Second person in FTX case sentenced to 7.5 years in prison: Former executive Ryan Salame receives longer sentence than requested by prosecutors
The U.S. Department of Justice announced in a press release yesterday that Ryan Salame, the former CEO of FTX Digital Markets (FTX Bahamas), has been sentenced to 7.5 years in prison for violating campaign finance laws and operating an unlicensed money transfer business.
FTX former executive Ryan Salame pleaded guilty and was ordered to surrender $1.5 billion in illegal proceeds.
According to the announcement, Judge Lewis Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York sentenced Salame to the lengthy prison term for two counts of violating campaign finance laws and operating an unlicensed money transfer business.
Ryan Salame used illegal involvement in political activities and unregulated money transfer operations to benefit FTX and Alameda Research, helping FTX expand its influence and scale.
The prosecutors in the case emphasized in legal documents disclosed by Bloomberg that political donation crimes are one of the largest crimes in U.S. history, and the unlicensed money transfer business misappropriated over $1 billion of user funds without regulation.
Following the announcement of the verdict, Salame returned to the social media platform X and frequently posted to inquire if any media outlets were interested in conducting public interviews with him.
Prior to this, Salame reported FTX’s fraudulent activities to the Securities Commission of the Bahamas in November 2022 and pleaded guilty to the aforementioned charges in September of the following year.
Judge Kaplan considered the sentencing recommendations of five to seven years from the four prosecutors in the case, as well as the defense arguments from Salame’s legal team, and sentenced him to 7.5 years in prison, which is evidently longer than the sentence sought by the prosecutors.
Regarding the reasons behind this, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Bini stated that Judge Kaplan’s decision to sentence Salame to a longer term than the prosecutors sought indicates that he views Salame’s direct involvement in a multimillion-dollar campaign finance fraud scheme as extremely serious. He added, “Despite Salame and his lawyers’ attempts to show remorse and cooperation, Judge Kaplan evidently did not accept it.”
At the same time, as mentioned in a statement by Prosecutor Damian Williams, this case is also one of the few cases in the FTX investigation involving violations of campaign finance laws. The background of the case being related to politics may have also influenced the judge’s decision. Salame and SBF, as well as former executive Nishad Singh, are accused of illegal campaign donations, which have damaged the public’s trust in the U.S. elections and financial system.
However, even facing a sentence of over 7 years, Salame may still benefit from the First Step Act of 2018, which allows eligible non-violent offenders to apply for parole after serving half of their sentence.
To date, other prominent employees involved in the FTX case, including Caroline Ellison, Nishad Singh, and Gary Wang, have pleaded guilty and cooperated with the legal process, but have not yet been sentenced.
In addition, looking back at the recent imprisonment of two other top executives in the cryptocurrency industry, SBF, the former CEO of FTX, and Zhao Changpeng CZ, the former CEO of Binance, were sentenced to 25 years and 4 months in prison, respectively.
Caroline Ellison, FTX, Gary Wang, Nishad Singh, Ryan Salame, SBF, U.S. Department of Justice.
