Caroline Ellison, former CEO of a hedge fund tied to crooked crypto exchange FTX and former girlfriend of Sam Bankman-Fried (himself already sentenced to 25 years), is off to jail for her part in it all. Ellison will serve two years, having served as his prosecution's star witness but not quite getting so sweet a deal as the one she was hoping for. She must also return $11bn swindled over the course of their run.
The prison term was significantly stiffer than the recommendation by the federal Probation Department that Judge Lewis Kaplan sentence Ellison, who had run the hedge fund Alameda Research, to three years of supervised release, with no time at all behind bars. Defense lawyers also had requested a no-prison sentence for Ellison.
Alameda received much of the $8 billion in customer funds looted by Bankman-Fried from FTX. The stolen money was used for Alameda's trading operation and other purposes. … While Kaplan praised Ellison for her extensive cooperation with prosecutors — which led to the conviction of Bankman-Fried — the judge said her criminal sentence needed to deter other potential bad actors from committing fraud
She pleaded guilty to conspiracy and financial fraud charges after reaching a plea deal in 2022 to serve as a witness. NBC News reports that "the filing did not say how much she would pay" in settlements.
Nice to see "effective altruist" in her bio, to this day.
