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Ex-FTX Executive’s Girlfriend Faces Campaign Finance Charges
(Bloomberg) -- Former FTX executive Ryan Salame’s domestic partner was charged with campaign finance violations Thursday, a day after Salame asked a judge to vacate his conviction or block her indictment.
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The indictment against Michelle Bond, the mother of Salame’s eight-month-old child, was unsealed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan alleging she accepted unlawful contributions in connection with her unsuccessful run for Congress in 2022.
On Wednesday, Salame said in a filing in his case that prosecutors had reneged on a deal to drop any investigation of Bond if he agreed to plead guilty. The government labeled Salame’s claims false and self-serving.
The latest indictment comes months after FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for overseeing the multibillion-dollar fraud that preceded the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse. The new charges illustrate the reach of the government’s continuing investigation.
According to the indictment, Bond, 45, of Potomac, Maryland, launched a campaign to represent New York’s 1st Congressional District in May 2022. Prosecutors say that Salame, who was identified in court documents as a high-level executive at “a now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange,” arranged for a “sham consulting agreement” with FTX that paid her $400,000.
The government alleges that Bond then used the money to illegally fund her campaign, and that Salame wired hundreds of thousands of dollars more to her personal bank account that she also used to finance her run for Congress. The pair discussed how Salame would pay the expenses for her campaign, prosecutors said.
Bond, the chief executive officer of the Digital Future think tank, launched a project in July to educate and register US voters in key swing states to gain support for pro-cryptocurrency candidates.
Bond’s lawyers declined to comment on the indictment. Digital Future didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
She appeared in court in Manhattan on Thursday afternoon and was released on a $1 million personal recognizance bond. Her lawyers, Jason Linder and Gina Parlovecchio, had no comment as she left court, accompanied by Salame.
In April 2023, the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched the Maryland home that Bond shared with Salame. He pleaded guilty in September and was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison for his role in illegal activities at the cryptocurrency platform before it collapsed.
The case is US v. Bond, 24-cr-494, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
(Updates with court appearance in eighth paragraph. A previous version of the story was corrected to reflect the age of the couple’s child.)
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