Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: How Sam Bankman-Fried Conned the Crypto World & The Sam Bankman-Fried Update
25 Nov 2025
Chapter 1: What is the premise of the podcast episode?
This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? Who catfishes a city? Is it even safe to snort human remains? Is that the plot of Footloose? I'm comedian Rory Scovel, and I'm here to tell you Josh Dean and I have a new podcast that celebrates the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals.
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I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltsin. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville, tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed.
It doesn't matter how much I fight. It doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this. It doesn't matter how much justice we get. None of it's going to get me pregnant.
Listen to What Happened in Nashville on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Who would you call if the unthinkable happened? My sister was shot 22 times. A police officer, right? But what do you do when the monster is the man in blue? This dude is the devil. He'll hurt you. This is the story of a detective who thought he was above the law until we came together to take him down. I said, you're going to see my face till the day that you die.
I got you, I got you, I got you. Listen to The Girlfriends, Untouchable, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's Michelle Williams, host of Checking In on the Black Effect Podcast Network. You know, we always say new year, new me, but real change starts on the inside.
It starts with giving your mind and your spirit the same attention you give your goals. And on my podcast, we talk mental health, healing, growth, and everything you need to step into your next season whole and empowered. New year, real you. Listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Oh, God is dead and you, Jamie Loftus, have killed him. I did it. I finally did it. You did it. You did it. No, God was a him and Jamie killed him. Hammer to the back of the head.
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Chapter 2: Who is Sam Bankman-Fried and why is he significant?
Founder of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, who we just found out has been sentenced to 11.25 years in prison.
I'm kind of... Yeah, I have mixed... I have mixed feelings because it's like people don't go... First of all, the prison industrial complex in general... No, it's...
It doesn't make anyone better to the extent that there's value in the present day and putting people in prison. It's people who are like a severe ongoing danger. And I don't see this making anything better. Like at the same time, I hate her. So I don't I'm not going to. She's horrible. It's not going to be the top injustice I rue today.
I do kind of like that her, after being exposed as an unrepentant criminal, she's like, oh, I think I'm just going to kind of be like a normie girl for a while. And I'm going to go to Coachella with my new boyfriend. And you're like, Liz, it's too late. It's too late for that, Liz.
You defrauded people with a fake medical device that led folks to get treatment for things they didn't have and ignore illnesses they did, which is bad.
You got caught before too many bodies hit the floor, but that would have stopped you.
But you didn't really care. You applied Steve Jobs logic to something that was not just a silly box to keep in your pocket. Oh, Lizzie.
Lizzie, Lizzie. You know, Lizzie's fucked is what we learned.
Also, putting her in prison for, you know, probably nine years when you consider all of the other things is like... not going to help anything. Uh, it'll just mean that that kid she has grows up without a mom for nine years and that's not going to make the world better.
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Chapter 3: What ethical theories influence Sam's actions?
It's a big disaster. It is very light. Yeah.
And in And as in words that will annoy me as little as possible, can you explain why FTS remains solvent and other?
It is not solvent. Oh, no.
Why did it outlast?
Oh, because they lied. So they were they were operating the short end of how to describe it. And we may there will be more details to come. But at present, it seems fair to say that it was a giant Ponzi scheme. They were taking in money, promising unreasonable returns, using other investor money to gamble on stuff to try to provide. Anyway, and it worked well.
Unlike all the other crypto guys, they were dishonest.
Yeah, it is. It is very likely. What differentiates this is the scale, because this is very likely a financial crime on the level of what Bernie Madoff did. We are talking in the 10 to 20 billion dollars stolen. Holy cow. A lot of money. This is a serious financial crime.
I'm going in on this pretty cold.
So I'm listening. So for the other kind of mass crime, like touchstone of this is that it has led to a class action lawsuit against Larry David, Shaquille O'Neal, Tom Brady, and a number of celebrities who were all in a, a Superbowl ad for FTX.
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Chapter 4: How did Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange operate?
One vote.
No shit.
Yeah, it kind of is. It's it's total bullshit because stuff it's the thing everybody agrees with on paper, but nobody will actually fight the tax prep companies, which is like, hey, the IRS like knows more or less what I make and like knows more or less what I owe. Why don't I just get a thing from them? Why do I have to go through this? Like, anyway, there's no need.
But it's like that's the only.
Other countries do it that way. We don't, though.
And it's because there has to be a convoluted system that's expensive and where they can charge you if you make the tiniest mistake because you can't read size one font.
