Speaker 1: Push k.
Speaker 2: Welcome to judging Sam. I'm Liddy Jean Kott. The trial
Speaker 2: of Sam Makemon Freed is now over and our coverage
Speaker 2: is winding down, but there are a few things that
Speaker 2: are still in my mind. While I was at reporting,
Speaker 2: family and friends would often send me articles, and a
Speaker 2: lot of these articles were by one particular writer, Elizabeth Lopato.
Speaker 1: She's a reporter at The Verge.
Speaker 2: Her stories about Sam Magmon Freed were sometimes funny, sometimes empathetic,
Speaker 2: and they were always full of razor sharp insights. I
Speaker 2: am so excited that she's joining me. Liz, thanks for
Speaker 2: being here.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it.
Speaker 2: It's really nice to talk to you inside at a
Speaker 2: normal hour instead of at one am or two am
Speaker 2: in front of the courthouse.
Speaker 3: No, it's amazing that we're not in the dark. I
Speaker 3: think that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was this whole experience like for you?
Speaker 3: I was kind of like getting shot out of a cannon.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I live in California most of the time, and so
Speaker 3: I was living in New York for a month in
Speaker 3: this sort of terrible bachelor pad with like modular everything
Speaker 3: that came out of cupboards and a kitchen the size
Speaker 3: of a postage stamp, and the trial was about all
Speaker 3: I was doing. You know, I have some friends in
Speaker 3: New York that I got to see on the weekends,
Speaker 3: but really like I would stand outside the courthouse and
Speaker 3: then I would sit through the trial, and then I
Speaker 3: would go home and write, and then I would immediately
Speaker 3: go to bed. So that was like an entire month
Speaker 3: of just really being in it.
Speaker 2: Did you have like a moment of extreme low, like
Speaker 2: my lowest of the low when I was trying to
Speaker 2: sleep on top of my computer on a poncho in
Speaker 2: the rain at three am by the courthouse. That's when
Speaker 2: I was like, how is this my life?
Speaker 1: Did you have like that?
Speaker 3: Did I have a moment like that? I don't think
Speaker 3: I did. I kind of knew what I was getting
Speaker 3: into because this is not my first time doing like
Speaker 3: a pretty hardcore trial outing that that is going to
Speaker 3: necessitate a certain amount of like standing outside. But I
Speaker 3: will say there was a moment when it started raining
Speaker 3: and I was like fully in rain gear and had
Speaker 3: already been standing outside for hours when the rain started,
Speaker 3: where I was like, Okay, well it's a good thing
Speaker 3: I'm outdoorsy, because otherwise I think I would be pretty
Speaker 3: upset by this.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure you beat me pretty much every single day,
Speaker 2: and most of the days you did make it into
Speaker 2: the courtroom. There was one day where I asked another
Speaker 2: reporter how much I would have to pay him to
Speaker 2: get a spot, and he told me his price was
Speaker 2: two thousand dollars. What what would have your price been?
Speaker 3: So the entire reason and that I was getting into
Speaker 3: the courtroom and I did get in every day, was
Speaker 3: that for me and covering the trial, it was important
Speaker 3: to give people a sense of what it was like
Speaker 3: in the courtroom. You know. There were moments. I think
Speaker 3: the most obvious one was when Sam was having that
Speaker 3: sort of weird evidentiary hearing and there had been an
Speaker 3: objection to the question about whether embezzlement was keeping customer
Speaker 3: money safe, and he answered it anyway, and his lawyer
Speaker 3: was like, Sam, you've been here for weeks now, you
Speaker 3: didn't have to answer that question, and say I was like,
Speaker 3: I know, but I felt like it was important. And
Speaker 3: that was like a very light moment in the courtroom.
