Sam Bankman-Fried parents

In 1990, Charles Keating, Jr, a devout Catholic and anti-porn crusader, was convicted of defrauding  customers of Lincoln Savings & Loan. He stole $250 million selling junk bonds he claimed were low risk. Mother Theresa sent a letter asking the judge for leniency. Keating had donated money to her. The prosecutor in the case wrote to Mother Theresa, explained Keating's crimes and asked that she return the stolen money he gave her. 

Part of the letter said:

My experience has been with the ‘con’ man and the perpetrator of the fraud. It is not uncommon for ‘con’ men to be generous with family, friends and charities. Perhaps they believe that their generosity will purchase love, respect or forgiveness. However, the time when the purchase of ‘indulgences’ was an acceptable method of seeking forgiveness died with the Reformation. No church, no charity, no organization should allow itself to be used as salve for the conscience of the criminal.

It was kind of him to suggest Keating had a conscience.

So what about Sam Bankman-Fried's parents? They're being sued by FTX for the return of the stolen money their son gave them. 

It seems like putting up the money for their son's legal defense violates everything they pretend to believe. The father claimed to be a utilitarian, in doing whatever will help the largest number of people, and they believed in "Effective Altruism", throwing their money around where it will do the greatest good, yet they're spending millions of dollars trying to keep a single obviously guilty psychopath out of prison. 

They spent $50,000 a year sending their son to an elite private school. And he had a brother and sister so they may have been squandering $150,000 a year on that when public education was free for the taking.

"That's what money's for," the father said about their big flabby son's legal defense, trying to make it sound like money meant nothing to them, like they hadn't greedily lapped up millions in stolen customer funds.

It's different seeing an entire bourgeois family wrapped up in a massive criminal enterprise. Bankman-Fried's brother and sister were involved in it, too. And the parents still try to pass themselves off as moral paragons. Are they now grappling with this blow to their self-image, or were they consciously trying to conceal their true selves all along?