Former FTX CEO starts prison sentence with LinkedIn post about ‘new position’

• Former FTX director Ryan Salame will go to prison on Friday.
• He took to LinkedIn on Wednesday to share his update.

Former FTX director Ryan Salame prepared to begin his seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence with a final Very Online post.

Salame, 31, a member of Sam Bankman-Fried’s inner circle, gave a life update on LinkedIn two days before he was scheduled to report to a federal correctional facility in Cumberland, Maryland.

“I am happy to share that I am starting a new position as an inmate at FCI Cumberland,” Salame posted on Wednesday.

In May, a federal judge sentenced Salame to 7.5 years in prison on fraud and campaign finance charges related to the 2022 collapse of the Bankman-Fried crypto exchange.

Prosecutors accused Salame of conspiring with Bankman-Fried to defraud FTX investors and customers, and of making hundreds of illegal donations to political campaigns.

Salame was one of four top FTX executives who pleaded guilty after the company went bankrupt. Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research; Gary Wang, former technology chief of FTX; and Nishad Singh, former technical chief of the FTX, also agreed to cooperate with federal investigators.

Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March.

Salame started at Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research before becoming co-CEO of FTX’s Bahamian affiliate in 2021.

In the months leading up to the start of his prison sentence, Salame posted regularly despite the pain, taking to the internet to share hundreds of posts on X.

Among Salame’s pre-prison musings, he shared his support for former President Donald Trump after the Republican candidate spoke at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville. He also complains that the legal system is unfair.

Salame’s prison start date was postponed several times after a dog bit him.

Last month, he tried to withdraw his guilty plea, saying prosecutors broke a promise to him when they charged Michelle Bond, a cryptocurrency advocate and Salame’s romantic partner, earlier this year. Prosecutors have strongly denied the allegation.

Salame later tried to withdraw, but instead faced a 30-minute court hearing from U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan.