(Headline USA) Caroline Ellison, a former top executive in Sam Bankman–Fried’s fallen FTX cryptocurrency empire, began her two-year prison sentence Thursday for her role in a fraud that cost investors, lenders and customers billions of dollars.
Ellison, 30, reported to the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
She had pleaded guilty and testified extensively against Bankman–Fried, her former boyfriend, before he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Ellison could have faced decades in prison herself, but both the judge and prosecutors said she deserved credit for her cooperation.
At her sentencing hearing in New York in September, she tearfully apologized and said she was “deeply ashamed.”
Ellison was chief executive at Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency hedge fund controlled by Bankman–Fried.
FTX was one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, known for its Super Bowl TV ad and its extensive lobbying campaign in Washington, before it collapsed in 2022.
U.S. prosecutors accused Bankman–Fried and other top executives of looting customer accounts on the exchange to make risky investments, make millions of dollars of illegal political donations, bribe Chinese officials and buy luxury real estate in the Caribbean.
The company, which gave predominantly to Democrats but also some Republicans, was able to circumvent normal oversight in part due to the donations to key policy- and lawmakers.
Ellison—the daughter of Massachusetts Institute of Techology economists Glenn and Sara Fisher Ellison—was also a family friend of Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler.
The judge overseeing her trial, Lewis Kaplan, gained notoriety as the judge who presided over a spurious defamation lawsuit waged by serial rape-hoaxer E. Jean Carroll.
Kaplan, who had ties to Carroll’s lawyers, repeatedly stacked the deck against Trump, effectively denying him due process in the high-profile lawfare case, leading to an $83.3 million defamation judgment against the now-president-elect for having the audacity to defend himself in response to Carroll’s highly dubious allegations.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