Speaker 3: It was really really funny. And then I came out
Speaker 3: of the courtroom and I realized that people were taking
Speaker 3: it as like a rebuke, like his lawyer was mad
Speaker 3: at him. And so there are moments like that where
Speaker 3: actually physically being in the room is important for reading
Speaker 3: the tone and you want to see what sort of
Speaker 3: the jury is seeing. Although the jury wasn't there for this.
Speaker 3: So I guess this is a long winded way of saying,
Speaker 3: like the assignment was for me to get into the courtrooms.
Speaker 3: The answer is you could not have paid me un
Speaker 3: Thus you were going to give me, like, you know,
Speaker 3: enough to cover the my salary.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, that's so true. I do.
Speaker 2: I remember that moment that you're talking about, and if
Speaker 2: you looked at the transcripts, it could have been interpreted
Speaker 2: one way, and if you're actually there, it seemed really different.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite articles that you wrote early on
Speaker 2: was about the millennial vocabulary that came up during Sam
Speaker 2: Aemunfried's trial. What are some examples of the millennial words
Speaker 2: that were used that you still remember?
Speaker 3: Everything was stuff and things and those are the two
Speaker 3: things that really stood out to me. You know, I
Speaker 3: was looking at these charts, these Excel spreadsheets that Caroline
Speaker 3: Ellison had made, and it would be like she's referring
Speaker 3: to what was she says was a bribe paid to
Speaker 3: Chinese officials, and she was like, you know, several million
Speaker 3: for the thing. And it's like, I am so embarrassed
Speaker 3: from my entire generation right now. This is humiliating. This
Speaker 3: is not even a good code. And also this is
Speaker 3: like such specific internet speak. You know, if you've looked
Speaker 3: at like the Enron documents or any of the other
Speaker 3: sort of documents associated with financial frauds, they're usually a
Speaker 3: little more sophisticated than this, you know, I mean, in
Speaker 3: fairness to Caroline Elison, I think that the sort of
Speaker 3: language she was using was truer to how she spoke
Speaker 3: and was truer to like her personality. So in that sense,
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's it's less embarrassing than some of
Speaker 3: the corporate speak that we've heard. Like, you know, if
Speaker 3: you've ever read a press release where a company is
Speaker 3: kind of trying to hide the fact that they're doing
Speaker 3: layoffs and they're talking about like headcount reductions or like
Speaker 3: strategic restructurings or whatever, there's like a certain kind of
Speaker 3: like goofy bloodlessness to it. And so it's just like,
Speaker 3: I guess a question of which sort of goofy euphemism.
Speaker 3: You want do you want the one that's that Internet speaker.
Speaker 3: Do you want the one that's you know, MBA speak
Speaker 3: because it's going to be Charkin either way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And the word the thing as a millennial To defend
Speaker 2: it for a second, it's a super versatile word. You
Speaker 2: can say I did a thing, which maybe means you
Speaker 2: bought a house, got engaged. It can also be a
Speaker 2: word used apparently to cover up a massive fraud. The
Speaker 2: thing could be possibly allegedly a bribe.
Speaker 1: It's a word.
Speaker 2: Not many words can cover such a vast array of
Speaker 2: possible meanings.
Speaker 3: And I also have to say when I wrote that,
Speaker 3: I sent it to one of my editors and he
Speaker 3: was like, you have just blown up my entire spot.
Speaker 3: All of my edits sound like this. And I was like,
Speaker 3: I know, Richard, like I'm aware I also talk like this.
Speaker 3: I was hyper aware of every time I said thing
Speaker 3: or stuff I think for the next two weeks where
Speaker 3: I was like, oh my god, I sound just like this.
Speaker 3: This is what I sound like to judging.
Speaker 2: Sam will be back in a minute, we're back. I'm
Speaker 2: also curious, so you know, before you covered the trial
Speaker 2: of Sam Kmunfried. You covered the Elizabeth Holmes trial, and
Speaker 2: I'm curious what similarities and differences you saw between both
Speaker 2: of them. Starting with let's say the similarities, I'm going to.
