Case 1:22-cr-00673-LAK Document 407-15 Filed 02/27/24 Page 3 of 6
unconflicted about devoting his life to the happiness of others and so little interested in his
own.
While in high school, he also started to think seriously about the implications of utilitarianism
for his work life, talking to lots of people about what the most valuable use of his talents might
be if his goal was to improve the wellbeing of others. While at MIT, with advice from others,
Sam found an answer to the question. He decided to use his quantitative skills in a high-paying
job in finance and give away his earnings to the most effective charitable organizations working
in areas he cared most about. In short, like many other young idealistic people in his
generation, he chose a life of earning to give. After graduation he took a job as a trader at Jane
Street Capital, an elite Wall Street quantitative trading firm, where he excelled. In his three
years there, he gave away over half of his earnings. Characteristically, he never told us–a friend
of his did. He has never been interested in praise, and has always deflected it.
In 2017, he left Jane Street to start Alameda and then, in 2019, FTX. For the next three years,
he worked seven days a week, typically 20 hours a day, to build the company. His father and I
of course worried about how hard he was driving himself and the costs to his mental and
physical health, but he dismissed us out of hand. He told us he didn’t care about himself; all he
cared about was living long enough to make a significant difference in the world. During the
first two years of FTX’s existence, he reinvested almost all of his substantial share of the profits
in the company. By the third year, he felt the company was on solid enough footing that he
could begin to give away a portion of his earnings to charitable endeavors he believed in. The
vaccine research project he sponsored was probably the highest impact gift he made in 2022,
but there were many others, and many more promising projects in the works with potentially
huge impact on the lives of the least well off that were cut off by the FTX implosion.
Sam’s desire to do good on a large scale never crowded out his concern for individuals. In his
senior year at MIT, the father of his close friend Matt Nass died
We
were the first people called, because of our close relationship to both Matt and his father. Matt
was extremely close to his father. We were worried about the shock to Matt of learning of his
death and didn’t want to tell him until he had someone with him for moral support.
Unfortunately, we were 3000 miles away. We called Sam, who was in school in Boston, and
asked if he would drive out to Western Massachusetts to be with Matt. Sam’s natural kindness
and levelheadedness made him the obvious choice. We had been planning to call Matt to tell
him the news once Sam arrived, but Sam told Matt himself, took him back to MIT, stayed up
playing board games all night with him, and then took him to the airport the next day and
stayed with him until his flight back to California. To this day, Sam is the first person we would
call if we needed an angel of mercy in a pinch.
For the first year of FTX’s existence, Sam famously manned the customer service lines
whenever he had a few minutes to spare, in part to make sure he knew about customer-related
problems first-hand but also because he likes solving others’ problems. He made a deliberate
choice to be open with other FTX employees about his own struggles with depression both to
destigmatize it and, by his own example, encourage them to seek help if they needed it. In late
3
Ex. A-14
