Michelle Bond, Girlfriend Of FTX Executive Ryan Salame, Pleads Not Guilty To Criminal Charges

Julia Smith

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Julia Smith

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Julia is an experienced editor with a passion for covering a wide variety of beats. She loves all things politics and regularly covers regulatory updates on emerging technology here for Crypto News.

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September 19, 2024

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Michelle Bond, the girlfriend of former FTX executive Ryan Salame, pleaded not guilty to violating campaign finance laws in relation to her run for Congress in 2022 this week.

According to court documents, Bond formally pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to cause unlawful campaign contributions, causing and receiving excessive campaign contributions, causing and receiving a conduit contribution, and causing and receiving an unlawful corporate contribution.

Michelle Bond Pleads Not Guilty

Bond, who ran as a Trump-backed Republican candidate in New York’s first congressional district, is accused of accepting over half a million dollars from FTX that was used to fund her campaign.

According to a federal indictment, Bond was dating Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX Markets, by early 2022.

Salame, meanwhile, received a 7.5 prison sentence after he pled guilty to conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and defraud the Federal Election Commission this past May.

However, the one-time Sam Bankman-Fried associate is now facing possible sanctions for seemingly admitting to lying under oath after he submitted a now-withdrawn petition to vacate his guilty plea.

The former crypto executive alleged that U.S. prosecutors reportedly promised to stop investigating Bond when he agreed to his original plea deal.

Salame was scheduled to begin serving his sentence for his crimes stemming from the now-defunct crypto exchange next month, though given his most recent plea, whether or not that will happen remains unclear.

Former FTX Executive Ryan Salame Speaks Out

Caroline Ellison, the ex-girlfriend of crypto mastermind Sam Bankman-Fried, is set to face sentencing on September 24.

Unlike Salame, Ellison agreed to testify against Bankman-Fried in his whirlwind 2023 trial. The crypto con artist was found guilty on seven fraud charges for orchestrating the massive digital asset scheme. He is currently serving a 25-year sentence at the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York.

Meanwhile, Salame has been an outspoken critic of the federal legal system on social media before the start of his sentence.

“I hope everyone appreciates the real lesson the government is teaching by putting SBF in prison for 25 years, me for 7.5 years, and Caroline for 0 years,” Salame said in a recent X post. “Lie as much as they push you to, and you can get away with anything…”

In addition to Ellison, FTX CTO Gary Wang and director of engineering Nishad Singh are slated to be sentenced sometime in the near future.