Ryan Salame, a former top lieutenant of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, has been sentenced to 90 months, or seven and a half years, in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Salame has also\u00a0been ordered to pay\u00a0more than $6 million in forfeiture and more than $5 million in restitution.<\/p>\n
The sentence is a heavier penalty than the five to seven years that prosecutors had suggested, and well beyond the 18 months that Salame\u2019s defense team had requested.<\/p>\n
In September, Salame pleaded guilty to conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions, defraud the Federal Election Commission, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business.<\/p>\n
Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced Sam Bankman-Fried to\u00a025 years in prison\u00a0in March.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Salame transitioned from a high-ranking post at Bankman-Fried\u2019s crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, to co-CEO of FTX\u2019s Bahamian subsidiary, FTX Digital Markets. Salame spent millions of dollars on real estate and campaign donations during his tenure.<\/p>\n
One estimate by Bahamian lawyers\u00a0claims Bankman-Fried and Salame spent $256.3 million to buy and maintain 35 properties across New Providence \u2014 real estate that Bahamian regulators wanted to retrieve in FTX\u2019s U.S. bankruptcy protection proceedings. Meanwhile,\u00a0data from the Federal Election Commission shows\u00a0that Salame gave more than $24 million to Republican candidates and causes in the 2022 election cycle.<\/p>\n
Days before FTX filed for bankruptcy in 2022, Salame went to Bahamian authorities to tell them that the Bankman-Fried may have committed fraud by sending customer money from the crypto exchange to his other firm, Alameda Research. According to a criminal filing, Salame disclosed \u201cpossible mishandling of clients\u2019 assets\u201d by Bankman-Fried.<\/p>\n
It was one of the first public acknowledgments of an insider turning on Bankman-Fried, who was\u00a0found guilty\u00a0of stealing more than $8 billion worth of customer cash they believed was safely being stored on the exchange.<\/p>\n
Since then, however,\u00a0several other insiders, including Alameda\u2019s former CEO and SBF\u2019s ex-girlfriend,\u00a0Caroline Ellison,\u00a0FTX co-founder Gary Wang, and FTX\u2019s ex-engineering head\u00a0Nishad Singh, all gave testimony for the prosecution that ultimately contributed to his guilty verdict in November. Salame did not take the stand during Bankman-Fried\u2019s trial.<\/p>\n
In a statement, U.S. attorney Damian Williams said Tuesday\u2019s sentence underscored \u201cthe substantial consequences for such offenses.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSalame\u2019s involvement in two serious federal crimes undermined public trust in American elections and the integrity of the financial system,\u201d Williams added.<\/p>\n
Salame is the first of SBF\u2019s executive team to be sentenced since the exchange filed for bankruptcy in Nov. 2022.<\/p>\n
\u2014\u00a0CNBC\u2019s Dan Mangan contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Ryan Salame, a former top lieutenant of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, has been sentenced to 90 months, or seven and a half years, in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Salame has also\u00a0been ordered to pay\u00a0more than $6 million in forfeiture and more than $5 million in restitution. The sentence is a heavier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5021,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}