Caroline Ellison, who testified against her ex-boyfriend and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in his cryptocurrency fraud trial, was sentenced Tuesday to two years in prison for her role in the case, New York prosecutors told AFP .
Ellison, the former CEO of cryptocurrency firm Alameda Research, received a much lighter sentence than the 110 years she faced after pleading guilty to seven charges, including fraud.
Her defense team had argued against jail time. Prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said they did not ask Judge Lewis Kaplan to impose a specific sentence, but simply suggested he take into account her past cooperation.
Ellison served as a key witness in the trial of cryptocurrency superstar Bankman-Fried — known by his initials “SBF” — who was sentenced to 25 years in March in one of the largest financial fraud cases in history.
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He is serving time in prison and has appealed his conviction.
During her court testimony, Ellison accused Bankman-Fried of dipping into clients’ funds to drive his riskier projects. He responded by trying to blame Ellison, describing her as a bad manager.
A billionaire before he turned 30, Bankman-Fried was a poster boy for the cryptocurrency boom.
Within a few months, he had turned his small start-up FTX, which was first launched in 2019, into the second largest cryptocurrency trading platform in the world.
However, as revealed by the Bankman-Fried trial, the firm had used the assets deposited with FTX to make riskier trades through sister company Alameda Research, as well as to buy real estate and make political donations.
FTX collapsed in November 2022, reporting more than $8 billion in debt by the time the company filed for bankruptcy.
Source: AFP