it together like we should watch it and he was like oh and well he was like he said that he would be down to watch it and sam actually has a really good sense of humor like you can probably tell with me i kind of like fuck with people a bit. Like, I would make jokes with Sam about, like, going to prison for life. So I'm not trying to be mean. I just joke about really horrible things. I joke about myself, too.

Like, I joke about how I lost a shit ton of money. So I would, like, make jokes with him. But I was just like, yeah. Like, I described it to him. But in the moment, he kind of was laughing about it. And he was like, oh, yeah, that sounds kind of funny. That's not that bad. And then I think he had, like, a couple couple of weeks later he had a bit of a breakdown

and he was just like people are even making fun of me for like saying i'm sorry and i was just like oh then i felt really bad because we were joking about it and he said that he was like yeah i have pretty thick skin and i find a lot of that stuff funny and then like a couple weeks later he was like people are making fun of me for saying is he like texting you about that or was that when you're with him it was in person yeah he was like, people are making fun of me for a second. Is he like texting you about that? Or was that when you're with him? It was in person, yeah. And he was like crying about it? He didn't like cry, but he was having like a bit of an emotional spiral.

He was having a moment, yeah. And he was just like, I don't know what people want. He was like, people ask me how I'm doing. But I don't even know what I'm supposed to respond. If I say I'm doing okay, then people think I'm being glib about the situation. If I say I'm doing poorly, then people think that i'm being insensitive to the actual victims here and it is it makes complete sense yeah like i don't know what a good answer to are you how are you doing if he says he's good it sounds insensitive if he says he's doing badly it sounds like he's trying

to be the play the victim it makes sense he's in a tough situation he would call them victims well he didn't use that wording he was just like it makes it sound like I'm being insensitive to the other people who are, like, hurt or whatever. Yes. And he's aware that people were hurt. But, yeah, he was having a little bit of a breakdown about, like, I don't even know what to say when people want to talk to me. I feel like there's no point in me even talking to people because anything I say is going to be interpreted negatively. And I kind of, like, felt for him because I'm like, yeah, there is no real answer to any of those questions yeah it's a human thing you straight imagine face you can't yeah you can't imagine the weight of the world on your shoulders with that even if you did put it

there yeah but all these it's just amazing to me all these times you go to his house you'd never talk to his parents while you're there i know they didn't like me like I think Sam kind of intentionally tried to invite me over when they were like out of the house or were and I didn't think anything of it but I think it's because

they like explicitly did not like me I could think of a few other reasons but yeah just saying but like with other there were other journalists

I'd spoken to that had visited Sam and apparently the parents would like sit in with them and like join in the them and join in the conversation and invite people to dinner. But they did not want to talk to me. I tried to introduce myself. They're like, nope. So I don't think they were fans.

Because they're backroom dealers. They've been around a long time. They know what they know. Yeah. New York Times. Oh, you're good. How you doing, Adam? Step right in.

Right? Tiffany Funk. What? Twitter? Who is this for? What kind of plebeians go on Twitter? Exactly. Twitter. Come on. Sam, a Twitter reporter? That's not a reporter.

You talk to the Washington Post. I will say, I actually like, I don't know if the word respect can be used for Sam publicly, but I was like, shout out to you for giving a little Twitter person a chance. It's like, yeah, I do got to say, I'm like, thank you. Gave me a shot. Yeah, gave you a shot. That was my first interview ever.

I've never interviewed anyone in my life. That was my first time interviewing anyone. The brooklyn drunk on a date interview you did you did a good job game time players make game time plays you were there thank you thank you so much all right but back back to the trial we got off this we've been talking about michael lewis and all that so we covered that but honestly again if people haven't seen that in 60 minutes he was just in denial about it and it was kind of tough because he's like this respected author and it does make you question some of the other stuff he's written about before i'll admit it i'm trying not to because i i'm a fan but you know if you're still that enthused by the guy and he was that close to him that's and that's a difficult

thing that's why i could never do that job and it's hard as a journalist too because you have a job to do and you have to be unbiased and you have to yes i mean imagine living with someone though for a couple years yeah yeah i mean like i don't know it's hard for me because i'm like on a personal level i consider sam a friend like i like i liked hanging out with largely just because we were so fucking opposite he's just so nerdy and like so confused by just normal things like if i told him i went to a bar he was just like what do you even do at a bar and i just found it like sort of endearing in a very nerdy way like i

i thought our conversations were kind of funny and interesting because he was just such an, we were both like alien species to each other. Yeah. Because I'm someone who like went backpacking and like partied and like socialized a lot. And he's just like, what do you do at bars? I visited the climate you care about so much. Come on. Bars are climates too.

Yeah. I was like, you have drinks and you talk to people. And he's like, so you drink alcohol and you just talk to random people yeah he's come on i know got a little tism yes definitely not a bad thing that's one way to say it's not a bad it's not listen literally like the most talented people i love autistic people all right this is gonna be on on that. All right. I'll cut that part there. But anyway, so they— All right.

