NEW YORK (AP) — Caroline Ellison, a former high government Sam Bankman Fried The fading cryptocurrency empire FTX faces years in jail when she is sentenced on fraud costs on Tuesday, however prosecutors stated she deserves leniency for her “extraordinary cooperation” as they investigated the corporate.
Ellison, 29, pleaded responsible almost two years in the past and testified in opposition to Bankman-Fried for almost three days throughout a trial final November.
In a court docket submitting, prosecutors stated her testimony was the “cornerstone of the case” in opposition to Bankman-Fried, 32, who was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in jail.
In asking the court docket for a lighter sentence, Ellison’s attorneys cited each his testimony at trial and the trauma of his on-and-off relationship with Bankman-Fried, however pressured that he was not making an attempt to evade duty for his crimes.
“Caroline blames nobody however herself for what she did,” her attorneys wrote in a court docket submitting. “She deeply regrets her function and can carry disgrace and regret to her grave.”
FTX was one of many world’s hottest cryptocurrency exchanges, identified for its Superbowl TV industrial and intensive lobbying in Washington, earlier than its collapse in 2022.
U.S. prosecutors have accused Bankman-Fried and different high executives of raiding shoppers’ inventory market accounts to make dangerous investments, acquire thousands and thousands of {dollars} in unlawful political donations, bribe Chinese officers and purchase luxurious Caribbean actual property.
Ellison was the CEO of Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency hedge fund managed by Bankman-Fried that was used to course of some consumer funds from FTX.
Her working relationship with Bankman-Fried was difficult by her romantic emotions for him, her attorneys wrote in a court docket submitting.
“From the start, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s conduct was erratic and manipulative. He initially professed robust emotions for Caroline and implied that their relationship would develop right into a full-blown affair. But after a number of weeks, he ‘ghosted’ Caroline with out rationalization, avoiding her exterior of labor and refusing to reply to messages that weren’t work-related,” her attorneys stated.
As the corporate started to falter, Ellison revealed the large fraud to staff who had labored for her even earlier than FTX has filed for bankruptcyhis attorneys wrote.
Finally, he additionally spoke at size with US investigators.
“Ellison cooperated at a excessive private {and professional} value, enduring intense media and public scrutiny and tried witness tampering by Bankman-Fried,” prosecutors wrote.
They stated the girl had been candid in her account of her misconduct and was “uniquely positioned to elucidate not solely the what and the way of Bankman-Fried’s crimes, but additionally the why.”
“In her quite a few conferences with the Government, Ellison approached its cooperation with outstanding candor, regret, and seriousness,” they wrote. “She engaged in an in depth doc evaluate that helped establish key corroborating paperwork in an investigation hampered by Bankman-Fried’s systematic destruction of proof.”
His testimony on the trial, they stated, was credible and convincing.
The sentencing will likely be pronounced by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.
After testifying on the Bankman-Fried trial, Ellison engaged in quite a few charitable actions, wrote a novel, and collaborated along with her dad and mom on a math enrichment textbook for superior highschool college students, based on her attorneys.
They stated he’s now additionally in a wholesome romantic relationship and has reconnected with highschool buddies he had misplaced contact with whereas working for Bankman-Fried and infrequently dated from 2017 till late 2022.
