Ryan Salame, the former co-chief executive of FTX Digital Markets, exits the Federal Court after he pleaded guilty to two charges including conspiring to make unlawful U.S. political contributions, in New York City, Sept. 7, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Convicted former FTX executive Ryan Salame’s domestic partner Michelle Bond has been indicted on charges accusing her of conspiring to raise unlawful campaign contributions in connection with her unsuccessful run for Congress in 2022, prosecutors announced Thursday.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams claims that Bond, 45, illegally funded her campaign with a “sham” $400,000 upfront payment from FTX, the now-bankrupt crypto exchange, followed by a $100,000 annual payment from FTX.
Bond was running for a House seat in New York’s first congressional district, which includes eastern Long Island.
The four-count indictment against Bond was unsealed a day after Salame, the father of their eight-month-old child, asked a New York federal judge to void his guilty plea to campaign finance and money-transmitting crimes. Salame’s lawyers claim prosecutors reneged on an agreement to drop their campaign finance probe of Bond as an incentive to get him to plead guilty.
Prosecutors describe Bond as an attorney based in or near Washington who, “at all times relevant to the indictment,” worked as the CEO for a digital assets trade group.
According to the indictment, Salame and Bond met in June 2021, and were in a relationship by early the following year.
Bond, who lives in Potomac, Maryland, is scheduled to appear in Manhattan federal court on Thursday.
The indictment alleges that Salame, identified only as CC-1, conspired with Bond to commit the crimes, saying that Salame arranged the payment from FTX to Bond. She then allegedly used “almost entirely” all of that money “to fund her campaign illegally,” the indictment says.”
Salame between June and August 2022 allegedly wired hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bond’s personal bank account, which she then also put toward illegally funding her campaign, according to the indictment.
Salame was not a cooperating witness in last year’s criminal trial of his former boss at FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, who was sentenced in March to 25 years in prison for fraud and conspiracy.
The charges against Salame stemmed from his involvement in a multimillion-dollar campaign finance scheme during his tenure at FTX. Salame is due to begin serving a 7-and-a-half-year prison sentence on Oct. 13. Salame also was ordered to pay more than $6 million in forfeiture and more than $5 million in restitution.
Williams separately wrote to the overseeing judge in the case on Wednesday to ask that the court “reject Ryan Salame’s shameless and self-serving attempt to renege on his guilty plea in the aftermath of his sentencing.”
Judge Lewis Kaplan has set a date of Sept. 12 to hear arguments from both sides on whether to toss out the deal Salame struck with the government.
In June, Bond announced the launch of Digital Future, a think tank “dedicated to promoting the development of the next generation of the financial services industry,” according to a press release at the time.
— CNBC’s Dan Mangan contributed to this report.
WATCH: Former FTX investor weighs in on SBF sentencing