I was doing a good job. I was holding it for a minute. Got to get it back. Anyway, so they start bringing the witnesses through. They get all the key witnesses done, and as you were saying earlier, they didn't really have— it wasn't like they were really bringing experts. They were making their whole case airtight, and I would imagine the most fireworks testimony came from Caroline. How long was that?

Caroline spent, I think, two to three days, her direct, and then she had crossed for a couple days. I thought her testimony was – everyone thought she was going to be the star witness there were the most journalists lined up outside for Caroline's testimony but I actually thought Nishant Singh's was like surprisingly very good and what was his role over there? he was engineering

I believe, director of engineering I forget the exact title he actually apparently only found out about what was going on in September allegedly but he just had the most descriptive he apparently actually stood up to sam bigman freed a couple of times and like brought to his attention like hey like what are we doing with all these customer funds did he end up getting charged with anything he did get charged with quite a few things i kind of assume that he's they're gonna go easy on him though because he's

also for for forfeited um like a property that he purchased he's forfeited a lot of the assets that he benefited from ftx now let me know so he'll probably get a decent sentence i don't know gotcha so he was a star on this what what besides him being one of the few that actually stand up to him was there were there key moments in there he did like give these very detailed descriptions of his private conversations with sam and it was just kind of it felt like watching a movie listening to him he was just like so sam was reclined on a chair and i was pacing around the balcony it's around sunset like so like really vivid imagery they also the government plopped up a

nice photo of the balcony with the sunset michael lewis is back there yeah this is good this is good stuff as i was watching i like, fucking screenwriters are going to love this one. Like it was good. So, um, it was just the most vivid imagery and it just was interesting to hear. Like he was just giving his, like, I said this, Sam says this, and I wish I could quote it all directly. But, um, his, his, I thought was impactful. Caroline's was impactful in that she, she knew Sam very well and she also cried on the stand. So that was an impactful moment. What was impactful in that she she knew sam very well and she also cried on the stand so that was an impactful moment what was that over um i think that was over her describing

what the last week of ftx was like and she described it as like the worst week of her life and that she was just so full of dread for so long and that it was finally like coming to an end and that she actually expressed that she was and sam actually told me that she said that caroline described how she felt about the collapse and she said that she felt relieved yes yeah and was like almost even happy because she just been like you don't have to live a lie anymore yeah exactly which obviously does not look good for sam because sam is saying i didn't know about all these problems and i just found out in october or november and then caroline's like i've been living with this for so long. So it's like, how the fuck would this guy not know?

You're saying you didn't know Sam. So that was pretty damning. She also just had some interesting anecdotes from the fact that she dated Sam. And apparently Sam Bickman-Fried thought he had a 5% chance at becoming president at some point. So that was a little...

That guy would have never been president. I hate to break it to him. No. Not going to happen. Another moment where we can just see how kind of delusional he is. that was a that guy would have never been present i hate to break it to him not gonna happen another another moment where we can just see how kind of like delusional he is i'm like the the statistical likelihood of that is so low he really said it at five percent how did he come up with that number okay so one thing i've noticed about sam is just that and this is one reason why i think that some people who talk to him might think he's like just a fucking genius but he just puts everything into

numbers like even if he's talking about an inter interpersonal interaction with someone he's like yeah i think there's probably like a 20 chance that they'll probably like say this just like always assigning numbers and probabilities to everything even things where it's not even appropriate to assign a number or probability to it so i think that some people like fucking sequoia probably hears him talk like this and they're like this guy's a fucking genius but when you actually like listen to this, but when you actually listen to the fucking numbers, he's signing things. I'm like, that's just wrong. That's wrong. No, there's not a 5% chance you're going to become president, Sam. No, there's not a 50% chance that you're going to get out of this scot-free. No, they're like every number he assigns to anything i'm just like that's just wrong that's just fucking wrong but yeah i think that probably is something that contributed to this like vision that everyone had in their minds really like this guy's a genius but um yeah apparently caroline also said that at some point

sam said that he would take a coin flip if the odds were 50 chance that the world ends and 50 chance that humanity ends up two times better off he would take that coin take the coin flip yeah so that just shows you his fucking insane yeah he's delusionally exactly yeah exactly and that's the thing it's like how do you i don't know how to judge a person like that where it's like obvious yeah he's fucking delusional i just don't i don't think he's pure evil but i don't know like what judge a person like that where it's like, yeah, he's fucking delusional. I just don't – I don't think he's pure evil. But I don't know like what that means for like what I believe his sort of sentencing and everything should be. I don't know. It makes it tough for me to say what his sentencing should be.

