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Former FTX Executive Ryan Salame Posted a LinkedIn Update Before Reporting to Prison

Former FTX executive Ryan Salame used LinkedIn’s job-announcement format to joke about becoming an inmate at FCI Cumberland, the night before he was due to report to prison.
From TheFinanceBase Team2 min to read
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Former FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame announced a new LinkedIn “position” as an inmate at FCI Cumberland the night before he was due to report to prison in October 2024. The dryly comic contrast between a standard career update and the imminent start of a prison sentence is what made the post stand out.

What Ryan Salame wrote on LinkedIn

In a post reported by Futurism on October 11, 2024, Salame wrote: “I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position,” followed by “as Inmate at FCI Cumberland!” Futurism said he posted it the night before he was due to begin his prison term.

The joke depended on the familiar LinkedIn format for announcing a job change: Salame used it to refer to his upcoming incarceration. Calling the post “hilarious” is a matter of interpretation; the underlying event is that he was about to report to prison after being sentenced for federal crimes.

Why the former crypto executive was going to prison

Salame was a high-ranking official at Alameda Research from 2019 to 2021 and became co-CEO of FTX’s Bahamian affiliate, FTX Digital Markets Ltd., in October 2021, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

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On September 7, 2023, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and defraud the Federal Election Commission, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. The Justice Department said Salame and others used FTX, Alameda Research, and North Dimension to transmit FTX customer funds without required licenses, and made false statements to U.S. banks to keep the businesses operating. It also said political contributions were structured to obscure Sam Bankman-Fried’s association with some of them.

Salame’s sentence and court-ordered payments

On May 28, 2024, the Justice Department announced that Salame had been sentenced to 90 months in prison—seven and a half years—and three years of supervised release. The department’s release says he was ordered to pay more than $6 million in forfeiture and more than $5 million in restitution.

The Justice Department also said Salame and co-conspirators made more than 300 political contributions totaling tens of millions of dollars. It described the contributions as unlawful because they were made in the names of straw donors or paid for with corporate funds, leading to false campaign or political action committee reports.

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Why published accounts differ on forfeiture

Futurism’s report gives a $1.5 billion forfeiture figure, while the Justice Department’s sentencing release gives Salame’s individual order as more than $6 million in forfeiture and more than $5 million in restitution. Those figures are materially different. The official release supports the latter amounts; without documentation that reconciles the discrepancy, the $1.5 billion figure should not be treated as Salame’s individual forfeiture order.

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U.S. Attorney Damian Williams characterized the conduct as an unlawful political influence campaign and an unlicensed money-transmitting business that helped FTX grow outside the law. That is the government’s description of the case, not a quotation of a separate judicial finding.

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