Michelle Bond, partner of former FTX executive Ryan Salame, pleads not guilty to campaign finance violations amid the ongoing FTX scandal. She who is free on a $1 million bond, can’t leave the mainland U.S. Her partner, Ryan Salame, is set to go to prison on October 11.
Bond, the partner of former FTX co-CEO Ryan Salame, has pleaded not guilty to four serious campaign finance charges in a New York court on September 17. These charges include breaking rules on campaign contributions and lying about where the money came from for her 2022 congressional campaign.
Salame allegedly helped by arranging a $400,000 payment from FTX for her campaign. Bond is accused of hiding this and lying to both the Federal Election Commission and Congress. Despite the charges, she remains free under strict travel restrictions.
FTX scandal legal updates
In September 2023, Ryan Salame pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy related to illegal political donations and deceiving the Federal Election Commission (FEC). He was sentenced to 90 months in prison. However, after his partner Michelle Bond was indicted, Salame asked the court to cancel his guilty plea, claiming that prosecutors had agreed not to investigate Bond, the mother of his child.
During a September 12 hearing, Judge Lewis Kaplan said he would think about whether to overturn Salame’s plea. For now, Salame is still scheduled to start his prison sentence on October 11.
Michelle Bond had run for New York’s 1st Congressional District in 2022 but didn’t make it past the Republican primary. Since then, she’s started a crypto think tank in Washington, DC. As of September 17, her trial date hasn’t been set, but a pretrial meeting is planned for January 2025.
Of the five people charged in the FTX and Alameda Research criminal cases, only Salame and former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried have been sentenced to prison so far.
Bankman-Fried is serving 25 years, but his lawyers are appealing his conviction. Former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison has a hearing on September 24, and two other FTX executives, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, will have their sentencing hearings later this year.
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