Why was Ryan Salame given a sentence longer than prosecutors recommended?

Months after his guilty plea to prosecutors, former FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame learned he would likely be spending more than seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty to two felony charges.

On May 28, Judge Lewis Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York considered sentencing recommendations from Salame’s legal team and prosecutors and ordered the former FTX executive to spend 90 months in prison. The judge’s decision reflected more time behind bars than even prosecutors recommended — up to seven years — and was considerably higher than what Salame’s lawyers requested: 18 months.

Taking to X for the first time since November 2022, Salame said the situation was “going to get interesting quickly” without directly referring to his sentencing and suggested he had no plans to flee the United States as “family [was] more important than anything.” A May 14 court filing stated that Salame had a child with his partner, Michelle Bond, in November 2023.

“Judge Kaplan’s 90-month sentence — above what the federal prosecutors asked for — underscored that the Judge viewed the fraud at FTX, including the multi-million dollar campaign finance fraud scheme in which Salame was directly involved, as extremely serious,” Mark Bini, an attorney at Reed Smith and former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, told Cointelegraph. “While Salame’s counsel sought to argue that his production of documents to the Government showed his cooperation and contrition, it’s clear that Judge Kaplan did not view it that way.”

In the last two months, two other former high-profile cryptocurrency executives have been sentenced to prison. However, judges overseeing the criminal case of Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried — in this case, also Judge Kaplan — and Changpeng “CZ” Zhao sentenced the former CEOs to less time in prison than what authorities had been requesting. Prosecutors recommended up to 50 years in SBF’s case and 36 months for CZ — the judges gave them 25 years and four months, respectively.

Related: Ex-Alameda Research co-CEO calls for ‘fair’ sentencing of Ryan Salame

Other figures connected to FTX and Alameda Research could also be sentenced sometime this year. Former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, former FTX engineering director Nishad Singh and FTX co-founder Gary Wang — all of whom testified at SBF’s criminal trial — pleaded guilty and have been cooperating with prosecutors. It was unclear at the time of publication if they would face prison time.

Unlike the other criminal cases the FTX and Alameda executives face, Salame’s was the only one involving campaign finance law violations in an election year. The political motivation could have influenced Judge Kaplan’s decision to impose additional time in prison. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams even cited Salame’s “unlawful political influence campaign,” which “undermined public trust in American elections.”

Sunil Kavuri, a U.K. national who testified at Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial, suggested on X that Judge Kaplan had considered Salame’s impact on FTX victims during sentencing. Before SBF’s sentencing, prosecutors filed hundreds of statements from people who the collapse of the crypto exchange had financially and personally impacted.

Bankman-Fried is currently in a federal facility in Oklahoma, reportedly as part of a transfer to a California prison. Zhao, sentenced on April 30, has yet to report to a facility in Oregon or Washington.

Magazine: ‘Less flashy’ Mashinsky set for less jail time than SBF: Inner City Press, X Hall of Flame