Why Didn't More Reporters See This Coming?

How SBF sweet-talked the media.

- SHAWN MCCREESH

ONE OF THE CRUCIAL prongs of Sam Bankman-Fried’s big con was his co-opting of the press, which turned out to be very easy for him. Manipulating journalists was a cinch—so few of us know how to write about anything to do with crypto—and he threw money all over an industry that’s notoriously cash starved. Now, any members of the mendicant media who have ties to him or helped launder his phony philosophies are acting sheepish, pointing fingers, or insisting they barely knew the guy.

Fortune magazine put SBF on its cover this year, asking, “The Next Warren Buffett?” Now the author of that story, Jeff John Roberts, confesses, “I was charmed by his nerdy affect as SBF, unkempt in a T-shirt and bushy hair, as he twirled a fidget spinner and rattled off tidbits about everything from M&A strategy to the macroeconomy to the importance of trust in business deals. It was all bullshit, of course, and I didn’t see through it.” (Fortune’s editor-in-chief, Alyson Shontell, says she has no regrets about putting him on the cover.)