Salame, SBF’s political fixer, is defiantly on his way to prison – BNN Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) — Ryan Salame, one of Sam Bankman-Fried’s top lieutenants at FTX, becomes on the run as he faces the start of his prison sentence for crimes committed while working at the fraudulent cryptocurrency exchange.

Salame will report Friday to a federal correctional facility in Cumberland, Maryland, to begin a 7 1/2-year sentence for violations of campaign finance law that the judge in the case, Lewis A. Kaplan, called “astonishing.”

But as he counts down the remaining hours of his freedom, the 31-year-old exudes a sense of exasperation at the supposedly harsh treatment, rather than remorse for crimes that Kaplan says threatened the stability of US political life.

Salame pleaded guilty last year to participating in a straw donor program for Bankman-Fried and to circumventing U.S. banking laws. In an interview on Tuesday, he said he had made a plea to protect his wife, crypto lobbyist Michelle Bond.

He encountered a last-minute attempt to backtrack when he accused prosecutors of reneging on a promise to drop an investigation into Bond in exchange for his guilty plea. The US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan has refuted that and labeled Salame’s attempt to return as “shameless”.

Huge donations

The massive political donations to Republicans at the heart of the matter were more about preventing another pandemic than influencing lawmakers’ positions on digital assets, he said. FTX founder Bankman-Fried is widely seen as the mastermind of one of the biggest frauds in U.S. history, but Salame said he considered testifying in his defense and that the former billionaire did not receive a fair trial.

“We never colluded about who to contribute to,” he said. “And Sam never asked me to donate anything.”

Although Salame was not accused of helping Bankman-Fried steal approximately $10 billion from customers, investors and lenders, Kaplan viewed the campaign donation violations as serious enough to merit a longer prison sentence than prosecutors had demanded. “He knew it was illegal, and the whole idea was to hide it from the world,” Kaplan said as he sentenced Salame in May.

Salame was scheduled to surrender to the Federal Bureau of Prisons on August 29, but requested a postponement of the operation in July after he was attacked by a dog.

Hoping for forgiveness

Salame is now pinning his hopes on a pardon on whoever emerges as president in the battle between Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump.

“I would be much more shocked if Harris awarded it based on certain political issues,” said Salame, who contributed $22.6 million to Republicans while at FTX, Federal Election Commission records show . “But I think there’s a good thing either way. If anyone pays attention for half a second, a lot of this doesn’t make any sense.”

Like many convicted criminals, Salame’s protests on social media and in court suffer from a credibility deficit. He has accused the Justice Department of corruption, tried to prevent Bond – the mother of his child – from being indicted through a niche legal maneuver and has repeatedly questioned the reliability of former colleagues who helped convict Bankman-Fried .

Federal prosecutors have rejected Salame’s claim of an implied agreement to drop the investigation into Bond, saying there was never such a guarantee. Prosecutors argued in a lawsuit in August that there was nothing to stop the U.S. Attorney’s Office from continuing to investigate Bond, which it did. In August, Bond was charged with campaign finance violations related to her failed 2022 run for Congress.

Legal costs

Salame said he paid $6 million in fees to law firm Mayer Brown. “So these are the best of the best lawyers,” he said. “And if they tell me there’s an incentive on the table, who am I to say it’s not true?”

Attorneys for Bond and Salame did not respond to requests for comment.

Salame claims he was not part of Bankman-Fried’s inner circle, despite being the ex-chief executive of FTX’s Bahamas subsidiary. Unlike Nishad Singh, Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang – former executives at FTX or its sister trading firm Alameda Research who pleaded guilty to crimes at the group – Salame did not make a deal to testify for the government at the Bankman-Fried trial. He said he almost testified in Bankman-Fried’s defense.

“Not because I think he’s innocent, but because a lot of the story is just demonstrably untrue,” he claimed. “People who worked at FTX know this, people who worked at Alameda know this.”

Several former FTX and Alameda employees testified at Bankman-Fried’s trial about rampant misconduct at the company, some after admitting to their own crimes and others under immunity. Prosecutors presented a wealth of evidence — coded messages, spreadsheets, emails and personal diary entries — that supported the testimony. The jury deliberated for about five hours before returning a guilty verdict. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Political commitment

Salame said his political interest was sparked by Sam Bankman-Fried’s younger brother, Gabriel, who sold him on the need to advocate for pandemic prevention efforts, rather than a desire to raise FTX’s profile or Influence US crypto policy. With the help of a shrewd political consultant and a personal super PAC that FEC records show he poured $15 million into, he met with lawmakers, he said. They considered him the “crypto guy,” he said, and he received more questions about Bitcoin than biosecurity.

He attended events such as a meeting hosted by the American Opportunity Alliance, a Republican donor network where Salame said he met billionaires Paul Singer and Charles Schwab. Then the wheels came off when FTX derailed and went bankrupt in 2022, ushering in a frigid crypto winter.

The digital asset market rebounded this year, and ironically, cash-rich crypto companies are once again major players in campaign finance through political action committees. They push for friendlier regulations, while critics, who see the sector primarily as a magnet for criminals, are scratching their heads over the sector’s existence.

In a post on LinkedIn on Thursday, Salame wrote that he is “starting a new position as an inmate at FCI Cumberland!” In the interview, he envisioned life after prison, saying he could use his “very good” crypto trading skills or even start a social media platform that would help politicians reach voters. “I’m strangely optimistic,” he said.

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