Author: Turner Wright, CoinTelegraph; Translated by: Wuzhu, Golden Finance
The U.S. Attorney’s Office has opposed a petition filed by former FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame to rescind his plea agreement involving campaign finance violations.
Prosecutors said in an Aug. 26 filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that they will file a written objection to the petition filed by Salame’s legal team by Sept. 4. The former FTX executive’s lawyers filed a petition for a writ of error seeking to have the court overturn Salame’s plea deal, which resulted in his being sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.
Salame claimed prosecutors hinted during his plea negotiations that they would not investigate his partner, Michelle Bond. On August 22, authorities unsealed an indictment against Bond alleging violations of campaign finance laws in his 2022 run for a U.S. House seat.
"Salame's complaint is premised on the (patently false) allegation that he was induced to plead guilty because the government said that in exchange for his guilty plea it would drop its investigation into Bond's conspiracy with Salame to commit criminal campaign finance violations," the filing states.
Source: SDNY
Bond, who was Salame’s partner during the collapse of FTX, ran for Congress in New York’s 1st Congressional District in 2022. Her candidacy did not proceed in the Republican primary, losing to Nicholas J. LaLota by about 5,000 votes. The indictment alleges that Bond and Salame conspired to embezzle funds from her campaign for Congress.
FTX goes to court
In September 2023, Salame pleaded guilty to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and to engaging in campaign finance fraud. In May, a federal judge sentenced him to 90 months in prison. Salame requested a stay of sentence due to medical complications from the dog bite and is scheduled to go to prison on October 13.
If the judge accepts Salame’s request to void his plea agreement and sentence, he could face a full criminal trial in the future. His agreement with prosecutors requires him to pay a fine of about $6 million to the government and $6 million to FTX debtors.
Salame, who is listed in the same indictment as Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried, is the only party who did not testify at the former FTX CEO’s trial. Former FTX engineering director Nishad Singh and co-founder Gary Wang accepted plea deals to testify at SBF’s trial and are scheduled to be sentenced in October and November, respectively.
Since being sentenced, Salame has been active on X, posting allegations against FTX executives, including former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison. Salame claimed, without clear evidence, that Ellison was “more guilty than SBF.”
In March, a judge sentenced Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison. His legal team has filed a notice of appeal. As of the time of publication, Ellison's sentencing hearing had not yet been scheduled.