So I try not to give numbers on that. Yeah, it's hard for anyone but it's hard for people that also are in the middle of it because you don't – one thing I've learned about myself and a lot of other people I've talked with share a similar idea. Most people don't want to believe someone is evil. Yeah. And it gets even harder when you're dealing with someone who actually probably isn't, but there's a whole lot else wrong. Completely. You know what I mean? that's the thing yeah it's not like i see him as like through rose colored lenses where i think that he's like innocent by any means but i'm like it's a complex mix of uh yeah diluted a lot of weird

weird personality quirks yeah i saw you there was i guess you would call controversial wasn't that controversial. But you sent out a tweet that had a lot of people talking. You know what I'm talking about. The one that said that I don't believe in life sentences? Yes. Yes. And I thought it was a great tweet.

You weren't – some people tried to take it like you were saying, oh, so he shouldn't be punished. You weren't saying that at all. Exactly. You weren't saying that at all. You were just saying, I feel a certain type of way that like this guy who I think was delusional and clueless is now potentially, and we don't know yet because sentencing hasn't happened yet, but is potentially going to go to prison for life. Completely. I'm not rooting for that. I'm not rooting for it. And neither, by the way, neither am I. I don't sit here and go, oh, how many years did he get?

I know. People get like that. Completely. I mean, I get comments of people being like hoping that he gets raped or murdered. I don't know if I can say that. But, you know, really horrible things. Like, I don't wish that on Sam. I'm not someone who doesn't think he should go to jail. I think he should go.

He should spend some time in prison. But I just, I don't know. I don't feel equipped to put a number on what i think is fair but anything that even approaches life in my opinion i just don't i don't see how it affects customers positively in the first place like i'm someone who lost a ton of my life savings to celsius and i actually fucking hate the machines keys because they've like personally antagonized me celsius tried to sue me really celsius we'll come back to that okay yeah um and uh chrissy mishinsky's posted strange rumors about me that i broke into their home you know i told you i leaked information she made weird rumors about me that i broke into celsius network systems that i

that i broke into their physical home she also made a rumor that i helped sam bakeman freed bribe chinese government officials where i was like out of all the things that Siegfried has done, you think I helped bribe Chinese government officials? I wonder why they thought that. I was like, a little racist? Yeah, just a little. I think I said that in a video and some people were like, why would you think that's racist? I'm like, what other connection would I have to Chinese government? Come on.

I know. So those people I actually fucking hate and think are like truly evil human beings. But even then, I like – honestly, like my main focus is on the fact that I hope every single fucking cent they ever like benefited from Celsius gets clawed back to creditors. I hope their fucking Manhattan penthouse gets clawed back to creditors. I want as much of my fucking money back as humanly possible. And sure, I guess they should go to prison and everything. But my main priority is like, I want my fucking money back. Make people whole.

Exactly. And I want to move on with my fucking life. Yes. So that's my main priority. I know other people don't feel the same. And obviously, they need to be punished. Obviously, it's a great deterrent to put someone in prison. So I see those as reasons for why they should go to prison.

But yeah, it's never been like my main focus for either sam or the missions keys and i'm not gonna lie i obviously like sam more as a person but yeah i mean there's more there is more there are more traits to be empathetic of if you know him like that like you i can see that and even if i don't want to be like i i understand that yeah and it's like sometimes i've said this before on the podcast a bunch but sometimes when we start talking about these cases whatever they are whatever the criminal case is reporters and therefore all of us throw around terms like five years 10 years 60 months 60 years like it's a deal at the pawn shop but i mean try to think about having a conversation with yourself five years from five years ago you couldn't you know what

i mean that like that's a long fucking time it is you know and so someone's like oh you know he got off he got five years that's five years of his life like that's a big deterrence it's crazy so to me yeah if the guy gets like 20 years, that's a wild sentence. I know. You know, that's a lot. He's fucked. Completely. Like people aren't, it's not like, oh, someone's going to go commit a fraud.

Oh, Sam only got 20. You know what I mean? Exactly. We do this thing where, I don't know what the year is, but it crosses a point where it's like the deterrence is there. Exactly. And that's just my opinion. I think even like fucking 10 years i think that's a deterrent i mean i also probably the median sentence for fucking murderers is apparently 17.5 years and the median sentence for like uh sexual assault is even lower than that obviously um and like i don't know you can

even like google it i don't like but that's what i've seen yeah and i'm like and like for example i've watched the jared i don't know if you saw like the subway uh guy jared focal who was like a child predator i know about it 14 fucking child victims he got 15 years for 14 child victims and i'm like and sam more worried about that for the public exactly completely like i see prison like the people that i think it's worth spending taxpayer money to fucking like keep them in prison off the streets are the people who are violent and are actually like, I don't want them on the fucking streets. Sam, it's like the main thing I hope he never is able to do. I hope he's never able to fucking touch anyone's money. I hope he's never able to run a company or start any or even work at a financial services business.

Like I hope he never touches anyone's money again. But is he a fucking threat if he's just sitting there able to walk the streets and see the light of day like i don't think he's an actual threat um i do agree with that yeah yeah because people aren't gonna i mean kevin o'leary might let him run a fucking company but no i mean he says that but a lot of people i tend to agree and like you said there has to be something because there has to be a deterrence you have to create something that makes people go oh i, I would never want that to happen to me. Completely. But you got to be careful with it.

