Tearful Caroline Ellison gets 2 years in prison over her role in FTX fraud

NEW YORK (AP) — Caroline Ellison, a former top executive in Sam Bankman-Fried ’s fallen FTX cryptocurrency empire, was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday after she apologized to everyone hurt by a fraud that stole billions of dollars from investors, lenders and customers.

Ellison, 29, could have faced a much tougher sentence, but both the judge and prosecutors said she deserved credit for talking extensively with federal investigators, pleading guilty and ultimately testifying against Bankman-Fried for three days at his trial last November.

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said Ellison's cooperation was “very, very substantial” and “remarkable.”

But he said a prison sentence was necessary because she had participated in what might be the “greatest financial fraud ever perpetrated in this country and probably anywhere else” or at least close to it.

Ellison was ordered to report to prison Nov. 7.

FTX was one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, known for its Superbowl TV ad and its extensive lobbying campaign in Washington, before it collapsed in 2022.

U.S. prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried and other top executives of looting customer accounts on the exchange to make risky investments, make millions of dollars of illegal political donations, bribe Chinese officials and buy luxury real estate in the Caribbean.

Ellison was chief executive at Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency hedge fund controlled by Bankman-Fried.

“I’m deeply ashamed with what I’ve done,” she said at the sentencing hearing, fighting through tears to say she was “so so sorry” to everyone she had harmed directly or indirectly.

She did not speak as she left Manhattan federal court, surrounded by lawyers.

In court Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon called for leniency, saying Ellison's testimony was “devastating and powerful proof” against Bankman-Fried, 32, who was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Attorney Anjan Sahni asked the judge to spare his client from prison, citing “unusual circumstances,” including her off-and-on romantic relationship with Bankman-Fried and the damage caused when her “whole professional and personal life came to revolve” around him.

Judge Kaplan agreed that Ellison's willingness to work with prosecutors was extraordinary.

“I’ve seen a lot of cooperators in 30 years here. I’ve never seen one quite like Ms. Ellison,” he said.

But he said that in such a serious case, he could not let cooperation be a get-out-of-jail-free card, even when it was clear that Bankman-Fried had become “your kryptonite.”

Bankman-Fried also testified at the trial, portraying himself to the jury as inexperienced and bumbling but not a criminal. He acknowledged making mistakes, but said he didn't defraud anyone and wasn't aware that Alameda Research had amassed billions of dollars in debt.

Sassoon, the prosecutor, described that testimony in court Tuesday as “evasive, even contemptuous.”

As the business began to falter, Ellison divulged the massive fraud to employees who worked for her even before FTX filed for bankruptcy, trial evidence showed.

Ultimately, she also spoke extensively with criminal and civil U.S. investigators.

Sassoon said prosecutors were impressed that Ellison did not “jump into the lifeboat” to escape her crimes but instead spent nearly two years fully cooperating.

Since testifying at Bankman-Fried’s trial, Ellison has engaged in extensive charity work, written a novel and worked with her parents on a math enrichment textbook for advanced high school students, according to her lawyers.

They said she also now has a healthy romantic relationship and has reconnected with high school friends she had lost touch with while she worked for and sometimes dated Bankman-Fried from 2017 until late 2022.

In this courtroom sketch, Judge Lewis Kaplan sentences Caroline Ellison, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, at Manhattan federal court in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)

In this courtroom sketch, Caroline Ellison gives her sentencing statement, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, at Manhattan federal court in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)

FILE - FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves federal court in Manhattan, Feb. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

Former FTX executive Caroline Ellison gets two years in prison over fraud

FILE - Caroline Ellison former CEO of Alameda Research founded by Sam Bankman-Fried goes into a wrong car as she exits the Manhattan federal court after testifying on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)

Former FTX executive Caroline Ellison gets two years in prison over fraud

BONNE TERRE, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man was executed Tuesday for breaking into a woman’s home and killing her, despite calls by her family and the prosecutor’s office that put him on death row to let him serve out the rest of his life in prison.

