Ryan Salame, a former top lieutenant of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, has been sentenced to 90 months, or seven and a half years, in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Salame has also been ordered to pay more than $6 million in forfeiture and more than $5 million in restitution. The sentence is a heavier penalty than the five to seven years that prosecutors had suggested, and well beyond the 18 months that Salame’s defense team had requested. In September, Salame pleaded guilty to conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions, defraud the Federal Election Commission, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Judge Lewis Kaplan sentenced Sam Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison in March. In 2021, Salame transitioned from a high-ranking post at Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, to co-CEO of FTX’s Bahamian subsidiary, FTX Digital Markets. Salame spent millions of dollars on real estate and campaign donations during…
