Caroline Ellison, former FTX exec and Sam Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend, sentenced to 2 years in prison

Caroline Ellison, whose testimony helped convict her former boss and ex-boyfriend, disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, was sentenced Tuesday to 2 years in jail for fraud and conspiracy.

Ellison was sentenced in U.S. District Court docket in Manhattan by Choose Lewis A. Kaplan to 24 months and ordered to forfeit $11 billion for her involvement within the collapse of Bankman-Fried’s crypto alternate firm, FTX. She had confronted a most sentence of about 110 years.

Ellison, 29, accepted a plea deal to expenses of conspiracy and monetary fraud in December 2022, a month after FTX spiraled out of business. She testified in opposition to Bankman-Fried for practically three days at his trial final November.

Bankman-Fried was convicted of all seven legal fraud expenses in opposition to him and sentenced to 25 years in jail. Prosecutors mentioned in a courtroom submitting that her testimony was the “cornerstone of the trial.”

Attorneys for Ellison had requested that she be sentenced to time served and supervised launch, citing her cooperation. In a courtroom doc filed earlier this month, her attorneys mentioned she made a swift return to the U.S. in 2022 from FTX’s headquarters within the Bahamas and voluntarily cooperated with the U.S. lawyer’s workplace.

She willingly labored with monetary regulators in serving to them perceive what went mistaken at FTX and at Alameda Analysis, FTX’s sister hedge fund, which Ellison ran, the doc mentioned.

With a limiteless credit score line from FTX, Alameda Analysis obtained a lot of the $8 billion in FTX buyer funds looted by Bankman-Fried, in line with federal prosecutors. He then used it for private bills, buying and selling, Alameda debt funds and political contributions, Ellison and different witnesses alleged.

In in search of a sentence of time served, protection lawyer Anjan Sahni mentioned Ellison has “recovered her ethical compass” and “profoundly regrets” not leaving Bankman-Fried’s orbit.

Ellison addressed the courtroom by studying from a press release through which she apologized to these she damage and expressed disgrace for her half within the saga.

However Kaplan, describing FTX’s collapse as presumably the best monetary fraud uncovered in U.S. historical past, mentioned he couldn’t comply with a “literal get-out-of-jail-free card” for the defendant.

He ordered her to give up to authorities on or after Nov. 7.

Within the 67-page courtroom doc filed on Sept. 10, FTX CEO John Ray, who has been guiding the crypto agency by way of chapter proceedings, mentioned that Ellison’s cooperation with the federal government was “helpful” in serving to his staff protect and defend “tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}” in belongings.

Her attorneys wrote that Bankman-Fried pressured her right into a sort-of isolation that culminated in her ethical compass being “warped.” They mentioned at his course, Ellison helped “steal billions” whereas dwelling “in dread, figuring out {that a} disastrous collapse was possible, however fearing that disentangling herself would solely hasten that collapse.” Her work relationship with Bankman-Fried was additional difficult by their on-and-off romantic relationship.

Ellison’s attorneys mentioned Bankman-Fried had satisfied her to remain by telling her that he cherished her and he or she was important to the enterprise’ survival “whereas additionally perversely demonstrating that he thought of her not adequate to be seen in public with him at high-profile occasions.”

Earlier than its collapse in 2022, FTX was one of many world’s hottest cryptocurrency exchanges and was recognized for its in depth lobbying marketing campaign in Washington and its Tremendous Bowl industrial.

Bankman-Fried and different prime executives had been accused of looting buyer accounts on the alternate to make dangerous investments, purchase luxurious actual property within the Caribbean, make hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in unlawful political donations and bribe Chinese language officers.

Ryan Salame, a former prime lieutenant of Bankman-Fried, was the primary of the FTX government staff to be sentenced. In Could, a decide handed down a seven-and-a-half-year jail sentence and ordered him to pay greater than $6 million in forfeiture and greater than $5 million in restitution.

Two different former executives, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, will probably be sentenced in October and November, respectively.