Marcellus Williams, 55, was convicted in the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, who was repeatedly stabbed during the burglary of her suburban St. Louis home.

Williams’ hopes of having his sentence commuted to life in prison suffered dual setbacks Monday when, almost simultaneously, Republican Gov. Mike Parson denied him clemency and the Missouri Supreme Court declined to grant him a stay of execution. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene Tuesday.

Williams was put to death despite questions his attorneys raised over jury selection at his trial and the handling of evidence in the case. His clemency petition focused heavily on how Gayle’s relatives wanted Williams’ sentence commuted to life without the possibility of parole.

“The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to live,” the petition stated. “Marcellus’ execution is not necessary.”

Last month, Gayle’s relatives gave their blessings to an agreement between the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney’s office and Williams’ attorneys to commute the sentence to life in prison. But acting on an appeal from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s Office, the state Supreme Court nullified the agreement.

Williams was among death row inmates in five states who were scheduled to be put to death in the span of a week — an unusually high number that defies a yearslong decline in the use and support of the death penalty in the U.S. The first was carried out Friday in South Carolina. Texas was also slated to execute a prisoner on Tuesday evening.

Gayle, 42, was a social worker and former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. Prosecutors at Williams’trial said he broke into her home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard the shower running and found a large butcher knife. Gayle was stabbed 43 times when she came downstairs. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.

Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. His girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. She said she later saw the purse and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.

Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the killing and provided details about it.

Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted of felonies and wanted a $10,000 reward. They said that fingerprints, a bloody shoeprint, hair and other evidence at the crime scene didn’t match Williams’.

A crime scene investigator had testified the killer wore gloves.

Tuesday marked the third time Williams had faced execution. He was less than a week away from lethal injection in January 2015 when the state Supreme Court called it off, allowing time for his attorneys to pursue additional DNA testing.

Williams was hours from being executed in August 2017 when then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, granted a stay. Greitens appointed a panel of retired judges to examine the case. But that panel never reached a conclusion.

Questions about DNA evidence also led St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But days before the Aug. 21 hearing, new testing showed that DNA on the knife belonged to members of the prosecutor’s office who handled it without gloves after the original crime lab tests.

Without DNA evidence pointing to any alternative suspect, Midwest Innocence Project attorneys reached a compromise with the prosecutor’s office: Williams would enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole. A no-contest plea isn’t an admission of guilt but is treated as such for the purpose of sentencing.

Judge Bruce Hilton signed off, as did Gayle’s family. But Bailey appealed, and the state Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with an evidentiary hearing, which took place last month.

Hilton ruled on Sept. 12 that the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence would stand, noting that Williams’ arguments all had been previously rejected. That decision was upheld Monday by the state Supreme Court.

Attorneys for Williams, who was Black, also challenged the fairness of his trial, particularly the fact that only one of the 12 jurors was Black. Tricia Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project said the prosecutor in the case, Keith Larner, removed six of seven Black prospective jurors.

Larner testified at the August hearing that he struck one potential Black juror partly because he looked too much like Williams — a statement that Williams’ attorneys asserted showed improper racial bias.

Larner contended that the jury selection process was fair.

Williams was the third Missouri inmate put to death this year and the 100th since the state resumed use of the death penalty in 1989.

AP writer Mark Sherman contributed from Washington. Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.

FILE - This photo provided by the Missouri Department of Corrections shows Marcellus Williams. (Missouri Department of Corrections via AP, file)

Lawyers seek Supreme Court intervention hours before a Missouri inmate's planned execution

FILE - Joseph Amrine, who was exonerated two decades ago after spending years on death row, speaks at a rally to support Missouri death row inmates Marcellus Williams on Aug. 21, 2024, in Clayton, Mo. (AP Photo/Jim Salter, file)

Lawyers seek Supreme Court intervention hours before a Missouri inmate's planned execution