Speaker 3: Start by saying this is specifically my opinion, but I
Speaker 3: think that there is a similar level of delusion involved
Speaker 3: with both Sam Beckmunfried and Elizabeth Holmes. And the reason
Speaker 3: I say that is that if you go and look
Speaker 3: at the statistics for going to trial against the federal government,
Speaker 3: people don't succeed, you know, in the Southern District of
Speaker 3: New York. Those odds are are terrible. And if you
Speaker 3: just plead guilty and you sort of throw yourself on
Speaker 3: the judge's and you say I've done I've done something terrible,
Speaker 3: I feel bad about it. I want to repay my
Speaker 3: debt to society. One of the things that you can
Speaker 3: possibly do is shorten your sentence because you seem like
Speaker 3: you have accepted that you've done wrong, and you are,
Speaker 3: you know, contrite.
Speaker 1: And you're saving the government a lot of money exactly.
Speaker 3: And so if you are going to trial, it's because
Speaker 3: you think you have a chance of acquittal. I think,
Speaker 3: and both Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman freed were obviously
Speaker 3: very good at talking to people before their fall. They
Speaker 3: were very good at convincing people to give them money,
Speaker 3: and so I think there was some level of, oh, well,
Speaker 3: if I just tell my side of the story, everybody
Speaker 3: will immediately understand, because everybody always understands when I tell
Speaker 3: my side of the story. So that was the big
Speaker 3: similarity I saw. I think Elizabeth Holmes was better at
Speaker 3: that than Sam was. She was certainly better at engendering sympathy.
Speaker 3: It didn't, you know, wind up mattering that much because
Speaker 3: she was still found guilty on most of the counts.
Speaker 2: But you mean, do you mean when she took the stand,
Speaker 2: because they both also took the stand, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So when Elizabeth Holmes got on the stand, I
Speaker 3: think she did a much better job of seeming sympathetic,
Speaker 3: and I think in some ways she ameliorated some of
Speaker 3: the damage that had been done by the prosecution, because
Speaker 3: up to that point, every time we had heard her voice,
Speaker 3: it had been a recording of her lying and you know,
Speaker 3: establishing that she was a person, establishing that you know,
Speaker 3: she had a background that you know, there were specific
Speaker 3: things in the company that she was really invested in
Speaker 3: or really believed in. I think that worked to her advantage.
Speaker 3: I think that the evidence in her case was pretty overwhelming,
Speaker 3: but she did They did manage to knock down a
Speaker 3: couple of the charges, specifically the ones related to patients.
Speaker 3: She was found not guilty of defrauding patients, and I
Speaker 3: think that, again, given the overwhelming statistics, when it comes
Speaker 3: to a government prosecution, is actually a pretty big whim
Speaker 3: So in that sense, I think she was much more
Speaker 3: convincing than Sam, partially because she was basically the same
Speaker 3: person on the direct and on the cross. There were
Speaker 3: to certainly times where she seemed uncomfortable, or she seemed nervous,
Speaker 3: or even angry or frustrated, but she was visibly and
Speaker 3: audibly the same.
Speaker 2: I have to ask us did she use the voice?
Speaker 3: Oh my god? So I have a lot of thoughts
Speaker 3: about this. I can't believe I'm about to go to
Speaker 3: bat for Elizabeth Holmes. I think we're the same age.
Speaker 3: There was an idea that the reason women weren't being
Speaker 3: taken seriously in the workplace was just that we didn't
Speaker 3: talk right. We talked to girly, we up talked. It
Speaker 3: was vocal fry and like if you ever heard Matt
Speaker 3: Levine speak, he does all of those things, but nobody cares.
Speaker 3: And so there were women who change the way that
Speaker 3: they spoke and the hopes of being taken more seriously.
Speaker 3: And I think that Elizabeth Holmes probably did that too,
Speaker 3: And so the thing that people think of as being
Speaker 3: quote unquote the voice is actually a response to the
Speaker 3: idea that if she spoke the way that women naturally speak,
Speaker 3: she wasn't.
