Former FTX exec Ryan Salame's romantic partner indicted on campaign finance crimes

Convicted former FTX executive Ryan Salame's domestic partner Michelle Bond has been indicted in New York on federal charges accusing her of conspiring to raise unlawful campaign contributions from FTX for her unsuccessful run for Congress in 2022, prosecutors announced Thursday.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams claims that Bond, 45, illegally funded her campaign with a "sham" $400,000 upfront payment from FTX, followed by a $100,000 annual payment from that now-bankrupt crypto exchange.

Bond, who lives in Potomac, Maryland, was running for a House seat in New York's first congressional district, which includes eastern Long Island.

Salame and Bond met in June 2021, and were in a relationship by early the following year, according to the indictment.

The indictment alleges that Salame, identified only as CC-1, conspired with Bond to commit the crimes, saying that Salame arranged the payment from FTX to Bond. She then allegedly used "almost entirely" all of that money "to fund her campaign illegally," the indictment says.

Salame between June and August 2022 allegedly wired hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bond's personal bank account, which she then also put toward illegally funding her campaign, according to the indictment.

The four-count indictment was unsealed a day after Salame, the father of Bond's eight-month-old child, asked a New York federal judge to void his guilty plea to campaign finance and money-transmitting crimes.

Salame's lawyers claim prosecutors reneged on an agreement to drop their campaign finance probe of Bond as an incentive to get him to plead guilty.

Bond was an attorney based in or near Washington who, "at all times relevant to the indictment," worked as the CEO of a digital assets trade group,