Ryan Salame, former co-chief executive officer of FTX Digital Markets Ltd., exits federal court in Recent York, on Sept. 7, 2023.
Stephanie Keith | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Former FTX executive Ryan Salame pleaded guilty Thursday in Recent York federal court to campaign finance and money-transmitting crimes, and agreed to forfeit greater than $1.5 billion.
Salame, during his plea, admitted that from fall 2021 to November 2022 he steered tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars of political contributions to each Democrats and Republicans in his own name when really the cash got here from Alameda Research, the hedge fund arm of the cryptocurrency exchange owner FTX.
Those contributions were made on the behest of then-FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, Salame said.
Bankman-Fried is about to go on trial Oct. 3 on wire fraud and securities fraud charges related to his alleged looting of billions of dollars in customer funds from FTX.
“From at the very least in or about 2020, as much as and including in or about November 2022, Ryan Salame, the defendant, engaged in multiple conspiracies to advance the interests of Samuel Bankman-Fried … and the cryptocurrency corporations Bankman-Fried founded and controlled — including FTX.com (“FTX”) and Alameda Research (“Alameda”) — through the operation of an illegal money transmitting business and violations of the federal election law,” the charging document filed against Salame says.
That document says that Salame, in a non-public message to a confidant, wrote that “the aim of those bipartisan donations can be ‘to weed out anti crypto dems for professional crypto dems and anti crypto repubs for professional crypto repubs,’ and that donations would likely be routed through Salame ‘to weed out that republican side.'”
Salame, who was released on a $1 million bond Thursday, faces a maximum possible sentence of 10 years in prison for the campaign finance violation and charge of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business.
His sentencing was scheduled for March 6 by Judge Lewis Kaplan in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Along with the monetary forfeiture, which shall be paid to the U.S. government, the 30-year-old Salame pays $5 million to debtors of FTX and $6 million in fines to the federal government. Salame also will give up two houses he owns in Lenox, Massachusetts, and his 2021 Porsche automobile.
Salame’s attorney, Jason Linder of the firm Mayer Brown, in an announcement said. “Ryan looks forward to putting this chapter behind him and moving forward together with his life.”
A source told CNBC that Salame shouldn’t be cooperating with federal prosecutors who’re preparing for the criminal fraud trial of 31-year-old Bankman-Fried.
But three other former executives who previously pleaded guilty in the identical court are expected to testify against Bankman-Fried.
They’re Caroline Ellison, who had been CEO of Alameda; former FTX technology chief Gary Wang; and Nishad Singh, who was FTX’s engineering boss.
U.S. Attorney Damien Williams, whose office is prosecuting the FTX cases, in an announcement said, “Ryan Salame agreed to advance the interests of FTX, Alameda Research, and his co-conspirators through an illegal political influence campaign and thru an unlicensed money transmitting business, which helped FTX grow faster and bigger by operating outside the law.”