And even Matt will talk about – he's – Matt Cox obviously. He's so open about the fact I was guilty of every single thing that they accused me of and I had to go to jail for a long time totally he's like when they gave me 26 i was a little surprised because my actual like victims were like banks he's like now if i had really he said i stole identities off homeless guys which was interesting but if i had completely taken away the life savings of people a la maybe like a Sam Bankman Freed or something. He's like, well, if they give me 26, I would have understood that. And that's – there's something to that. It's true.

But you talk to him. He's like, yeah, I mean it's got to be 15. It's got to be something like that. Like you're going to jail. When you do something wrong, you're going to jail. That's just what it is. And that's why he ran from the FBI for many years. Oh, did he?

Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just met him. I just met him. You got to why he ran from the FBI for many years. Oh, did he? Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just met him. I just met him. I just met him. You got to check out his story. It's pretty wild. But anyway, going back, we're going back and forth from the trial.

I kind of like this. But going back to it. So they bring all the witnesses through. And then, like you said, no one was sure what the defense would do. Was it only bringing SBF to the stand or did they bring any of their own witnesses too? They had two witnesses who I thought were both not super impactful. I think one of the witnesses was a lawyer who joined or who started being Sam's legal counsel after the collapse. So they weren't there during the relevant time. And I was just like, what are you

trying to like, I don't know what you're trying to do with this. He seemed very, very sorry. Yeah, exactly. Like he felt very very sorry yeah exactly like he felt really bad so it's like i don't think this is necessarily helpful to your case and then they had like some expert witness who had just very like he looked for a really specific set of data in the ftx databases and i don't even remember what that set was but i remember the prosecution was like so that's all you looked up you didn't look up anything else you didn't look at the movement of funds you didn't look at any of this you just looked up this nope that's all you looked up? You didn't look up anything else? You didn't look at the movement of funds? You didn't look at any of this? You just looked up this? Nope, that's it.

Exactly. So that was all Sam. Those were Sam's two witnesses. And then he testified. How many face palms did you see from his attorneys? Like how many? Oh, God. I mean, even when Sam was testifying, there were like some questions that had been objected to and sustained and Sam would answer them anyways. And his lawyers at one point were like, Sam, you've been sitting here for a month. You know, you don't have to answer questions if they've been sustained. I don't know if it was you or someone else, but there were some people posting like the transcript of like, Sam, lawyer. So did you get this? Sam's lawyer. Objection. Judge. Sustain. Sam.

Yeah, I got that. Exactly. It was kind of a funny, it was actually a funny moment. It was like, I forget the exact context was, but Sam was saying like, yeah, of course we knew that we needed to safeguard customer funds. And like, of course. And the prosecutor was like, so do you consider not embezzling customer funds to be a part of safeguarding them? And Sam's lawyer is, object, objection. Sustained.

Sustained. And then Sam goes, yes, I consider not embezzling funds to be an aspect of safeguarding them. Do you think his lawyers wanted him to testify or he insisted on it? I knew Sam would testify. It was just knowing Sam and knowing that he first of all likes to talk. Second of all, likes taking a fucking gamble. He likes taking a fucking risk and will always swing for the fences.

I knew he would testify. So I think that Sam's lawyers I think that Sam ended up with those lawyers because he already I don't know what's public about his first set of lawyers, so I won't go into that, but he already had a set of lawyers before these ones. And I kind of assumed that he chose these lawyers because they would like let him do

what he wanted to do because something else happened with his previous lawyers. So I think they kind of have, they've kind of had to let him go off and write his little sub stack, let him go off and do his little media tour. So when it came to testifying, I'm sure they were like, that's the worst that's damn yeah exactly like they're still getting their paycheck so like yes they are like hey this guy's doing this to himself like it's not even our fault if he goes to prison like he's done it god i hope my lawyers are better than that i hope they're like you sit the fuck down you shut up i know they should just like broken his phones like during house like it's not good yeah that's if i'm paying lawyers like that they better be doing that shit to me if i'm that dumb but how many days did he testify i think it only lasted

like three or four days i believe it was how long are these sessions though like when he's testifying are these like three hour sessions six hour sessions there are breaks throughout the day but like we get court starts on at like 9 30. We get out at around four, a couple of breaks in between. So there's breaks, but yeah, pretty long periods of talk. And how would you describe the jury watching him testify? It was so hard to, okay. I felt like they looked annoyed with him. I felt like I saw some eye rolls.

I saw some furrowed eyebrows. I saw some sort of like when two jurors would sort of look at each other and just be like eye roll at each other. But I also was like, maybe I'm overreading this. Like I don't know them too well. Maybe they're furrowing their eyebrows and they just do that when they listen to things. I don't know.

