Michael Novogratz on the criminal behavior of Sam Bankman-Fried

Sam is delusional about what happened and his culpability in it.  We could all be dime store psychiatrists.  There's a lot of narcissism there.  There's a lot of grandiosity, but being psychiatrists isn't going to really help.  He needs to be prosecuted.  He will spend time in jail.  They perpetuated a large fraud and it wasn't just Sam.  You don't pull this off with one person...  I'm not saying he even planned this all like a criminal mastermind.  What they did was criminal and they need to be prosecuted for it...  Stanford [SBF's alma mater] is one of the best universities in America and he worked at Jane Street and those guys are fiercely good.  Traders don't forget how they lose money.  It's kind of the DNA of anybody who spends time in this field.  So it's just kind of a pile of malarkey to say, "oh, I didn't understand how much risk we had.  These were huge bets, and they were huge bets made with my money and other depositors' money...  It's "I stole your money and I should've risk managed the money better."  It was the theater of the absurd to some degree...  Some people start off going down the path, they get in trouble and start breaking the law thinking they can get it back.  It's a tale as old as time, right?  And so you might not have started the plan of, "oh, I'm going to go rob everybody," but the moment there was one mistake you start cheating.  And then you start cheating more and then you start cheating more and next thing you know, you've got a $10 billion cheat going on.

~ Michael Novogratz, CNBC interview, December 1, 2022