Speaker 2: Going to be taken seriously by anybody, right, And it's like,
Speaker 2: you can't win, right because if you change the way
Speaker 2: you speak, people are like wondering why you sound different.
Speaker 2: And then if you sound like a woman, people don't
Speaker 2: like that you sound like a woman. So maybe that's
Speaker 2: not a fair thing to hold against her, and maybe
Speaker 2: the fraud is, but maybe the voice is actually a
Speaker 2: bit of a red herring here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the fraud is totally fair. The voice thing I
Speaker 3: think is, I think that that's sort of a distraction.
Speaker 3: You know, it's people wanting to say that she's so fake,
Speaker 3: that even her voice is fake, that everything about her
Speaker 3: is fake, and I just don't think that's true. But
Speaker 3: you know, I certainly understand how when somebody carries off
Speaker 3: a fraud of that scale comes possible to think, you know,
Speaker 3: all of these quirks are these real too? And I
Speaker 3: think there was some of that with Sam as well,
Speaker 3: you know. And so in Sam's case, it's like the
Speaker 3: wild hair and like he's kind of unkempt and a
Speaker 3: little shaggy because he doesn't care about what he looks like,
Speaker 3: because he's not shallow like the.
Speaker 1: Rest of us thinking of that deeper things.
Speaker 3: Right, And you know, I do think that that was
Speaker 3: an image thing, but I also suspect it's an image
Speaker 3: thing that came from something real. I do think that
Speaker 3: on some level he probably doesn't care that much about
Speaker 3: what he looks like, and that you know, underneath any
Speaker 3: kind of image making, if it's going to be successful,
Speaker 3: there is like a stratum of something real. Like we
Speaker 3: were looking at the photos of him from his frat days,
Speaker 3: Like there was that photo of him with Gary Wong,
Speaker 3: and he's dressed the same way, and like, certainly like
Speaker 3: branding is an important part of business, but the branding
Speaker 3: does come from the way this guy actually did dress.
Speaker 3: So you know, it's one of those things whereas like
Speaker 3: there's not the sharp delineation between what's real and what's
Speaker 3: not that I think a lot of people would.
Speaker 1: Like, Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 2: But they also are both parallel in the sense that,
Speaker 2: and I think you wrote about this, they both did
Speaker 2: make themselves into characters, and that's part of what made
Speaker 2: them so compelling to write about, right, Yeah, or became characters.
Speaker 2: I guess it's arguable how much they did it on purpose,
Speaker 2: but to some degree it feels like they both must
Speaker 2: have a little bit been making themselves into characters.
Speaker 3: I think it was more than a little bit. They
Speaker 3: both had hired very powerful pr people, and so you know,
Speaker 3: I do think that they had these images that were
Speaker 3: shaped for them, but I think the images came from
Speaker 3: something underneath that that was real. Because again, like if
Speaker 3: you're thinking about marketing, you're thinking about advertising, the most
Speaker 3: powerful stuff you can use is the truth, you know,
Speaker 3: So there is some sort of stratum under there where
Speaker 3: there is a thing that's real and it's just been
Speaker 3: you know, presented in a certain way or polished to
Speaker 3: a certain sheen that makes it into a character or
Speaker 3: even a caricature that's then easier for people to digest
Speaker 3: and easier for people to write about, and easier for
Speaker 3: people to think about and that sort of sticks in
Speaker 3: the mind.
Speaker 2: I remember, I think, I remember you telling me that
Speaker 2: you felt a little bit differently about Elizabeth Holmes after
Speaker 2: she took the stand.
Speaker 3: I felt again, I felt more sympathetic to her. I
Speaker 3: still felt that she had probably done what she was
Speaker 3: accused of, but she was successfully humanized herself, and so
Speaker 3: in that sense, I think her testimony was successful in
Speaker 3: making me sympathetic in a way that Sam's was not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was my question.