Well, and more to the point, because I don't actually think the IRS is advocating to keep it a pain in the ass. I think it's these tax prep companies because they have an entire industry based on charging people to do the thing that they have to do to avoid going to fucking prison. Anyway, I said he's an asshole, and I'm sure he is, but he was right about this.
I don't know what to say about that. Like all of us, Joseph is also a podcaster. He is the host of the co-host of the Stanford Legal podcast.
Oh, insufferable times, too. And he's a nerd.
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Chapter 5: What does Sam Bankman-Fried's God complex reveal about his behavior?
Like if it's this easy for him to con people into shit, like, of course, you would have a God complex. You've never you've never been told no.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. It's cool. So what Sequoia was, yeah, sorry, I have to continue this fucking quote. And next he's gonna talk about a person who works at Sequoia and is in the room for this. I sit 10 feet from him and I walked over thinking, oh shit, that was really good, remembers Aurora. And it turns out that fucker was playing League of Legends through the entire meeting.
And this is framed in the article and in all the coverage before everything fell apart. It's like so awesome. He's so cool. This writer talks a bunch about how Sam never stops playing video games. When he's talking to this writer, when he's having corporate meetings, he's playing video games basically 100% of the time. And this is always mentioned is like he's always working.
He's always in the office. He sleeps in a beanbag chair at his desk. And it's like, no, dude, he's not always working. He's conning you.
Chapter 6: How did Sam Bankman-Fried attempt to manipulate perceptions of his work?
And he plays video games all the time and pretends that that's a fucking job, which is great. Great con. Good for you.
Always working and always there. Two very different flavors of things happening.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's all part of the fucking con. So is the fact that he always he always wore like ratty old athletic shorts and like a wrinkled T-shirt. Because like that's if you are a young man in the tech industry, that makes people think you're a genius. Right. Because geniuses dress like shit. Yeah.
He's like, now, if I bring a real stink into the room, people are going to jack up my already fake IQ score about 20 points. Yeah, this is fucking horseshit.
Chapter 7: What were the implications of Sam's actions on his relationships and company?
And it's like, you know who else dresses like shit? The guy I used to buy weed from. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Does he also have a pet snake? You know who wears the same outfit as Sam Bankman Freed? My old buddy who once at a party got into an argument with a guy and broke 15 bones in his face because they were both drinking. Not a corporate genius.
I do like that shared aesthetic where it's like really the difference is the pet snake. That is, that's the, that's, that's how you truly can sniff out the millionaires from the, yes. I don't want a pet snake.
He's the same kind of person as Elizabeth Holmes. And he was, again, he's a confidence man.
And this gets us into the Larry David shit because the thing about being a confidence man is that as long as people are convinced their money is safe and most of them don't try to pull it out, then you can keep the con going and you can keep the fake numbers increasing and everyone will think you're richer and you can actually get real money out of this.
So one of the things that he did is he would pour shitloads of money into sponsorship deals and to other ventures to make his company seem legit. One way he did this.
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Chapter 8: What are the latest developments in Sam Bankman-Fried's legal troubles?
Yeah. He spent 17 and a half million through FTX to sponsor the athletic teams at UC Berkeley. He launched a 20 million dollar ad campaign with Tom Brady and Giselle BĆ¼ndchen. He offered NFTs at Coachella.
Yeah.
And he spent $135 million on the naming rights for the Miami Heat's home arena. And this is all to build confidence, right? You see it's the same thing Crypto.com did, by the way, with the arena.
I was going to say, I feel like the Crypto.com arena is not long for this world. And we don't recognize that as an actual thing.
Is my money safe in this thing that's a bank but not a bank? Well, their name is on the arena, so it's probably legit.
Yeah.
here's the thing is like yeah it's like now walking into the crypto.com arena arena i couldn't feel less safe i couldn't feel less secure nobody unlike when it was the staple center i'm like oh you know what's never going to go out of style little notebooks people have been using staples since we were cavemen i assume so yes the earliest technology just like the worst fucking name on earth but it's yeah it infuriates me these people yeah sophie has a dog in the fight i do i do
In his interview with Vox, Sam basically admits this, albeit in a slightly careful way. Journalist, so FTX technically wasn't gambling with their money. FTX had just loaned their money to Alameda, who had gambled with their money and lost it. And you didn't realize it was a big deal because you didn't realize how much money it was?
Sam responds, and also I thought Alameda had enough collateral to reasonably cover it. Journalist says, I get how you could have gotten away with it, but I guess that seems sketchy even if you get away with it. Sam, it was never the intention. Sometimes life creeps up on you.
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