Caroline Ellison sentenced to 2 years in prison over massive FTX crypto-scandal



The 29-year-old former girlfriend to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday for her part in the massive cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme.

'I've seen a lot of cooperators in 30 years here. I've never seen one quite like Ms. Ellison.'

Caroline Ellison had been the CEO of Alameda Research, a privately-controlled hedge fund that Bankman-Fried had been improperly funneling money into from the massive FTX cryptocurrency exchange. In Dec. 2022, Ellison pleaded guilty to seven counts related to the scheme, including conspiracy to commit commodities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

Although she faced up to 110 years in prison for the seven charges, a judge in New York gave her a shortened sentence due to her "very, very substantial" cooperation with the government's case against her former boyfriend and other FTX executives.

"She cooperated and he denied the whole thing," said Judge Lewis Kaplan. "I've seen a lot of cooperators in 30 years here. I've never seen one quite like Ms. Ellison."

Bankman-Fried had previously been ordered by Kaplan to turn over $11 billion in funds to the government in order to compensate the victims of the FTX scandal. He was convicted on seven charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Kaplan went on to note that Bankman-Fried continued to claim innocence while Ellison had expressed guilt and regret.

"You are genuinely remorseful," the judge continued. "He's sorry the gamble he took didn't work out, and he's really sorry he got caught."

Ellison apologized for her behavior at a podium before the sentence was announced.

"I want to apologize most of all to the victims," said a tearful Ellison. "Not a day goes by when I don't think about all the people I hurt."

Bankman-Fried has filed an appeal of the conviction on the basis that it was an unfair trial a year after he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

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Sam Bankman-Fried's girlfriend and a co-founder of FTX have pled guilty to criminal fraud charges and are cooperating with feds



Sam Bankman-Fried's girlfriend Caroline Ellison and another co-founder of FTX pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges related to the billion-dollar FTX cryptocurrency exchange, according to unsealed court documents.

The report on Friday came after Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas to the United States to face charges, including wire fraud and money laundering.

Bankman-Fried was lauded by many as a genius when he co-founded the massive cryptocurrency exchange FTX. He shrouded his actions by claiming that he was amassing billions in wealth in order to donate much of it to charity.

Ellison had been the CEO of Alameda Research, a privately-controlled hedge fund. Bankman-Fried is accused of illegally and covertly transferring billions from FTX to Alameda without properly notifying his investors. She pleaded guilty to seven counts, including conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Ellison faces a maximum sentence of 110 years in prison for the seven charges.

FTX co-founder Gary Wang pleaded guilty to four counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, and faces a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison.

Among the celebrities who have been caught in the web of the FTX collapse are NFL superstar quarterback Tom Brady, who is being sued by an investor for promoting the exchange in commercials.

At one point, Bankman-Fried was estimated to be worth $16 billion. He is expected to make his first court appearance on Thursday.

In an interview with the New York Times, Bankman-Fried claimed he never intended to defraud anyone but admitted that mistakes were made.

"Whatever happened, why it happened, I had a duty to our stakeholders, our customers, our investors, the regulators of the world, to do right by them," said Bankman-Fried. "Clearly I didn’t do a good job of that."

The financial fraud case is considered the largest in U.S. history.

Here's an explainer for the FTX collapse:

The FTX Collapse, Explained | What Went Wrong | WSJwww.youtube.com

Wall Street Journal gets torched over softball op-ed claiming FTX went bankrupt because supporters lost faith in its founder



A bizarre opinion article in the Wall Street Journal was torched by people online because the writer claimed that the cryptocurrency company FTX collapsed because supporters lost faith in its founder.

The article tried to tie together the fortunes of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and those of former President Donald Trump, but along the way, Allysia Finley claimed that lack of support is why FTX failed.

"Mr. Bankman-Fried may not believe in anything greater than himself any more than the former president does," Finley wrote, referring to the disgraced founder's admission that he took advantage of ESG scores to dupe liberals into supporting him.

"FTX failed because Mr. Bankman-Fried’s supporters lost confidence in him. That may be how Mr. Trump finally crashes and burns too," Finley concluded.

Apart from the strained analogy to Trump's election fraud claims, Finley was excoriated online for her odd description of the downfall of FTX.

"Democrat's second biggest donor ran a DNC money laundering operation, shared a stage with Bill Clinton, hobnobbed with everyone in the Dem Party and had a line entitled 'Trumplose' on FTX balance sheet. And WSJ wants you believe he's Trump's twin. The dumbf***ery is off the hook," read one popular response.

"What the actual F@%K is this, who is paying for these articles to make SBF look like the victim?" replied another critic.

"It's unbelievable! How can anyone not see it how @SBF_FTX is protected by some hidden forces? 'He failed because his supporters lost confidence in him.' Yes they lost confidence because he defrauded them with creating a ponzi. Did Maddof fail because of his supporters?" read another critical tweet.

"Mainstream media will continue down its path of irrelevancy when it presents information through their own political lens. SBF have a backdoor in his accounting system to steal money and he gave a lot of money to political benefactors. How is that not the headline?" responded another critic.

Bankman-Fried is under "supervision" in the Bahamas as the investigation into the collapse continues. The cryptocurrency exchange company was valued at about $32 billion before filing for bankruptcy.

Here's more about the fall of FTX:

The FTX Collapse, Explained | What Went Wrong | WSJwww.youtube.com