Speaker 2: What impact did Sam Mankman Free taking the stand have
Speaker 2: on how you thought about the case?
Speaker 3: You know, there are a couple of things, and one
Speaker 3: of the big ones is the obvious lying. Just the
Speaker 3: obvious lying that took place on the cross examination. And
Speaker 3: there were places where I think Elizabeth Holmes was obviously
Speaker 3: obfus skating to but she wasn't being presented with something
Speaker 3: she'd obviously said and then going oh, I don't remember that,
Speaker 3: you know, especially because we had all of this detailed
Speaker 3: recollection of his glory days at Jane Street on the
Speaker 3: direct where he was remembering stuff that had happened five
Speaker 3: ten years before, and then we get to the cross
Speaker 3: and he can't remember what he said last week come on,
Speaker 3: So there was That was something that really I think
Speaker 3: changed how I felt about him, because coming off of
Speaker 3: the direct, he did manage to present what I think
Speaker 3: was probably something like the old Sam mcmunfried. He was
Speaker 3: occasionally charming, He managed to tell a story pretty well.
Speaker 3: There were moments in which you sort of where he
Speaker 3: was funny, I think, and where I think he could
Speaker 3: be convincing, even though there were definitely moments where he
Speaker 3: was definitely answering a question that was not the question
Speaker 3: that was put to him, and that seemed to get
Speaker 3: on the judge's nerves quite a bit because it was
Speaker 3: a recurring phenomenon and it's not how court works. You
Speaker 3: can do that with journalists, but you can't do that
Speaker 3: under oath. They'll ask the same question again. You're on
Speaker 3: their time, so the you know, I think that the
Speaker 3: direct mostly worked for him, except that he was providing
Speaker 3: an alternative explanation for something that we had heard several
Speaker 3: witnesses corroborating each other's stories on and he was the
Speaker 3: only person providing that explanation and he had no documentation
Speaker 3: to come with it, and like that was one of
Speaker 3: the things that I think the prosecution really had going
Speaker 3: for them is that even though a lot of you know,
Speaker 3: text messages, slack messages, all of those things had been destroyed,
Speaker 3: they still had some emails, and they had some spreadsheets,
Speaker 3: and they had some memos, and that provided sort of
Speaker 3: an undergirding for the testimony. So that was a big
Speaker 3: part of it. And the other piece of it was
Speaker 3: that he seemed to be trying to thread the needle
Speaker 3: in a way that he was not exactly lying, but
Speaker 3: he wasn't exactly telling the truth, and that read both
Speaker 3: as arrogant and untrustworthy, I think, at least to me,
Speaker 3: where he would start, you know, these sort of word
Speaker 3: salad answers with to my recollection, as I recall at
Speaker 3: the time, whatever jargon, jargon, jargon, jargon, jargon, and then
Speaker 3: the judge would say something like, so you're saying you
Speaker 3: could do whatever you wanted, essentially, and then Sam would
Speaker 3: have to say yes, because that was what he meant.
Speaker 3: And that was like about the document retention policy, you
Speaker 3: may recall. So there were these moments where he just
Speaker 3: he made himself read as much more untrustworthy than I
Speaker 3: think he needed to, and so that made me a
Speaker 3: lot less sympathetic to him, even though I think maybe
Speaker 3: a lot of the circumstances around THERENOS and FTX were similar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you think what you're saying is kind of
Speaker 2: making me think that maybe, at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Holmes was just better at people than say, makemen freed.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's definitely true. Elizabeth Holmes's big skill was people.
