[NBC] Ellison accepted a plea deal on charges of conspiracy and financial fraud in December 2022, a month after FTX spiraled into bankruptcy.Caroline Ellison, whose testimony helped convict her former boss and ex-boyfriend, disgraced cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, was sentenced Tuesday to two years in prison for fraud and conspiracy.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan sentenced Ellison in New York City to 24 months and ordered her to forfeit $11 billion for her involvement in the collapse of Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange company, FTX. She had faced a maximum sentence of about 110 years.
Ellison, 29, accepted a plea deal on charges of conspiracy and financial fraud in December 2022, a month after FTX spiraled into bankruptcy. She testified against Bankman-Fried for nearly three days at his trial in November....
Lawyers for Ellison had asked that she be sentenced to time served and supervised release, citing her cooperation. In a court document filed this month, her lawyers said she made a swift return to the U.S. in 2022 from FTX’s headquarters in the Bahamas and voluntarily cooperated with the U.S. attorney’s office....
But Kaplan, describing FTX's collapse as possibly the greatest financial fraud uncovered in U.S. history, said he could not agree to a "literal get-out-of-jail-free card" for the defendant.
He ordered her to surrender to authorities on or after Nov. 7.
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Caroline Ellison 12/23/2022 Bankman-Fried's ex-girlfriend and FTX co-founder plead guilty to fraud charges
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Caroline Ellison 12/23/2022 Bankman-Fried's ex-girlfriend and FTX co-founder plead guilty to fraud charges
Caroline Ellison 12/14/2022 Founder of FTX Crypto Exchange Arrested
Caroline Ellison 11/12/2022 Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire ‘was run by a gang of kids in the Bahamas' who all dated each other