He confessed for the retirement plan. Free healthcare, housing and meals. /s

You absolutely hit the nail on the head. I think their failure was not in renting EV's, it was that they just bought EV's without building out infrastructure around them. How do you order 100,000 EV's but not install chargers at your rental locations? How hard would it have been to just have the attendant plug the car in when it's returned to ensure it has a full charge?

They could have turned that into an advantage and not require EV renters to recharge the car before returning it, sell it as a perk of EV's. It's the one thing I really hate about rentals cars in general, I've lost count of how many times I've circled around an airport looking for a gas station in an unfamiliar city while trying to make my flight in time. It's a HUGE pain, and EV's make that seem like it should be a problem of the past. The whole reason to push refueling on to the renter is the man power to take every car to the nearest gas station to refuel is too high. EV's wouldn't have that problem if Hertz had just thought the whole thing through.

Consider that he had those restrictions as part of his bail. He violated them multiple times. He threatened and tried to coerce potential witnesses, he moved crypto assets around, etc. This is a guy who doesn't believe the rules apply to him. He also likely has hidden accounts and crypto waiting for him. He won't need a paycheck, he'd just disappear overseas with a retirement you and I could only dream of. In his case placing him in prison isn't about restitution, it's to protect society, and maybe deter the next guy.

SBF should never be free in his mortal life. How many people would happily take 10 years prison in exchange for $1M, much less $10M, $100M or $1B? The total societal harm, and lives damaged has to be taken into account. He did more damage then a meth-head robbing a convenience store for $300 at gun point. It's not about revenge, or punishment, or rehabilitation, it's the principle of the thing. It's to prevent the next guy from trying the same thing. You're also assuming that he hasn't locked away some of that crypto in hidden wallets, or in overseas bank accounts. People have a hard time wrapping their minds around the scale of this kind of fraud. When you grift billions of dollars, squirreling away 10's of millions is like pocket change, and would be nothing to hide. Ask yourself how did he afford his high price lawyers? If we did what you suggest, he would most likely just run another scam of some sort, or he could 100% leave the country and just live a retirement you and I could only dream of with his ill gotten gains. A guy who gave 100's of millions to politicians, (who by the way haven't given that money back), would never live a life of poverty for penance. Hell, the guy could probably sell SBF t-shirts or golden shoes, and make millions at this point.

I think this actually worse than Elizabeth Holmes-level fraud. At least she only blew investor money, and it was largely spent on at least trying to build the thing she promised (if it was impossible and she largely knew that at some point). SBF on the other hand... They ran Super Bowl commercials to convince people that their exchange was legit and trusted by celebs. People used FTX to purchase crypto and then just took the money and spent it all on hookers and blow. This is like you putting money into eTrade or Robinhood, etc your app tells you that you own a bunch of stock that you "purchased" and shows you a neat little dollar balance and all, only to find out you were really funding a drug fueled, polyamorous- sex-party bender in a $40MM condo in the Bahamas by a bunch of 20 year olds who couldn't even be bothered to open a bank account after 3 years despite having $32bn flow throw their exchange. As the OP mentioned, if they had even a few brain cells to rub together, they could have pulled off the grift successfully with no one the wiser. They effectively ran a short on crypto during the largest drop in crypto history. If they had just kept their theft to say 80-90% of the money, they could have used that to buy back all of the necessary crypto and returned the funds to their customers. What I don't get is what was their plan? If crypto hadn't crashed their current position would have been WORSE not better. I don't think they were smart enough to actually foresee the drop, otherwise they'd be hailed as the smartest guys on the planet right now. Instead their plan seemed to be: 1) Take deposits 2) Spend it all 3) Hope nobody notices? 4) Profit??