Federal court in New York, United States, on Tuesday condemned Caroline Ellison has been sentenced to two years in prison for fraud and conspiracy, in the trial against cryptocurrency entrepreneur and ex-boyfriend Sam Bankman-Fried, known as SBF. The ongoing trial relates to one of the biggest scandals ever in the crypto world: SBF was arrested last December after the bankruptcy of FTX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, which he founded in 2019. Ellison is the former director of FTX Alameda Research, an investment fund affiliated with the same SBF that is embroiled in the scandal.
In practice, SBF would have used the money entrusted to FTX by clients to live a lavish lifestyle, buy multimillion-dollar properties in the Bahamas, lavishly fund both the Democratic and Republican parties in the run-up to the 2020 and 2022 elections, and fill a giant hole in the balance sheet of his investment fund, Alameda Research. Ellison recently pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
For Ellison, 29, the sentence was much lighter than that of SBF, 32, who was sentenced last March to 25 years in prison: the judge who sentenced her acknowledged her cooperation in the trial and in her behavior. He added that he believed she was “deeply remorseful” and that she had been “used” by SBF to carry out the fraud at the center of the trial, adding that these elements could not be a “get out of jail free card,” given the seriousness of the scandal that has been compared, in terms of its effects on the sector, to the Wall Street crash of 2008, which started the serious financial crisis of those years.
– Read also: The trial of the “crypto king” has begun.
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