Ex-FTX exec's girlfriend accused of using his money to illegally fuel her political career
REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
- DOJ prosecutors brought charges against Michelle Bond, a failed Republican congressional candidate.
- They allege she illegally used money from her boyfriend, Ryan Salame, to fuel her campaign.
- Salame gave Bond money through an allegedly fake consulting gig with FTX, where he was an executive.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have brought criminal charges against Michelle Bond, a cryptocurrency advocate who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2022.
According to an indictment unsealed Thursday, Bond had a fake consulting agreement with FTX, the notorious cryptocurrency exchange run by Sam Bankman-Fried.
Her boyfriend, Ryan Salame, was an executive at one of FTX's affiliate companies in the Bahamas.
The $400,000 she received — along with gobs of more stolen money from FTX — fueled her congressional campaign, prosecutors say.
Bond then lied about the money in forms submitted to the House Ethics Committee, as well as the Federal Elections Commission, the indictment alleges. She told board members at her job at a trade group seeking to influence crypto policy in Congress that she never actually consulted for FTX, according to the indictment.
"BOND did not perform any services for the Exchange pursuant to the Consulting Agreement," the indictment says.
Bond ran for US Congress as a Republican in New York's first district, on Long Island. She lost the primary election and has since launched a crypto think tank called Digital Future.
Neither Bond nor a spokesperson for Digital Future immediately responded to requests for comment from BI.
Bond and Salame are romantic partners and have a child together, who is about eight months old.
The charges against Bond come one day after she finalized a divorce with her previous partner, according to Salame.
"The love of my life, after a brutal and long and downright aggressive process, is finally divorced!!! ❤️ We're going through hell still but we got this !" Salame posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday night.
Salame was one of four executives at FTX and Alameda Research, a crypto trading firm controlled by Bankman-Fried, who faced criminal charges from federal prosecutors in Manhattan following the dramatic collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange in November 2022.
He — along with executives Gary Wang, Nishad Singh, and Caroline Ellison — pleaded guilty to the charges against him. Wang, Singh, and Ellison all testified at Bankman-Fried's trial late last year, where he was convicted on fraud and money laundering charges and later sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Prosecutors never offered a cooperation agreement to Salame, according to a source familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity because of the ongoing litigation surrounding the case.
Salame was initially meant to serve a 7 ½-year prison sentence on August 29, but it was delayed so that he could receive medical treatment after a dog bit him on his face. On social media, he has grumbled about the unfairness of the legal system.
According to the indictment against Bond, Salame, who is referred to in the document as "CC-1," arranged for the fake $400,000 consulting job with FTX, along with additional funds. In total, Salame and FTX gave Bond over $900,000, according to the indictment — far above the legal limits.
According to prosecutors, Salame even once asked a friend to donate to Bond's campaign, who joked about Salame reimbursing them.
"lol don't type that, that's not allowed," Salame said in a text message included in the indictment.
Salame didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Salame says the Justice Department promised to stop investigating Bond
Just before Bond's indictment was unsealed, on Wednesday night, Salame's lawyers asked US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who sentenced him, to toss out his plea deal.
They alleged that Danielle Sassoon, a Manhattan federal prosecutor involved in the FTX prosecutions, reneged on "implied assurances" that her office would cease investigating Bond — who they also represent.
"A significant contributing factor to my accepting the plea arrangement was the understanding that, if I did so, the government would not pursue the campaign-finance charges against Bond," Salame wrote in a filing filed to court Wednesday. "And I took the government at its word, expecting that the implied commitment would be honored."
In a response Wednesday night, Sassoon called Salame's filings "self-serving" and "demonstrably false."
She wrote that prosecutors had a follow-up meeting with Salame's attorneys where they "spelled out, for the avoidance of any doubt, that a Salame guilty plea would not stop any ongoing investigation into Bond's conduct."
Prosecutors brought four separate criminal counts against Bond related to campaign finance violations, each of which carries a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison.
In a letter to Judge Kaplan earlier this year, pleading for a low sentence for Salame, Bond wrote that he was a "pillar of support" for her, their child together, and her two children from a previous marriage.
"He's been deliberate about preparing our family for the possibility of incarceration by spending as much time with us as he can now, assisting with multiple medical and mental health resources for the kids, and assisting me with getting back on my feet given all the loss experienced as a result of FTX's collapse," Bond wrote.