Sam Bankman-Fried went from being a billionaire palling around with Tom Brady in the Bahamas to a broke, convicted fraudster who faces decades behind bars.

The 31-year-old former CEO of FTX was found guilty by a jury on all seven charges of fraud and conspiracy. The sentencing for these charges, which carry up to 115 years in prison, is scheduled for March 28, 2024. SBF is expected to appeal.

A jury took just over four hours yesterday, including dinner, to conclude that SBF stole $8 billion in customer funds from his crypto exchange FTX to fund risky investments, political contributions, and luxury real estate. The conviction ends a trial that saw three of SBF’s former top lieutenants, including his former girlfriend Caroline Ellison, testify that he was the mastermind behind the yearslong con.

• In a dramatic turn toward the end of the trial, SBF took the stand to depict himself as someone who made mistakes but did not knowingly steal from customers. He was not convincing, saying he “couldn’t recall” details more than 140 times during cross-examination, per the NYT.

An Icarus-like fall for the former “crypto king”

FTX, which Bankman-Fried founded in 2019, became ubiquitous during the pandemic as crypto hype reached a fever pitch and the company spent lavishly on marketing. The Miami Heat played at FTX Arena and the company enlisted a roster of A-list celebs, including Larry David and Tom Brady, to promote its crypto trading platform.

SBF also became a familiar face in Washington, DC, to push for oversight of the crypto industry and as a major donor to political causes.

But as crypto plunged in 2022, FTX was revealed to be little more than SBF’s personal piggy bank and collapsed. The guy put in charge of getting FTX’s affairs in order wrote, “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here”—and he oversaw the Enron bankruptcy.

Bottom line: We’ve just witnessed one of the biggest financial frauds on record. And while the crypto industry would love to move on from the SBF saga, it still faces a number of ongoing legal fights.—NF

Crisp air, homemade signs, and neon-clad runners for miles: It’s marathon season. And in honor of this special time of year, we asked HOKA athlete Futsum Zienasellassie to share some race-day wisdom. Here’s what he had to say:

“Pacing yourself is very important. If you go out too fast, you’ll suffer later. But if you go out at a pace that’s right for you, then you’ll have a great chance of finishing strong and running a time that you can be proud of.”

Best of luck to everyone racing in New York City this weekend. To the spectators: Have fun, wear comfy shoes, and bring a snack.

Happy race weekend, y’all .

Six Flags, Cedar Fair merging to create $8 billion theme park behemoth. The companies behind Great Adventure and Knott’s Berry Farm will now be one (if regulators approve). In a joint statement, the companies said they will use the name Six Flags but keep Cedar Fair’s stock ticker, FUN, in case you forget what they are good for. The new combined entity will own and operate 27 amusement parks, 15 water parks, and nine resorts across 17 states, Canada, and Mexico. The merger comes amid a renewed arms race for the industry as it seeks to recover from the pandemic. Both Disney and NBCUniversal have announced major expansions to their parks businesses.

🛒 FTC accuses Jeff Bezos of intentionally making Amazon worse for consumers. That is one of the revelations from newly unredacted sections of regulators’ long-awaited lawsuit against Amazon, originally filed in September. According to the FTC, Bezos directed company executives to add irrelevant and inaccurate ads to search results in order to increase revenue. The FTC also alleges that Amazon’s super secret pricing algorithm, “Project Nessie,” unfairly netted the e-commerce giant $1 billion in “excess profit.” An Amazon spokesperson told WaPo that the FTC “grossly mischaracterizes” Nessie.

Apple sales declined for the fourth straight quarter. The iPhone-maker hasn’t had a slowdown this long since 2001. Observers blamed the results on a weakened market in China, where Apple devices are banned in some workplaces and the company is dealing with competition from Huawei. Still, it wasn’t all bad: Apple’s services division hit a record $22.3 billion in revenue, while overall revenue beat Wall Street’s expectations even as sales continued to slow.

Despite the omnipresence of celeb influencers and Gen Z icons, no one’s got more financial clout among college students than ’ol Bill.

