A representative of one of the most famous cryptocurrency exchanges was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison

Ryan Salame, a former top executive of the bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange, has been sentenced to prison for misappropriating customer funds and making illegal political donations. Despite attempts to cooperate with the investigation, the court sentenced him to 7.5 years in prison, Bloomberg reports.

In late January, the new management of FTX finally gave up trying to restore the exchange, which went bankrupt in 2022. The former head of FTX, Сем Бенкман-Фрід" href="https://noworries.news/biography/sem-benkman-frid/" data-bio-id="3697">Sam Bankman-Fried, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud and embezzlement of client funds.

Salameh was one of Bankman-Fried's closest assistants. He joined the FTX-linked Alameda Research fund after meeting Bankman-Fried at a blockchain conference in 2019.

After the platform registered in the Bahamas in 2021, he became an intermediary between the company and the local government and was appointed as the executive director of FTX Digital Markets. He held this position until November 2022, when it became known that FTX clients' funds were used uncontrollably to buy real estate, invest, and make political donations to both US parties.

According to the documents published as part of the exchange’s bankruptcy, the FTX team spent about $ 255 million on dozens of apartments, villas, and plots of land in the Bahamas. The most expensive was a $ 30 million penthouse on the top floor of the Orchid in the Albany luxury residential complex, which served as the exchange’s headquarters.

In September 2023, he pleaded guilty to criminal charges, including illegal political donations. The sentence was harsher than the prosecution had requested. Prosecutors asked for five to seven years in prison, while the defense argued for a year and a half or less.