Despite Ryan Salame pleading guilty to conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter, you wouldn’t be able to tell from his presence on X (formerly Twitter).
The former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets is begging to be interviewed, providing political commentary, stating he’s ready to release a memoir, and denying much of his role at FTX and Alameda (despite his guilty plea).
Salame insists that there’s much more to the FTX and Alameda sagas, but hasn’t clarified what new information he has to provide and no one has publicly stated that they’ll be interviewing him. Nor has any publisher offered to publish his memoirs. So why has Salame returned to X and why is he talking so much?
It’s impossible to know what’s going on in the mind of Salame, but it’s obvious that he’s desperately seeking attention and is completely unrepentant for the crimes he committed and the individuals he harmed with his actions. It’s also worth noting that Salame was sentenced to 90 months in federal prison, his one intelligent move being that he didn’t open his enormous mouth before his sentence was decided.
Read more: ‘Soak my Deck’ captain Sam Trabucco sails in for Ryan Salame
First Step Act
Most nonviolent, first-time federal offenders are now extended an offer of early release through a Donald Trump-passed law called the First Step Act. The act allows criminals to take off as much as half of their sentence so they can be released into a halfway house or the home of a relative. This means that if Salame changes his attitude and behavior and instead chooses to act like a decent human being while behind bars, his 90-month sentence will be reduced to 45 months.
It’s important that everyone remember what Salame is guilty of and why he’s going to be spending years in prison.
Salame helped name the FTX-related company North Dimension so that it obscured the ultimate beneficial owner, he lied to a bank so that customer funds could be sent to the account he opened, he falsely claimed he wasn’t running a money transmitter, and he directed others to move customer funds into and out of bank accounts. Put simply, he helped steal from hundreds of thousands of people.
And none of that even touches on the real reason he’s going to be spending so much time behind bars: his insane straw donations to numerous politicians.
Salame ‘conspired with [SBF] to make [political] contributions [under his name]’ and a ‘private message to a confidant’ explained that the ‘bipartisan donations would be to weed out anti crypto dems for pro-crypto dems and anti-crypto repubs for pro-crypto repubs, and that donations would likely be routed through Salame ‘to weed out that republican side.’
Salame knew he was breaking the law, he knew that he was helping FTX and Alameda executives move money in illegal ways, and he knew that customer funds were moving through a supposed corporate account.
Now, he’s desperate to have you believe his side of the story but it’s important to remember that, like his co-workers and friends at the top tier of the FTX criminal syndicate, Salame is a liar and has no reason to share the truth with you or anyone else.