Speaker 3: And I was thinking about it because with a lot
Speaker 3: of these folks where you're told someone is charming, like
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of like Adam Newman at WEE Work, even
Speaker 3: though he hasn't done anything fraudulent. He just enriched himself
Speaker 3: and told everybody what he was doing. But the skills
Speaker 3: don't always translate on screen, so you might see a
Speaker 3: clip of this person and just being like, why why
Speaker 3: were people following him? I don't get it. But with
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Holmes, the thing that she was really good at,
Speaker 3: I think, and we got this in a lot of
Speaker 3: the testimony was making other people feel heard and feel important.
Speaker 3: And that was the thing that we would hear over
Speaker 3: and over again, was that you'd bring her a concern
Speaker 3: and it sounded like she was taking it seriously and
Speaker 3: really listening to you. And then Sunny Balani and be like,
Speaker 3: we're not doing that, and also you suck and obviously
Speaker 3: the two of them were coordinating. But her skill set
Speaker 3: was really making people feel important, and that was part
Speaker 3: of you know, that's that's a fairly important people skill.
Speaker 3: Like that is a really good people skill, like being
Speaker 3: able to make someone feel listened to, and Sam is
Speaker 3: not good at that.
Speaker 2: So what do you think you know from watching the
Speaker 2: trial following the case, at some point he did build
Speaker 2: this company that was very successful. What was his skill set?
Speaker 3: I think Sam was uniquely suited to crypto because he
Speaker 3: made people feel like if they didn't understand him, it
Speaker 3: was because they were too stupid to understand him. Just
Speaker 3: real talk thinking about like the way that he answered
Speaker 3: questions when they were put to him, and also Nishad
Speaker 3: Singh's testimony that he found Sam really intimidating. I think
Speaker 3: probably a lot of people found Sam really intimidating, and
Speaker 3: so I think there was a certain element of being
Speaker 3: able to make other people feel stupid and feel that
Speaker 3: he was smart and they were dumb. That was part
Speaker 3: of what built that empire, because you know, there is
Speaker 3: a it's a strategy you can do that you can
Speaker 3: bowldlose your way through people if you want. It's not
Speaker 3: a strategy I personally would recommend, particularly because it tends
Speaker 3: to leave a lot of really pissed off people behind you.
Speaker 3: But it can work. And so if you think about,
Speaker 3: you know, going into a VC meeting and playing a
Speaker 3: video game during it while you're answering these questions, which
Speaker 3: is a very famous anecdote. Right, he did that several times.
Speaker 3: To me, that reads as arrogant and insulting. That's not
Speaker 3: somebody I want to work with. That's not somebody who
Speaker 3: I think is going to be receptive to my ideas
Speaker 3: or who I want to trust with my money. But
Speaker 3: to other people, I can certainly see that reading as like,
Speaker 3: this guy is so smart he doesn't actually have to
Speaker 3: pay attention to me in order to answer my questions.
Speaker 3: This guy is so far beyond what I'm doing that
Speaker 3: our conversation isn't enough to stimulate him, and so he
Speaker 3: can simultaneously do two or three other things and not
Speaker 3: miss abeit. Ge whiz. He's so smart, right.
Speaker 2: And it's perfect for an industry that's kind of built
Speaker 2: on people maybe not fully understanding it, but feeling a
Speaker 2: bit dumb about not fully understanding it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. I mean I have explained NFTs to
Speaker 3: a number of people, and every time I explain it
Speaker 3: to a normal person, they say, wait, is that it is?
Speaker 3: That all? And I'm like, yes, that's it. That's all.
Speaker 3: There's no other extra, like there's you're not stupid, Like
Speaker 3: that's what it is. And so I think this is
Speaker 3: an industry where being able to use jargon in that
Speaker 3: way can really convince people that they want to be
Speaker 3: in on this like cool new technology that they don't
Speaker 3: totally understand, but you know, if they don't get them
Speaker 3: on the ground level, they're going to miss out. And
Speaker 3: that fear of missing out is huge in crypto. I
Speaker 3: think it's one of the main motivating forces actually for
Speaker 3: a lot of sort of crypto shenanigans that we see.
