For fraud crimes of the type SBF is alleged to have committed, Guidelines Section 2B1.1 applies (see here and scroll down, or search for the word “fraud,” and you’ll come to it). In the indictment, SBF is charged with fraud crimes for which the statutory penalty is 20 years or more, so he starts off with a base offense level of seven.

Then the guidelines turn to the amount of fraud at issue. And that’s where things start to look really dire for SBF. While there have been valuations of the now-collapsed FTX cryptocurrency exchange in the $30 billion-or-more range that are no doubt wildly overstated, the amount of investor funds that SBF converted to his own use has been more concretely estimated at between $1.5 and $2 billion. Notice, though, that the fraud chart in subsection 2B1.1(b)(1)(A) only goes up to $550 million. This could cause prosecutors to argue that SBF’s fraud is so severe, it is beyond what the guidelines commission considered a “heartland” offense, and thus warrants a sentence longer than what the guidelines would ordinarily allow for. Even if a court were to reject such a claim, at $550 billion or above, the guidelines instruct the court to add 30 offense-level points. …

But we’re not done yet, because SBF was (allegedly) the head honcho of a sophisticated scheme involving multiple participants.