So I didn't like put too much weight on what I was seeing in the jury's faces. But you could kind of sense that they felt a bit kind of annoyed at this guy. And Sam, I thought, did fine in his direct testimony. But I thought that he, in his cross-examination, just came off so unlikable. Like in my notes, I was like writing like fucking dickhead. He just came off like such a fucking dickhead. Damn it, Sam. Right?

I'm just like, why are you doing this to yourself? But like in his direct examination, he was giving his entire recounting of how FTX and Alameda started and what his intentions were. He just wanted to make a better product. It obviously wasn't fraudulent from the start. He remembered lots of moments. Then cross-examination, they'll ask him like a really simple question like, so you met with Bill Clinton?

I don't recall that. How did you get to the Super Bowl? I don't remember that. And then they would just corner him into questions. So they're like, so How did you get to the Super Bowl? I don't remember that. And then they would just corner him into questions. So they're like, so how did you get to the Super Bowl? Did you fly on a private jet to the Super Bowl? I don't recall. Well, let's pull up the fucking photo

of you on a private jet on the way to the Super Bowl. The one with him sleeping? I don't know if that one exactly was from the Super Bowl, but they had exhibit A, B, and C where they asked him, do you recall this? And he'd pretend he didn't remember. And I'm like, you know they're about to fucking pull up a picture of this. And he would just pretend that he didn't remember anything.

So it was just so frustrating just watching that. As a jury member, I'm just like, this guy doesn't fucking look trustworthy anymore. He remembers how Alameda started in Airbnb but doesn't remember that he, like, met Bill Clinton. Like, that's a pretty memorable thing. Yes. I would say I'd remember. That'd be on my list of memories exactly for sure yeah and was he literally saying like the line i do not recall literally the prosecution actually counted it and it was over 140 times that sam said i don't recall i don't remember just wouldn't answer really straightforward

questions and some of those questions were not even fucking damning or like directly relevant to his criminal charges it's like did you meet with bill clinton you saying yes to that doesn't mean you're admitting to fucking fraud but he did not look great yeah well but like not being able to admit something like that i'm just like come on man yeah it's better to admit it than to say i do not recall because then if you don't remember fucking anything then how are we supposed to trust your entire day of testimony where you're trying to where you're retelling your side of events you know like if you don't remember any questions you know it's not going well not going well did you think this was going to be there were what seven or eight counts right yeah seven counts do you think it was going to be seven for seven i was actually i was like

maybe like i knew he'd be found guilty on at least some of the counts, most of them probably. But I was like, maybe, like, there's maybe one juror has, like, some uncertainty about maybe one count. I'm no lawyer, so I can't say which ones are the most doubtful. But I was surprised that the jury decided on a verdict within four hours of deliberation. They didn't even let the pizza get there. Exactly. They got back there. This is a financial case too.

So complex. Raj's jury deliberated for 14 days. Wow. Because again, you got to go through all the numbers. And then when the government tried to hit his brother a few years later, they deliberated for like three hours. Wow. Same types of things.

And they found him innocent. Oh. The brother. Holy shit. Which tells you that like, you don't even have time to go through the numbers and find hours wow same types of things and and they found him innocent oh the brother holy shit which tells you that like you don't even have time to go through the numbers and find so it's more impressive when they find someone innocent that quickly because it's like there's nothing here when you find someone guilty like that though it's also pretty impressive because there's not you know you might be sending someone to prison for life and like they're like, yeah, it looks like you did it. I know. It's fast.

But, Alessi, can you actually pull up Tiff's YouTube channel? The recent video was right after. Which one are we doing? The one that was right after the verdict where you were running back or whatever. Oh, God. If you go to the main. So, down, down. Guilty on all accounts, that one. Click that one and cut like 40 seconds ahead.

I got to give you the other account. I'm sorry I have the commercials on there. I have YouTube premium. Fucking peasants. So you shouldn't be having commercials. All right, cut to the second timestamp, the beginning of the second timestamp. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Go ahead. Yep. We're good? Apparently there's a verdict. I was like shitting my pants. So you went home. I went home because I was talking to the court marshals. I'm dumb.

They're not letting anyone in at this point. That was stupid of me, but I'm right outside the court. Pause it for a second. And Sam Bigman-Fried was found. So you talked to a... I was talking to the court marshals that day, and they were like, there's no fucking way they come up with a verdict today. They were like, because I was like...