Speaker 3: And simultaneously, during that period where Sam was seeking investment,
Speaker 3: that fear of missing out was a huge part of
Speaker 3: the VC industry because all of this money had come
Speaker 3: slashing into VC due to the low interest rates, and
Speaker 3: so there wasn't you know, there weren't as many other
Speaker 3: places you could park your money and make a decent return,
Speaker 3: and so they had to find companies that looked like
Speaker 3: they were going to be like powerhouses that would pay
Speaker 3: off for this investment. And so you see the sort
Speaker 3: of like the speed at which people were investing suggests
Speaker 3: that almost no due diligence was being done. And we
Speaker 3: saw that with Theranose too, Like there was a long
Speaker 3: discussion of the due diligence that the vcs had done
Speaker 3: on theraphose, and in many cases it was pretty minimal,
Speaker 3: if there was any. So there was that kind of
Speaker 3: environment where being able to make a strong first impression,
Speaker 3: even without any kind of documentation or whatever, really really mattered.
Speaker 3: And so making other people feel that he was super
Speaker 3: smart and super on top of things and in this
Speaker 3: hot new industry and he understood it and you didn't, like,
Speaker 3: I think that that was a fairly powerful.
Speaker 2: Thing, right, That makes sense. They're kind of like opposites.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Holmes made you feel special, you know, and therefore
Speaker 2: you should give her your money. And Sam Magmunfried, I
Speaker 2: guess made you feel like he was special, and therefore
Speaker 2: you should give him your money.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's right. That's a good way of putting.
Speaker 1: It, judging. Sam will be back in a minute. We're back.
Speaker 2: I'm curious about you know, you write about tech a lot,
Speaker 2: and it feels like there's been all these tech CEOs,
Speaker 2: you've had these falls from grace.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's going to have any impact on
Speaker 1: the industry.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think one of the things that's
Speaker 3: underappreciated about the tech industry is how much of it
Speaker 3: is about marketing. And if you look all the way
Speaker 3: back to Steve Jobs, a lot of the big Apple
Speaker 3: moments are actually about marketing. And Apple's marketing department is
Speaker 3: really integrated in terms of how they design products. It's
Speaker 3: not just you know, the tech people come up with
Speaker 3: something and then the marketing department sells it. The marketing
Speaker 3: department is involved in the design. So I think in
Speaker 3: that sense that renders the tech industry vulnerable to people
Speaker 3: who are good at marketing in a way that maybe
Speaker 3: some other industries are not. I don't know that it's
Speaker 3: uniquely vulnerable. If you think about some of the scandals
Speaker 3: that we've had over the years in the pharmat industr,
Speaker 3: for instance, they've also been marketing related. So you know,
Speaker 3: there was a big scandal boy about a decade ago
Speaker 3: where a lot of pharmaceutical industries were selling antipsychotics for
Speaker 3: indications they weren't approved for. Marketing is often the place
Speaker 3: where you start to see this stuff happening. It's where
Speaker 3: people promise stuff that they maybe aren't going to deliver.
Speaker 3: So if you think about, for instance, Fire Festival, another
Speaker 3: famous millennial fraud, the part that he was good at
Speaker 3: was marketing. The part that people really got, you know,
Speaker 3: got down. The part that made Fire Festival looks something,
Speaker 3: looks so cool basically was all marketing. It was all marketing,
Speaker 3: and they just there was nothing underneath it to support
Speaker 3: the marketing. There there was no actual festival. And so
Speaker 3: I think any industry where marketing is that important can
Speaker 3: lead to sort of the cart pulling the horse right
Speaker 3: where the marketing department gets all the way out there
Speaker 3: and there's nothing underneath. And I think that was part
Speaker 3: of what happened in FTX. And there was this sort
Speaker 3: of marketing powerhouse that Sam had going and that he
Speaker 3: was very good at. Obviously, like people knew what FTX was.
