FTX Co-Founder Ryan Salame Bags May 28 as Sentence Hearing Date

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A former executive at FTX Derivatives Exchange, Ryan Salame, is set to be sentenced on May 28th in a New York court. This comes after he admitted guilt to criminal charges accusing him of collaborating in a financial fraud scheme.

Based on information from the court records published on Tuesday, the sentencing hearing for Salame is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m., presided over by Judge Lewis Kaplan in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Allegations Against Former FTX Exchange’s Salame

In September 2023, Salame admitted to conspiring to illegally donate funds and running an unlicensed money transfer business before Judge Kaplan. Accordingly, his sentencing hearing, which was initially scheduled for May 1, was later changed to May 28, as recorded in the court records.

Prosecutors claimed that Salame and his accomplices organized more than 300 political donations totaling “large sums of illegal money,” employing deceitful techniques such as having others contribute under their names (straw donors) or using corporate funds instead.

Salame admitted not only to conspiring to deceive the Federal Elections Committee and Campaign Contributions, but also to running an unauthorized money transfer business without a license. Consequently, he was penalized with a fine totaling $1.5 billion and forfeited several of his assets.

Sentence Speculations

Carrie Anne Ellison, the ex-CEO of Alameda Research, Gary Wang, a co-founder of FTX, and Nishad Singh, FTX’s previous Engineering Director, are among those who have confessed to their involvement in the fraud scheme and have pleaded guilty.

Last month, a court handed down a 25-year prison term for Sam Bankman-Fried, the ex-CEO of FTX. However, legal experts predict that Salame’s recent guilty plea may not significantly reduce his impending sentence from the judge.

In a criminal fraud trial towards the end of last year, Judge Kaplan alleged that Bankman-Fried lied under oath about not having conversations with Salame and others regarding political donations in the United States.

After filing for bankruptcy, FTX Exchange, led by John Ray III, has managed to recover approximately $7 billion from their assets in an attempt to reimburse their investors.

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2024-04-10 20:21