Ryan Salame, a former top executive at FTX, has been sentenced to nearly eight years in prison, a term exceeding the recommendations made by federal prosecutors. Salame, who served as co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, the Bahamas-based subsidiary of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange, was sentenced by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday.
Salame had pleaded guilty in September to charges of making tens of millions of dollars in unlawful campaign donations to support causes favored by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. The charges included one count of conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business.
Federal prosecutors initially sought a prison term of five to seven years for Salame, while his defense team argued for a much lighter sentence of 18 months. However, Judge Kaplan imposed a 90-month sentence, highlighting the severity of Salame’s actions.
“Salame’s involvement in two serious federal crimes undermined public trust in American elections and the integrity of the financial system,” said Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Salame, 30, did not cooperate with federal authorities in the high-profile trial of Bankman-Fried, though he did turn over nearly 600,000 pages of documents to investigators. His attorneys emphasized that he was the first FTX executive to alert Bahamian authorities to potential fraud in late 2022, just days before FTX filed for bankruptcy.
Bankman-Fried, who was convicted last November on multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the collapse of FTX, was sentenced earlier this year to 25 years in prison for misappropriating $8 billion from FTX customers. Prosecutors have described the collapse as one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history.
The investigation revealed that Salame, Bankman-Fried, and former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh used customer funds to make political donations to candidates advocating for crypto-friendly legislation. Salame alone donated more than $24 million to Republican candidates and causes during the 2022 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission data.
In addition to his prison term, Salame was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay over $6 million in forfeiture and more than $5 million in restitution. The severity of his sentence may signal how Judge Kaplan will handle other FTX executives who have cooperated with federal investigators.
Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend Caroline Ellison, along with Singh and Gary Wang, are set to be sentenced later this year. All three have pleaded guilty to financial misconduct and agreed to testify against Bankman-Fried.
Prosecutors detailed how Bankman-Fried used FTX customer funds to make over $100 million in political contributions ahead of the 2022 elections, primarily to Democratic candidates, and to purchase a luxurious $40 million Bahamian penthouse where he and his colleagues resided.
Salame joined Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s trading firm, in 2019 and later became co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets in late 2021. Despite his attempts to mitigate the consequences of his actions, the court’s decision reflects the broader fallout from one of the most notorious financial scandals in recent history.
