In a high-profile case involving campaign finance and money-transfer crimes, Ryan Salame is fighting his guilty plea. He was a key executive at the now-defunct bitcoin exchange FTX. Salame says that federal officials broke the deal they made when they said they would not look into his partner, Michelle Bond, if he agreed to plead guilty.
In September 2023, federal officials charged Salame with two felonies. He now says that he made this choice under fake pretenses. Salame says that while they were negotiating a plea deal, officials told him that they would stop looking into Bond’s campaign finance actions if he helped them. He does say, however, that the government has since started looking into Bond again, which contradicts what they said earlier.
Salame’s lawyers have asked for a “writ of coram nobis,” which is a way for the law to fix a wrong decision. They are asking the court to either throw out Salame’s plea deal or stick to the original rules by not charging Bond. Salame claims that the government forced Bond to plead guilty by threatening to investigate him further.
In his filing, he says that the government’s actions were unfairly dishonest and that the whole plea deal should not be valid. Salame will start his 7.5-year jail term on October 13. He also has to give back more than $5 million and forfeit more than $6 million. Initially, FTX charged him with a significant campaign finance scheme involving millions of dollars. This led to his plea deal.
The case is part of a larger legal story involving FTX. Other important people, like founder Sam Bankman-Fried, have faced serious legal consequences. Salame’s present move shows that there are still disagreements about plea deals and how prosecutors should handle high-stakes financial crime cases.
