NEW YORK — Former cryptocurrency executive Caroline Ellison was sentenced on Tuesday to two years in prison for her role in her former boyfriend Sam Bankman-Fried’s theft of $8 billion in customer funds from the now-bankrupt FTX exchange he founded, even as the judge recognized her extensive cooperation with prosecutors. U.S.
District Judge Lewis Kaplan said at a sentencing hearing in Manhattan federal court that he was not comfortable with remorse and cooperation being a “get out of jail free card” in a case so serious. Prosecutors have called Bankman-Fried’s actions one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S.
history. Ellison, 29, pleaded guilty to seven felony counts of fraud and conspiracy and testified as a prosecution witness in the trial of Bankman-Fried, who was convicted of fraud and other charges last year and is serving a 25-year prison sentence arising from FTX’s 2022 collapse. The crimes to which she pleaded guilty carried a maximum sentence of 110 years in prison.
Her lawyers had argued for no prison time due to her cooperation. Prosecutors sought leniency as well. Kaplan told Ellison she was “gravely culpable in this fraud,” though he said her “remarkable cooperation” represented a “fundamental distinction” between her and Bankman-Fried.
“There’s no way you’re ever going to do something like this again, I am persuaded,” the judge told Ellison. “But here’s the thing: this was, if not the very greatest financial fraud ever perp.