Elon Musk Joins Growing List Of Executives Saying Bankman-Fried Should Go To Prison

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, over the weekend, joined the growing list of executives calling for the arrest and imprisonment of the disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

Entrepreneur Devin Simonson said in a tweet that Bankman-Fried "does not need any more mentioning except for his court date." Musk concurred to it and responded that the fallen FTX CEO should be given "an adult timeout in the big house," suggesting that SBF, as he is called in the crypto industry, should be in prison.

Musk has become the latest entrepreneur who wants to see SBF behind bars. Billionaire and NBD team Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said a few days ago that if he were Bankman-Fried he would be afraid of going to jail for a long time. "I talked to the guy and thought he was smart ... I had no idea he was going to take other people's money and put it to his personal use," Cuban told TMZ.

But while Cuban's comment on Bankman-Fried sounded a bit subtle, Galaxy Digital's CEO Mike Novogratz in a recent interview with CNBC's Squawk Box, called the former FTX CEO "delusional" and said that he needs to be prosecuted and should "spend time in jail."

Novogratz said, "let's be really clear. Sam was delusional about what happened and his culpability in it," he told the program's host Andrew Ross Sorkin on Thursday. "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," the CEO added.

"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," Novogratz further said. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is baffled why Bankman-Fried is still not yet in custody.

"The DOJ or somebody should be able to make—just based on his public statements, I think there's a very open and shut case for fraud," the Coinbase CEO said during the a16z Crypto Founder Summit last Tuesday. "I'm not an expert on this, but the people I talk to seem to agree on that," Armstrong added.

"I think we were all pretty shocked to see the scope of the fraud that happened at FTX. And let's call it a fraud. We have to call it what it actually is. It's been pretty bizarre that mainstream media hasn't really come out and said, 'This guy's a criminal.' Maybe they want to wait until he's actually indicted or something like that, and in custody. But it seems very clear at this point that that's the case," Armstrong further said.

Bankman-Fried could be facing serious legal issues but experts say he can use an interesting defense, and that is, his actions were not criminal and that he was just plain stupid. "Mismanaging your company and losing a bunch of other people's money is not criminal," Randall Eliason, an ex-prosecutor who now teaches law at DC's George Washington University, said. "It happens all the time. For a criminal case, there has to be deception."