A Morning Brew/Generation Lab survey asked US college students to name three individuals who embody their ideas of financial success. Half of them selected Bill Gates, while Jeff Bezos placed second (40%), and Elon Musk came in third (35%). More than a quarter of students (26%) chose Taylor Swift, who beat out Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffett and is the only person in the top six who isn’t a current or former CEO—though she is a billionaire.

The results suggest young people still consider traditional industry titans to be the paragons of success, even as the influencer economy produces a new generation of gazillionaires. Kylie Jenner, inventor of the Lip Kit, finished with 4%, sandwiched between Michael Bloomberg (6%) and George Soros (4%).

For financial advice, there’s no place like home

College students aren’t relying on TikTok to learn how to open a Roth IRA or see if it counts as saving money if they stretch their leftover pad thai into two more meals. Instead...

• Call them Vin Diesel because, for college kids, it’s still all about #family: Nearly two-thirds (64%) said they look to parents or family members the most for financial advice, compared with 1% who said they seek the advice of celebrities.
• A third of students said they most often leverage their personal networks for financial advice, almost double the share (19%) who said the same of social media.

Success is coming soon…college students are as optimistic as someone who thinks they’ll make their train leaving in two minutes. About half of respondents (45%) believe they will achieve financial success between the ages of 31 and 40, and 21% think they’ll get there earlier. And they don’t need Bill Gates’s money to be happy—76% said they’d be satisfied with a net worth of a cool $1 million.—CC

Cue “How Bout Now” by Drake, because the largest retailer in the US is flexing a new glow-up.

Walmart is turning the lights back on in 117 locations across 30 states today after they underwent more than $500 million in renovations. The company says those living near an updated store can expect to see…

• Modernized decor, lighting, and restrooms, plus more spacious layouts with unboxed product displays.
• Larger pharmacy areas with private consultation rooms and expanded vision centers.
• Digital touchpoints for product info, and a grab-and-go section for drinks, sandwiches, or just a whole rotisserie chicken.

Today marks the retail giant’s largest single day of “re-grand openings,” and it’s not over yet: Walmart will spend upward of $9 billion to upgrade more than 1,400 of its 4,717 US stores as part of a remodeling plan that will continue into 2024.

Retail’s facelift: Target is shelling out between $4 billion and $5 billion to refresh its in-person and digital shopping experiences, while recent bankruptcy survivor JCPenney plans to invest $1 billion in brick-and-mortar and website renovations.—ML

Stat: It might actually be your fiduciary duty to be woke. In one of the biggest global studies of its kind, BlackRock found that gender-balanced companies generally outperform their less-balanced peers—and it’s not particularly close. Companies in the middle quintile of gender equity have a 7.7% average annual return on their assets, compared with 5.6% for companies with the highest share of male employees and 6.1% for those with the highest share of women, according to the study of 1,250 major companies. That pattern was consistent within different countries and industries.

Quote: “I am home, working from home, spending an unhealthy amount of time scrolling through Twitter and I come up with a very, very dumb idea to vent my frustration.”

HBO CEO Casey Bloys is sorry for ordering underlings to troll TV critics. That was the subject of a recent Rolling Stone report, in which unearthed texts from a wrongful termination lawsuit revealed Bloys had tasked staffers with making secret Twitter accounts and saying mean things to critics who wrote negative reviews of the network’s shows. In a deeply awkward coincidence, Bloys was scheduled to face many of those same critics at a presentation yesterday, when he owned up to the stealth operation and said he has “progressed over the past couple of years to using DMs” instead.

Read: China’s richest person made billions bottling pristine water. (Bloomberg)

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s Weekly News Quiz has been compared to hail marying someone a beer onto a large boat.

It’s that satisfying. Ace the quiz.

Feast: One man’s yearslong quest to identify the greatest sandwich in world history.

Listen: In honor of yesterday’s release of the last “new” song by the Beatles, here’s the best Beatles medley on the internet.

Game: Fortnite Battle Royale brings back its widely beloved original map today, which explains why your child said they aren’t feeling well and needed to stay home.

Watch: The first trailer for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, part of the rare Hollywood reboot franchise to thrive critically and commercially.

Holiday hurrah: Wondering which channel is best to sleigh the festive season? We teamed up with Intuit Mailchimp to show you why email and SMS can level up your strategies. Take a look.*

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