You're good. Yeah, I was like, I'm so tired. I kind of want to go home, but I obviously want to see the verdict. And they're like, it's not going to come in today. Come back on Monday. Because we had a Friday off court. They were like, there's no fucking chance. They're like've I've watched

fucking dozens hundreds whatever of cases it never comes back this quickly and they were like especially for a case like this like this obviously

really complex case it's a kiss of death right there exactly so they were like come back Monday maybe sometime next week they'll come back

with a verdict for fucking hours I was at my apartment I literally was like shitting myself how close are you to the courthouse like a 12 minute walk

not that bad so she's running back. They're running. Guilty on all seven charges. I really was not expecting a verdict tonight. Like I said, I spoke to some of the court marshals and they said they've sat through dozens or hundreds of cases and they said that it's very rare for them to have

within hours. But the jurors must have felt dead sure that Sam was guilty. And I'm also surprised that he was guilty on all seven charges. I'm not surprised in that I thought he was innocent. I just thought that maybe there would be a longer deliberation over, you know, all seven charges. So the fact that they found him guilty within hours on the same day was kind of shocking to me. I was expecting this verdict, to be honest, but that is not so quickly.

So I'm outside of the courthouse right now. Kind of annoying. It's exciting. We love Kate. Hi guys. Beautiful Kate Rooney. Oh my gosh. Wow. Wow.

I'm so pissed that I wasn't in the room. Oh my gosh. I thought the verdict would come in like tomorrow. I did too. I took me 30 minutes. I was shocked. We're filming each other. All right, pause it.

I'll put this link in the description. People will check it out. But that's why people like you because it's very, we were talking before the camera, but it's very woman on the street

like just going with the flow, not like all boxed in with the media. Literally everything has been on my iPhone. They like you. I love Kate. She's cool.

That's cool? Yeah. So she made friends with all the people in the courtroom I did make friends with everyone Kate was so adorable she like came up to me

and she was like I'm a fan I was like what the fuck you're like you're on TV you're like the fucking I'm actually a fan of you

but yeah everything I've done has been on my little iPhone but you didn't get to be in the courtroom then when it happened I didn't I really wanted to

I wanted to like wave bye to Sam but I was in prison oh that's so bad oh so many mixed emotions about all this but his obviously is there were reports about like his family was all broken up it seems like they were a little bit in denial too i think so but you had had we had been hinting at this earlier you had never talked with them as we said at the house but you did have a moment with his mom in the courtroom we did have a moment when was that this wasn't this was before that verdict day up obviously but i left court a little bit early one of the days and as i was going to pick up my electronic device because you have to turn it in at the

beginning of each day um i saw barbara freed walking the same direction i was like oh i guess she's leaving early too i think that they were talking about um some of the properties that sam's parents benefited that day so she might not have wanted to be in the room for that one and uh so i was just like oh shit okay we're going the same direction in my head i'm like this is my internal dialogue i'm like okay do i say something to her i should probably say something to her i mean i've been to her house before it'd be kind of rude if i didn't say something to her and just say hello and obviously i'm like she's probably not going through a great time so we just got to the electronic pickup we're standing side by side and i just so fucking timid so fucking beta was like hey um i'm sorry you must be going

through a really hard time right now um i'm just really sorry didn't know what to say didn't plan that out very much but it was literally just like i'm so sorry you must be having such a hard time right now that's pretty much the extent of it and she was just like who are you oh she hit you with the who are you uh-huh uh-huh oh no and i'm like i was being so fucking beta like come on so i'm like okay and i was like oh i'm my name's t. I've actually been to your house before. She's like, oh, oh, I know who you are. It was like so, it just fucking snapped at me. And I was like, oh, yeah. She's like, you wrote that very unfortunate article about Sam.

Oh, she said unfortunate article? Yeah. God, she's so upperclass. So upperclass. Such an academic. And I was like, sorry are you are you confused like i because i okay i have a sub stack and i but i don't write articles i've like reposted some things that sam has sent me and i've like posted every a lot of celsius leaks i've posted on my sub stack like wallet addresses and things that are written i've reposted on sub stack but i've actually never

written an actual article let alone an article specifically about like Sam and I, but she was like, you wrote that very unfortunate article about your conversations with Sam. So I was just really confused. I kept asking the same question and asking for clarification. I was like, are you talking about like a video I posted or, and she's like,

no, that article, that article. And I was like, and so we were like walking out of court and she kept repeating this to me like yelling at me and uh she we got outside and she was trying to pull up whatever article and then she just i know but then she just stopped and she's like you know what i can't even talk to you right now it was just really really dramatic to like the point where there were a

couple of people who were standing outside the courthouse that witnessed this and they like came up to like comfort me and they were like why was that woman yelling at you are you okay did that lady hurt you exactly and they didn't even know it was sam's mom but they were like why was that woman yelling at you i was like that was sam bigman oh they didn't know they didn't know it was sam's mom these aren't these aren't photographers i think that they were probably like people in the public that maybe were like an overflow room or something like that maybe they hadn't seen sam's mom and mom in person but they didn't know it was sam's mom and they're like how do you not know okay i know i didn't i was surprised too but i was like that was sam's mom they're like what why does she hate so yeah that was a quite a little interaction well she's gone

