WASHINGTON, DC Dec. 14 (DPI) – Thirty-year-old Sam Bankman Fried was arrested in The Bahamas on fraud charges yesterday, the latest development in the collapse of the young man’s unregulated $36 billion cryptocurrency exchange called FTX.

The Wall Street Journal op-ed writers weighed in today on the arrest, declaring that Bankman-Fried’s alleged crimes are “old-fashioned embezzlement, but with new blockchain jargon.” It goes on to say that, with all the high drama of political donations, missing funds and characters with utterly privileged backgrounds, “Mr. Bankman-Fried’s case will be fascinating to watch.”

But one aspect the editorial didn’t bring up, and many readers did, was the role of Bankman-Fried’s parents, both of whom are professors at Stanford Law School. The two apparently were paid consultants to FTX and benefited from the misuse of funds their son was reportedly engaging in. Some are already calling for them to be charged as well. As one reader adroitly put it: “The real world, beyond academia has consequences.”

The most popular comments, among more than 1000, zeroed in on Bankman-Fried’s parents:

I want to know about his parents involvement in this billion $$$ crypto fraud scheme. Obviously, they are brilliant Stanford Law School professors specializing in tax law and social justice jurisprudence. Mr. Bankman was a paid FTX employee for the last year while Ms. Fried organized a highly sophisticated Silicon Valley super Pac funneling $40,000,000 to Democrat candidates during the midterm election cycle. Moreover, SBF purchased a $16,000,000 mansion in the Bahamas designating Bankman and Fried in the deed as the owners of the property. In all likelihood, the real estate was purchased with FTX or Alameda funds. Why didn’t his highly sophisticated law school professor parents question the legitimacy of this property transaction? But, what I find most interesting, is after the FTX collapse, the liberal media came to Bankman and Fried’s defense with a cockamamie story that they tried to RETURN the deed and negate their ownership of the property………..9 months after the real estate transaction had been executed. To be sure, these Silicon Valley shysters truly believe they are morally and intellectually superior to the rest of society.

Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, parents of Sam Bankman-Fried, are sophisticated, highly educated, have sharp elbows, to work at an elite institution all these years, attend meetings in Washington with politicians, knowing how to maneuver, create an algorithm to exploit political fundraising by creating the organization, Mind the Gap, have many highly influential friends and colleagues, involved with FTX businesses. Will Stanford University ask them to resign from the institution and not live on Stanford campus in subsidized housing? Joseph Bankman is a tax attorney – he must know basic math that 2+2 does not equal $50 million in political donations, he must have asked himself where all this money is coming from…. They are very connected, spent time in FTX’s offices, and saw that there was not a Board of Directors, no CFO, saw the inner workings, etc. Will they be treated with kid gloves? The real world, beyond academia has consequences.

And his parents are Stanford Law professors, his advisors/mentors, and beneficiaries of FTX largess. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Historians will see the FTX affair the way historians see the Stavisky affair in the decadent France of the 30s. Because of the high-powered academic parents at Stanford and MIT who did all they could to raise “geniuses,” the affair becomes the reductio ad absurdum of meritocratic Boomer parenting in which the highest status goes to the parents whose kids use their awesome “brilliance” be get rich quick beyond the dreams of Croesus. Too bad the value system of this parenting actually had the unsurprising result of creating sociopathic, narcissistic monsters on each coast, both suffering from advanced cases of criminally arrested development.