Former FTX executive Ryan Salame has a new LinkedIn job title.
Salame trolled his social media followers on Thursday after District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan shot down a request to delay the start of his incarceration until December.
The former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets reported to prison on Friday, but not before posting on LinkedIn that he was “happy to share” he was starting a new position as “Inmate at FCI Cumberland.” Salame even added “cleaning” and “whittling” to his LinkedIn skillset, and he took to X to mourn his soon-to-be-broken Wordle streak.
Salame’s LinkedIn profile has been deleted since but images of his updates are circulating on the social media platform X.
The former executive pled guilty last year to conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and defraud the Federal Election Commission, as well as conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business.
In May, Kaplan sentenced Salame to 7.5 years behind bars, but a dust-up over the indictment of the mother of his child, Michelle Bond, complicated the start of his prison term.
In a petition to the court in August, Salame claimed he cut a deal with the government and pled guilty to prevent further investigation into Bond, a former Congressional candidate.
A few days later, Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced charges against Bond over alleged campaign finance violations related to her unsuccessful run for Congress in 2022.
Williams said in an indictment that Salame organized a sham $400,000 payment to Bond from FTX, which Bond allegedly used to fund her campaign.
Salame’s lawyers claimed the government used the former CEO’s negotiations to threaten Bond and induce Salame into pleading guilty. Salame asked the court first to dismiss Bond’s indictment, but if that didn’t happen, to dismiss his own conviction and guilty plea.
The prosecution shot back, however, calling Salame’s accusation “demonstrably false” in a response.
Salame’s lawyers later filed to withdraw the former FTX executive’s petition so Bond could bring up the issue in her case. Judge Kaplan, however, then accused the embattled former FTX executive of providing false testimony during his guilty plea in 2023.
“You are asking me to let stand a conviction and sentence that I now know is based on false testimony before me in the plea allocution… And that might be a big problem.”
FTX imploded and filed for bankruptcy in November 2022 amid accusations that CEO Sam Bankman-Fried mishandled the exchange’s funds by loaning out billions of dollars worth of customer deposits to Alameda Research, the firm’s trading arm.
The exchange’s multi-billion dollar collapse led to a sharp downtick in crypto prices, and US federal authorities arrested Bankman-Fried the following month.
In March, Judge Kaplan sentenced Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison and three years of supervised release. He also ordered the 32-year-old to pay $11 billion in forfeiture. Bankman-Fried is appealing his conviction and sentence.
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