Caroline Ellison gets 3 months taken off 2-year sentence
Convicted FTX fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried’s former on-again, off-again girlfriend will serve less prison time than her original sentence, according to a report.
Caroline Ellison, who ran Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research cryptocurrency hedge fund, reported to Danbury Federal Correctional Institute in Connecticut on Nov. 7 to begin serving a two-year sentence after she pleaded guilty to wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering linked to the collapse of FTX.
But Federal Bureau of Prisons records indicate that her release date is scheduled for July 20, 2026 — or three months short of two years, according to Business Insider.
The Post has sought comment from Ellison’s lawyer.
In 2018, then-President Donald Trump signed into law the First Step Act, which allows incarcerated individuals to earn time off their sentence for good behavior.
“Every incarcerated individual earns Good Conduct Time (GCT), which is projected on their release date,” a federal prison official told Business Insider.
Those serving time “will be eligible to earn up to 54 days of GCT time for each year of the sentence imposed by the court,” according to the spokesperson.
In accordance with federal law, the Bureau of Prisons “continues to pro-rate the amount of GCT earned for the final year of service of the sentence,” the spokesman said.
Ellison, 30, was sentenced in September after agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors who oversaw the Bankman-Fried case.
During trial, Ellison testified that she and Bankman-Fried used Alameda Research to invest billions of dollars’ worth of customer deposits into risky bets.
Ellison’s attorneys asked US District Judge Lewis Kaplan to not give her any prison time, citing her cooperation.
But Kaplan told Ellison at her sentencing hearing that “for it to be a case this serious, to be a literal get-out-of-jail-free card — I cannot see a way to it.”
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.
“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.
Bankman-Fried, 32, remains jailed at the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn after appealing his conviction.
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