He added that the speed at which Bankman-Fried’s rags-to-riches-to-rags tale unfolded makes the case difficult to compare with fraudsters like Madoff, the financier who was sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009 for stealing $65 billion from thousands of investors. Madoff executed his Ponzi scheme over the course of more than 20 years. Holmes, who was sentenced to prison for more than 11 years for defrauding investors of nearly $145 million, saw the rise and fall of Theranos play out for over a decade.
“FTX rose and fell in the span of a year,” Atwater said. “It was one of the last partygoers to the event, and they arrived on the scene when confidence was at its highest and scrutiny was non-existent.”
Source: FTX Adds a Complex Chapter to the Financial-Fraud History Books – Bloomberg