Former FTX co-CEO Ryan Salame has updated his LinkedIn profile with a new role: a prisoner in a federal correctional institute. “I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Inmate at FCI Cumberland!” He said in a post above an animated image celebrating his new position.
Salame’s job history includes time at a bunch of prestigious crypto businesses. He worked the crypto OTC trading desk at Circle, was the head of OTC at Alameda Research (one of the branches of FTX) and eventually became the 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 whittling.
The post was a hit on LinkedIn and has, as of this writing, garnered more than 1,000 comments. It was so popular that it broke containment and spread to other social media sites like X where it’s been reposted too many times to count. We love it when someone who’s been convicted of a crime takes it good-naturedly, especially when those crimes are financial in nature.
Salame was part of the executive leadership team of FTX 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 turned out the company was robbing Peter to pay Paul. Now most of its executives are in jail.
In September of last year, Salame pleaded guilty to using FTX’s cash to donate tens of millions of dollars to political campaigns on both sides of the aisle. The goal was to get 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 transmitting business, which helped FTX grow faster and larger by operating outside of the law,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement about Salame’s sentencing. “Salame’s involvement in two serious federal crimes undermined public trust in American elections and the integrity of the financial system. Today’s sentence underscores the substantial consequences for such offenses.”
Salame is 30 and if he’s in the can for his full sentence, he won’t get to update his LinkedIn profile again 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 forfeiture and more than $5 million in restitution.
Salame is one of the harsher sentences handed down in the wake of the collapse of FTX. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $11 billion. His on-again-off-again girlfriend and head of Alameda Research, Caroline Ellison, was sentenced to two years. Singh and executive Gary Wang are still waiting to hear their fate, which the courts will hand down on October 20 and November 20 respectively.
We’ll have to watch their LinkedIn profiles to see how well they take it.
