FTX exec who turned on Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 7.5 years in prison

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 been ordered to pay more than $6 million in forfeiture and more than $5 million in restitution.

The sentence is a heavier penalty than the five to seven years that prosecutors had suggested and well beyond the 18 months that Salame's defense team had requested.

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.

Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced Sam Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison in March.

In 2021, Salame transitioned from a high-ranking post at Bankman-Fried's crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, to co-CEO of FTX's Bahamian subsidiary, FTX Digital Markets. Salame spent millions on real estate and campaign donations during his tenure.

One estimate by Bahamian lawyers claims that Bankman-Fried and Salame spent $256.3 million to buy and maintain 35 properties across New Providence — real estate that Bahamian regulators wanted to retrieve in FTX's U.S. bankruptcy protection proceedings. Meanwhile, data from the Federal Election Commission shows that Salame gave more than $24 million to Republican candidates and causes in the 2022 election cycle.

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 "possible mishandling of clients' assets" by Bankman-Fried.

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