through it i mean i i'll empathize with that that's the thing that's why i kind of feel bad talking about it was like obviously a noteworthy experience, but I'm like, yeah, she's obviously like having the worst time of her life. Like her son is potentially going to go to prison for a really long time. Yeah, I can't imagine that. So he, you weren't in there obviously, but he, what did some of the, you had talked to some of the reporters who were, did they say that there was like a dose of reality moment from him or same status quo they said that the mood in the courtroom was actually just pretty somber like no one was cheering for the fact that someone's life was over and obviously even like the jury members didn't look like they were proud of themselves or anything um it's like at the end of the day like i've said like i'm probably

more empathetic to sam than the average person but But after watching the trial, I would have had to write guilty as well. Like there was so much evidence. And I kept asking what Sam's reaction was. And pretty much everyone said that he was just stone faced, like there was no reaction. And ultimately, I wasn't actually surprised even actually in the in that we don't have to watch the video. But I think I said, like, I can't actually imagine Sam being super overly emotional because he's not a very emotional person. And that kind of, like, lined up with what I heard from people in the courtroom. They said that he didn't cry.

He didn't... There was no emotion on his face. He mostly just turned to talk to his lawyers when he heard the verdict. And he didn't even turn to look back at his parents until he was being actually, like, escorted out of the room or whatever. So as he was exiting,

apparently he looked at his parents and gave them a little nod and then then exited but apparently his parents were obviously yeah it's heavy for sure and he's at the middle of you know there's all kinds of unanswered questions that probably always will be unanswered about this and people's conspiracy brains will always be tingling just because of who his friends were. And I understand that. I understand why people think that. I mean I sit here and wonder it too. He knew the most important people and paid off the most important people. And I guess to the credit of the justice off and say, look, we got him.

He's in jail and other people who may have had knowledge or involvement or some shady dealings with him never get looked at. Do you ever wonder about that? I'm not necessarily a conspiracy theorist. That's good. I know that there are a lot of people who are saying, well, since Sam made these political donations, he get let off like pardoned i personally am not under that but like there's no what didn't happen well yeah it didn't happen he's some people are like this i still get comments of people being like he's never gonna see the inside of a cell i'm like what the fuck are you talking he's literally in fucking jail right now so there's still like delusional people like that i think that if

anything i don't think the political donations are gonna help him at. I mean, now these politicians have more incentive to just publicly show, look, I'm not, I'm not corrupt. Look, I'm not, I'm not with this guy. Like I don't support this guy. And there's no new money coming in. Like they don't have any incentive to continually help, help him. Like the billions of dollars that Sam was getting, it's all over now. Like, so I don't think it's going to think the political donations are going to help him. If anything, I feel like the politicians have egg on their face and they're going to try to publicly distance themselves as much as possible. Also, though, I'm sure that there's probably some things that politicians did that they probably don't want coming out in the second trial. Oh, yeah.

I think there's probably incentive for some things to not get made public. But I don't think that they're going to be rooting for him to get pardoneded or get sent free or anything like that do you think the second trial will happen or they'll come up with a deal god i mean i wonder because at this point it feels like fucking overkill like you guys got him on seven charges he's already facing 115 years i don't think we really need more charges to be for him to be found guilty on like it if anything it would feel like just for show and just to send a message if we did the second trial because these are the political charges this time yeah that's the only thing that why it might look weird if they dropped it but it's just kind of like all the resources it takes to put on like a criminal trial and like with these very

high highly paid prosecutors and everything like that to do a whole another round of this feels like overkill yeah because he already got found guilty so i mean logically i don't think it should happen but if anything like it might look bad for them to drop that's the thing that's the one if they drop those ones or like make a deal on those ones like a public out oh my god all the you're gonna have every tenfold hat in america tingling 100 so that's i think that's if the political charges donation or political donations charge wasn't in that one then I'd be like no way but yeah now I'm like yeah maybe they have

to just to keep these conspiracy theorists at bay I don't know yeah it's it's a mess but I'll admit when I first saw it come through I did not think he was ever gonna

I should say I felt strongly that there was a good possibility he would never face the full brunt of things. I knew he was going to have to face something. He wasn't going to – they weren't just going to let him walk. They were going to have to do something. But there would be some sort of deal, and it doesn't appear that way. I mean I don't know. Did you have any beat on what the judge thought of him i mean i know he was like violating the conditions of his bail on the build-up that's probably not

good yeah it was judge caplan right yeah i don't think the judge is a fan of him although the judge also seems like he's a relatively fair even-mannered judge but um i've heard mixed things from people um i was just talking to do you know genello? He's like a mobster. I saw his friends. But I was talking to him and he was just at MDC and he said that Kaplan is a really harsh sentencer. And also Martin Shkreli told me that Kaplan is a really harsh sentencer. Although when I read some articles, I think I read a Bloomberg article that found a couple of examples

