Former FTX executive Caroline Ellison sentenced to two years for fraud
Al Jazeera
The former CEO of Alameda Research served as a key prosecution witness against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
Caroline Ellison, the former business partner and girlfriend of cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried, has been sentenced to two years in prison for her role in one of the biggest financial frauds in history.
Ellison, the CEO of Alameda Research and Bankman-Fried’s on-and-off girlfriend, was a key prosecution witness in last year’s trial that saw the founder of the ill-fated crypto exchange FTX sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Ellison pleaded guilty to seven charges, including fraud, shortly after the collapse of FTX in 2022, crimes carrying a maximum sentence of 110 years in prison.
But both the judge and prosecutors said that Ellison deserved leniency for cooperating with investigators, including testifying against Bankman-Fried over the course of three days at his trial.
United States District Judge Lewis A Kaplan said on Tuesday that Ellison’s cooperation had been “very substantial”, but a prison term was justified despite her lawyers’ request for a non-custodial sentence given the magnitude of the fraud.
