Ryan Salame’s Sentence Reduced
The United States Bureau of Prisons recently updated the release date for Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, reducing his prison sentence by one year. Salame was scheduled to be released in April 2032 but is now scheduled to leave custody in March 2031. The authorities have not given any official reasons for this adjustment, though.
Background on Salame’s Conviction
In September 2023, Salame pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business and one count of campaign finance fraud, among others, over his role in the now-infamous collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. He was sentenced to 7.5 years in federal prison and three years of supervised release after his guilty plea in May 2023.
The collapse of FTX had widespread ramifications, and Salame – although contested – was very much at the center of extensive legal scrutiny. Prior to the recent sentence reduction, his release date was set for April 2032.
Legal Battles and Sentencing Debates
Salame’s legal team had earlier sought a much lighter sentence, asking for no more than 18 months. His lawyers underlined the considerable forfeiture of assets as adequate punishment and underlined that Salame was not heavily involved in the core fraudulent activities of FTX. They insisted he had no knowledge of the criminal schemes engineered by the company’s leadership.
Notwithstanding these, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan finally sentenced Salame to 90 months, citing the immense financial losses from FTX’s collapse and the seriousness of the case. Federal prosecutors had asked for a sentence ranging from 5 to 7 years earlier, but Kaplan outdid their recommendations.
Disagreements over Plea Deal
In August 2023, Salame moved to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming federal prosecutors reneged on a major part of their agreement. He said that in exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors gave the impression that they would stop investigating his partner, Michelle Bond, for campaign finance violations. But reportedly, investigations into Bond did resume, and that fact fueled Salame’s motion to invalidate the plea agreement.
Final Sentencing Developments
All of Salame’s efforts to delay the sentence or void the plea, however, never materialized, and in October 2023, he turned himself in to the medium-security FCI Cumberland. While confirmation of a reduction in sentence has come, correction officials remain mum about why it has been revised.
