Former FTX Director Locked Up on LinkedIn and Federal Prison

Former FTX co-CEO Ryan Salame has updated his LinkedIn profile with a new role: an inmate at a federal correctional facility. “I am excited to share that I am starting a new position as an inmate at FCI Cumberland!” he said in a message above an animated image celebrating his new position.

Salame’s work history includes time at a number of prestigious crypto companies. He worked on the crypto OTC trading desk at Circle, was head of OTC at Alameda Research (one of FTX’s offices), and eventually became co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets. Now he’s added another job to the list: inmate, full-time, at FCI Cumberland. His skills? Cleaning and sharpening.

The post was a hit on LinkedIn and has generated more than 1,000 comments at the time of writing. It was so popular that it broke control and spread to other social media sites like X, where it was reposted too many times to count. We love it when someone convicted of a crime takes it in a good-natured way, especially when those crimes are financial in nature.

Salame was part of FTX’s executive leadership team, where he worked closely with founder Sam Bankman-Fried and chief engineer Nishad Singh. FTX was a crypto success story for a while, but it turns out the company was robbing Peter to pay Paul. Now most of its executives are in prison.

Last September, Salame pleaded guilty to using FTX’s money to donate tens of millions of dollars to political campaigns on both sides of the aisle. The goal was to push politicians to pass crypto-friendly legislation. According to the Justice Department, Salame and FTX made more than $300 million in political contributions and lied about where the money came from.

“Ryan Salame agreed to advance the interests of FTX, Alameda Research and his co-conspirators through an unlawful political influence campaign and through an unlicensed money transmission company, allowing FTX to grow faster and bigger by operating outside the law,” said the American lawyer. Damian Williams said in a statement about Salame’s sentencing. “Salame’s involvement in two serious federal crimes undermined public confidence in U.S. elections and the integrity of the financial system. Today’s sentence underlines the substantial consequences of such crimes.”

Salame is thirty and if he receives his full sentence, he will not be able to update his LinkedIn profile for more than seven years. In addition to the time behind bars, Salame agreed to forfeit $1.5 billion and pay an additional $6 million in forfeiture and more than $5 million in restitution.

Salame is one of the harsher sentences handed down following the collapse of FTX. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $11 billion. His girlfriend and head of Alameda Research, Caroline Ellison, was sentenced to two years. Singh and director Gary Wang are still awaiting their fate, which the courts will pronounce on October 20 and November 20 respectively.

We’ll have to look at their LinkedIn profiles to see how much they like it.