Caroline Ellison, whose testimony helped convict her former boss and ex-boyfriend, disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, was sentenced Tuesday to 2 years in jail for fraud and conspiracy. Ellison was sentenced in U.S.
District Court docket in Manhattan by Choose Lewis A. Kaplan to 24 months and ordered to forfeit $11 billion for her involvement within the collapse of Bankman-Fried’s crypto alternate firm, FTX. She had confronted a most sentence of about 110 years.
Ellison, 29, accepted a plea deal to expenses of conspiracy and monetary fraud in December 2022, a month after FTX spiraled out of business. She testified in opposition to Bankman-Fried for practically three days at his trial final November. Bankman-Fried was convicted of all seven legal fraud expenses in opposition to him and sentenced to 25 years in jail.
Prosecutors mentioned in a courtroom submitting that her testimony was the “cornerstone of the trial.” Attorneys for Ellison had requested that she be sentenced to time served and supervised launch, citing her cooperation. In a courtroom doc filed earlier this month, her attorneys mentioned she made a swift return to the U.
S. in 2022 from FTX’s headquarters within the Bahamas and voluntarily cooperated with the U.S.
lawyer’s workplace. She willingly labored with monetary regulators in serving to them perceive what went mistaken at FTX and at Alameda Analysis, FTX’s sister hedge fund, which Ellison ran, the doc mentioned. With a limiteless .
