When asked why he had conspired to make unlawful political contributions and to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business if, as he stated in his plea agreement, he knew these acts were illegal, Salame suggested that the legal process creates a result “not always tethered to actual factual things that occur in reality.”
One of Salame’s most significant claims was that the prosecutors lied to his lawyers. “During negotiations, they had made a strong inducement and statement that if I pled guilty, they would not look into my wife and the mother of my child for any campaign finance violations.” His then-partner, now-wife, Michelle Bond, was indicted in August for conspiring to cause and causing unlawful campaign contributions related to her unsuccessful Congressional campaign.
Guilty Plea Not ‘Tethered to Actual Factual Things’
When asked why he had engaged in the unlawful political donations if, as he stated in his plea, he knew they were crimes, he said he pleaded guilty because prosecutors made false promises to his lawyers about Bond’s case to induce the guilty plea. (More on that later.)
He also disputed prosecutors’ claim that the political donations he made as a straw donor for Bankman-Fried were technically booked as “loans” to him, but he understood they didn’t need to be paid back. When asked why he didn’t fight back, Salame said that doing so would be difficult considering that Nishad Singh, the former director of engineering at FTX, had already pleaded guilty to the same campaign fraud charge, even if Salame actually did think they were loans.
Read more: Former FTX Exec Ryan Salame Pleads Guilty to Criminal Charges
“When you go through this process and decide whether to plead guilty or not, what really occurred and what you lived and experienced matter a lot less than, am I going to spend the next zero to 10 years in prison or am I going to spend the next zero to 50 years in prison? And so the prosecution makes it out that if we don’t reach a plea agreement, we’re going to send you to jail for the rest of your life for as long as humanly possible,” he said.
Caroline Ellison: As Guilty as SBF?
In addition to questioning the circumstances of his plea, Salame leveled accusations at his former colleagues, particularly Ellison and Singh. Explaining why he said Ellison was “at least equally guilty” as SBF, he says, “she has a whole section of her diary. It even came out where she admits to lying to Sam or trying to hide her failures and what was going wrong at Alameda.”
Read more: ‘More Willing to Lie and Steal’: Caroline Ellison’s Time at FTX and Alameda
When Shin pointed out that the performance of Alameda should not have had any bearing on whether FTX customer deposits were safely being kept for customers, Salame responded, ”It’s a little relevant,” and pointed to the amounts of money that Alameda made in 2019 to 2021. “To go from this heaping pile of money to now we need to steal or misappropriate $8 billion of customer funds in the matter of a year is unfathomable,” he said, referring to the year 2022.
Shin reminded him that that would not be surprising in 2022. (That year, the crypto markets crashed from over $2.2 trillion in January to less than $800 billion by mid-November, and the industry saw numerous collapses, including Terra/Luna, Three Arrows Capital, Celsius, Voyager, Genesis, and FTX itself.)
Learn more: Collapses, Bankruptcies, and Fraud: How 2022 Became the Year of Crypto Carnage
As for Singh, he said, “The idea that Nishad who was worth $1 [billion] to $1.5 billion thought of himself as a straw donor for Sam…I know that’s not how he thought about it. …him describing in that way didn’t come from his lived experiences. It came from him saying that to save himself and probably to say what the prosecution wanted him to say.”
When pressed on how Salame could say he knew Caroline was as guilty as SBF or that Nishad lied even if he didn’t know about the fraud until it became public, he said, “I do know who Caroline was as a person. I do know who Sam was as a person. And so that’s what I’m willing to comment on. I do know how the banking structure worked, how it was advertised, how it was put in the terms of service, how we talked about it. And so those things that I do factually know about, I’m happy to comment on those and message those. And both of those statements that I know Caroline lied, and I know Nishad lied, are factually true.”
Ellison received a 2-year sentence, while Bankman-Fried got 25 years; Singh is yet to be sentenced.
Read more: How Sam Bankman-Fried’s Sentencing Went Down: A Timeline of Events
Salame also pushed back on the idea that Bankman-Fried coerced Ellison, calling it “impossible” based on Bankman-Fried’s personality, which he described as without the emotional capability to manipulate Ellison, suggesting that her portrayal of their relationship in court was exaggerated. Salame went further, dismissing the idea that Bankman-Fried held that kind of power over anyone at FTX or Alameda.
His Claims the Prosecutors Lied
Salame also asserted that the prosecutors lied to the lawyers he and Bond share by promising to not pursue charges against her. “So that immediately prevented me from considering any other options. I was very close to going to trial on the charges,” he said
When pressed by Shin on the fact that the prosecutors had shown evidence of email communications recapping a conversation in which they had informed Salame’s and Bond’s lawyers that his guilty plea would have no bearing on her case, Salame said, “I have substantial evidence that they made this inducement. My lawyers told me it was the strongest inducement they’d heard in their 20-plus years as prosecutors or on the defense side.’”
He said more information would come out in the future and that he couldn’t comment on Bond’s case now since it is ongoing. “But I will tell you that it was advertised to me as the strongest inducement my lawyers had basically ever heard,” he said. “And these are expensive lawyers. These are very expensive lawyers. These are lawyers that were former prosecutors.”
