Ryan Salame’s attorneys have requested that the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets be sentenced to a maximum of 18 months in prison.
Salame’s legal team argued in a May 14 filing with the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York that a maximum prison term of 18 months was “appropriate” in addition to the “substantial restitution and forfeiture obligations” stipulated by the former FTX executive.
In September 2023, Salame entered a guilty plea for conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business and campaign finance fraud. Judge Lewis Kaplan is scheduled to impose his sentence on May 28.
“[Salame] had no idea that the four individuals implicated in Alameda and FTX had formed a conspiracy to deceive and steal from their clientele,” his attorneys argued in the sentencing memo dated May 14.
“Ryan never committed theft.” He never told consumers a lie. Furthermore, he and all others were deceived into believing that the businesses were authentic, financially stable, and extraordinarily lucrative.
“As Caroline Ellison testified at Bankman-Fried’s trial, even as the FTX exchange was collapsing on November 6, 2022, she and Bankman-Fried conspired to keep Ryan in the dark about their fraud, misleading him just as they had misled the rest of the world.”
On November 9, 2022, Salame informed the Securities Commission of the Bahamas of FTX’s fraudulent activities. This information was disclosed just two days before the resignation of former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried and the exchange’s subsequent bankruptcy filing.
Later, Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas to the United States, where he was convicted of seven felony counts. In March, a magistrate sentenced him to 25 years in prison.
As Salame’s attorneys stated, the former FTX executive deserved an 18-month sentence due to his position at the “lowest rung of the conspiracies to which he pleaded guilty” and the improbability of his recurrence of comparable offenses.
Salame “truly accepted responsibility” for his actions, in contrast to the Bankman-Fried case, which ostensibly deterred individuals from entering the cryptocurrency space.
After Bankman-Fried, the former executive will likely be the second individual associated with FTX and Alameda Research to receive a sentence. Former FTX engineering director Nishad Singh, former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, and FTX co-founder Gary Wang all pleaded guilty to charges and testified in SBF’s criminal trial; however, their potential prison sentences were not known at the time of publication.
Salame, who entered a guilty plea in 2023, has been released on a $1 million bond since then. As part of his agreement with prosecutors, he will surrender two properties and a business and pay approximately $6 million in penalties to the U.S. government and $6 million to FTX debtors. His attorneys stated that he would be left with “no remaining assets.”
