Michelle Bond, CEO of Digital Futures.
CNBC
Former FTX executive Ryan Salame’s common-law partner convicted Michelle Bond Prosecutors announced Thursday that she has been indicted in New York on federal charges accusing her of conspiring to raise illegal campaign contributions from FTX to help her failed bid for Congress in 2022.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams alleged that Bond, 45, received “spurious” $400,000 advances from FTX and subsequent $100,000 annual payments from the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange. , illegally funded her campaign.
Bond is running for a House seat in New York’s 1st Congressional District, which includes eastern Long Island.
Bond, who lives in Potomac, Maryland, is scheduled to appear in Manhattan federal court on Thursday.
four count indictment A day earlier, Salam, the father of Bond’s eight-month-old child, asked a New York federal judge to throw out his guilty plea to campaign finance and money transfer crimes.
Salaam’s attorneys claim prosecutors violated an agreement to drop a campaign finance investigation into Bond to incentivize him to plead guilty.
The indictment said Bond was an attorney in or near Washington who served as the executive director of a digital asset trading group “at all times relevant to the indictment.” In June, Bond also announced the establishment of a “Digital Future” think tank “committed to promoting the development of the next generation of financial services industry.” Press release.
Ryan Salame, the former co-chief executive of FTX Digital Markets, pleaded guilty to two charges in New York City on September 7, 2023, including conspiring to make illegal political contributions to the United States, and subsequently withdrew from federal court.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
The indictment states that Salam and Bond met in June 2021 and entered into a relationship early the following year.
The indictment alleges that Salame, identified only as CC-1, conspired with Bond to commit crimes and alleges that Salame arranged payments from FTX to Bond. She then allegedly used “substantially all” of that money to “illegally fund her campaign,” according to the indictment.
The indictment states that Salaam allegedly wired hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bond’s personal bank account between June and August 2022, which she then used to illegally fund her campaign.
Last year, Salam did not cooperate with witnesses in the criminal trial of his former FTX boss, Sam Bankman-Fried. Sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud and conspiracy.
The charges against Salame stem from his involvement in a multimillion-dollar campaign finance scheme during his tenure at FTX.
Salam will begin serving a seven-and-a-half-year sentence on October 13. order payment More than $6 million was confiscated and more than $5 million was returned.
U.S. Attorney Williams wrote a separate letter to the judge in the criminal case on Wednesday asking the court to “reject Ryan Salam’s shameless and selfish attempt to recant his guilty plea after sentencing.”
Judge Lewis Kaplan has scheduled a hearing on Sept. 12 to hear arguments from both sides on whether to void Salam’s agreement with prosecutors.
— CNBC’s Dan Mangan contributed to this report.
watch: Former FTX investor weighs in on SBF sentencing
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