Speaker 3: There was a Super Bowl ad, there was the FTX arena,
Speaker 3: Like this was something that people were very aware of
Speaker 3: in a way that they maybe were not aware of
Speaker 3: other crypto companies. Like, for instance, Kraken or Coinbase, which
Speaker 3: had been around longer. So I think that that emphasis
Speaker 3: on marketing is part of what can be dangerous. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess I don't know that the tech industry itself,
Speaker 3: that the tech piece of this is the problem. I
Speaker 3: think that the problem comes back to the thing that's
Speaker 3: a problem in every industry, which is usually the marketing department.
Speaker 2: Right, there's just a lot of any for marketing in tech.
Speaker 3: Yes, definitely.
Speaker 1: Are there any.
Speaker 2: Moments from covering the trial of sam akmn Freed that
Speaker 2: you think are really going to stick with you, or
Speaker 2: like one particular moment that you think might stick with
Speaker 2: you that you can see, you know, when you think
Speaker 2: about the trial years from now, that you might still
Speaker 2: think about that moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think one of the big ones actually was
Speaker 3: pretty early, and it was Adam you DiDia. I got
Speaker 3: out of his testimony and immediately texted my best friend,
Speaker 3: who I was also college roommates with and who I
Speaker 3: still see on a very regular basis. I texted, her,
Speaker 3: if you ever testify against me, I am so fucked
Speaker 3: like just imagining how pissed off and betrayed Adam Youydidio
Speaker 3: would have to feel in order to agree to this
Speaker 3: really is striking to me, because you know, if you
Speaker 3: think about the people you're really loyal to and the
Speaker 3: people you really love and what you would be willing
Speaker 3: to do for them, you can serve imagine him being like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm going to plead the fifth to everything. It's going
Speaker 3: to be the fifth the whole way. And that's not
Speaker 3: what he did. So that really stuck with me great.
Speaker 2: And he didn't have to testify. It's not like he
Speaker 2: had been charged with anything.
Speaker 3: He hadn't been charged with anything, he didn't have a
Speaker 3: cooperation agreement. So choosing to testify in that way suggested
Speaker 3: someone who is genuinely very angry, very angry, and maybe
Speaker 3: who felt very very betrayed by somebody he had once loved,
Speaker 3: and so that was really striking to me. The other
Speaker 3: big one was watching Sam's parents react to the verdict, which,
Speaker 3: you know, we saw some evidence that they were involved
Speaker 3: in FTX. How involved, I don't know, and I'm not
Speaker 3: going to pretend that I have any good answers about that,
Speaker 3: but there is something if you've ever seen a parent
Speaker 3: in anguish, there's something about that that really sticks with
Speaker 3: you and watching them receive the verdict and not only
Speaker 3: receive the verdict and experience that anguish, but experience the
Speaker 3: anguish in a room full of reporters and having no
Speaker 3: privacy in that moment that really stuck with me. Like,
Speaker 3: there was this moment where his father sort of doubled
Speaker 3: over and his mother had her hands over her face,
Speaker 3: and I watched the courtroom artist who was seated in
Speaker 3: the row in front of them, turn around and start
Speaker 3: sketching them, and you can see the sketch. It's out
Speaker 3: there if you look. And it was such a genuinely
Speaker 3: horrible moment, and it was also such a hugely public moment,
Speaker 3: and those combination of things, like, really, that really stuck
Speaker 3: with me.
Speaker 1: Lizlie Patta, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Lydia Jean, It's been great.
Speaker 4: This episode of Judging Sam was hosted by Lydia Jean
Speaker 4: kot Our court reporter Catherine Girardeau and Nisha Venken produced
Speaker 4: this show. Sophie Crane is our editor. Our music was
Speaker 4: composed by Matthias Bossi and John Evans of stell Wagons Symphonet.
Speaker 4: Judging Sam is a production of Pushkin Industries. Got a
Speaker 4: question or comment for me, there's a website for that
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