Caroline Ellison began serving her prison sentence of two years on Thursday for her role in the collapse of crypto exchange FTX that caused customers to lose billions of dollars.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed to The Block that Ellison is in custody at the Federal Correctional Institution Danbury — a low security prison in Connecticut that has 1,252 people in custody, according to its website.
Ellison was the co-CEO of Alameda Research, which was revealed to have closer than realized ties to FTX. Ellison is also the ex-girlfriend of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried founded both FTX and Alameda Research.
Ellison pled guilty in December 2022 to two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of actual wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
As part of her sentencing in September, Ellison agreed to forfeit about $11 billion. Ellison also addressed the court at the time and said she wanted to apologize to those who lost money because of her actions. She said “not a day goes by that I don’t think about all of the people I hurt,” according to reporting from Bloomberg.
Ellison cooperated with the government and testified against Bankman-Fried during his criminal trial earlier this year. Ellison told the court in March that Bankman-Fried directed her to commit the crimes that led to the exchange's downfall. Ellison said Alameda had access to customer deposits through an unlimited line of credit and also had direct access to customer deposits that were sent to Alameda's bank account known as "fiat@". Bankman-Fried was ultimately sentenced to nearly 25 years in prison in March and ordered to pay back up to $11 billion in investor and lender losses.
Other former FTX executives have been sentenced over the past year. Nishad Singh, FTX's former engineering director, was given no prison time but three years of supervised release last month after pleading guilty and cooperating with authorities. Former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets Ryan Salame began his prison sentence of seven and a half years last month.
FTX co-founder Gary Wang is set to be sentenced on Nov. 20.
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