of Judge Kaplan going below the recommended guideline sentence. So there's examples on both sides, I guess, of him being harsh or him being slightly lenient. But I don't think he's Sam's biggest fan. I think Sam probably came off as a bit pompous and didn't necessarily take responsibility for his actions or own up to anything. And I guess kind of like wasted everyone's time going to trial. So I don't know if Judge caplan's going to be too pleased and i also wonder if he'll find that sam you know if you might see think that sam perjured himself on the stand so there's a lot of factors at play here and obviously the amount of money that's gone

is just off the charts in the like guidelines political capital in this situation if we're peaking if we're speaking like politically ca Kaplan and judges, look, I'm not in their head. They are trained to not worry about that stuff and rule objectively when it comes to things like this. But let's be honest, they're all still humans. They're not robots. There's so much attention on this and so many vibes against him. The only outcome, possible outcome for caplan is bad here

and the only way he has a bad outcome meaning like in the press for him is if he gives him too light of a sentence there's no downside to caplan putting this guy in in jail for life no one's going to feel empathy for it so he could technically do it completely that's an interesting dichotomy i 100 agree with that and that's why i'm kind of like i think there is actually like a higher than if this case wasn't so high profile and had so much media attention i think that maybe kaplan would lean towards a moderate sentence especially since sam is young but god with all the eyes on this it would look bad for him if he gave him a moderate is he on the other trial too? Yeah. Oof.

I know. Tough for Sam. I know. It's really not looking so good. You've done a great job covering it though. Thank you. I mean, this has been really cool for you to kind of get your whole start on like the biggest case in America and knock it out of the park.

So you should be proud of that. It's crazy. I mean, I obviously never expected anything like this to happen but it also feels like a sort of a i'm gonna have a bit of an existential crisis because i'm like i started off with a fucking bank started off with the fucking biggest financial fraud scandal of our generation i'm like i don't know what i'm supposed to fucking cover from here well what did what happened with mishinsky by the way you were talking about that for a second oh like they were accusing you they were suing you or something well well celsius the as a company tried to sue me for leaking information um and he spent 72 000 i believe trying to sue me thinking about suing me and it came up in a

bankruptcy filing as tiffany fong litigation i would have been like why wasn't it 150 i know and they fucking owe me more money than that like you could have just fucking given that to me but instead they just burning creditors money to potentially sue a fucking creditor insane and i'm not someone who ever broke an nda like so they're suing me for leaking this or wanted to sue me for leaks of information you don't work there exactly i didn't i don't fucking worry that it's not like did you spend that much money talking to a lawyer for them to tell you that I didn't fucking break an NDA so you don't really have anything here? Well, in New York, that's about four hours. But still, I mean, Christ. True.

That's wild. Fucking ridiculous. It's crazy when – and I think you're right. That's more the axis of evil when you see stuff like that. Completely. Where people are trying to destroy people. Completely. You know, and they're very aware of it too. Totally. And when does his aware of it too. Totally.

And when does his trial supposedly start? September 2024. So I'll definitely be here to cover that. Is that in SDNY? Oh, let's go. Do you want to come? I will go to that. I'll come there for a day of that for sure.

Sounds fun. I've never done that. My dad's a lawyer, but he's a civil lawyer. So I've watched him cook in court, but it's not criminal stuff. That's cool. Okay. I mean, Sam's not criminal stuff. That's cool. Okay. I mean, Sam's was my first time going to court. It's a heavy thing, like you said.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with the courtroom, no one cheering and stuff like that when someone gets found. And I get it sometimes when a murdered family is – when the family of a murder victim sees that, they'll cheer. I get it. it's a heavy thing but you know there's there's life and death in the balance in there and it happens with a gavel completely it's crazy it really was crazy i felt a little i felt like emotional after the after the verdict a lot of things going through your head i'm sure yeah because you know i know it's like on a personal level and obviously i was like this is the right decision obviously he i think he was guilty but yeah it is hard to think about someone going to prison for that long.

And like we were saying, even if you went away for 10 years and you were like, put that into perspective, what that means for someone's life. And I was just thinking about, you know, I was able to have all these very candid, unfiltered conversations with Sam sitting at his house. And I was like, oh, the next time I'd be able to talk to Sam in any sort of unfiltered, normal way without being, I guess, surveilled or anything like that. By then in 10 years, like I might have, I hope I have like fucking kids and a family and I'm going to be a house and like my life will be so different. And like, I don't know, it made me kind of sad to think about, like, he'll just be sitting there and I'm going to be a house and like my life will be so different. And like, I don't know, it made me kind of sad to think about like, he'll just be sitting there and I'm going to be off doing something else. And it made me really sad to think about. His time stops. Yeah. While it keeps going too. It's a very weird thing. But Tiffany, great job on all this. Your YouTube channel is Tiffany Fong.

We'll link that in the description. Thank you. Your Twitter is Tiffany Fong with an underscore. Tiffany Fong with one underscore. Okay. We'll link that as well. I really enjoyed this. Awesome job on the case. Thank you so much. And you're very entertaining talking about it too. Thank you. This was so fun.

You guys are great. I'm glad to hear it. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace.