Ryan Salame Challenges Guilty Plea, Citing Broken Promise

According to Ryan Salame, a former executive of FTX, the government has broken its promise to cease its investigation into his partner.

In a criminal case involving campaign finance and money-transmitting offences, Ryan Salame, a former top executive at FTX, is attempting to revoke his guilty plea on the grounds that prosecutors broke their promise not to look into his fiancée.

Ryan Salame requested a post-conviction remedy about his plea agreement in a petition for a “writ of coram nobis,” a legal order that permits a court to rectify its initial verdict, on August 21.

In September 2023, the ex-FTX executive pleaded guilty to two felonies.

He claims that during the plea talks, the government made hints that if Salame entered a guilty plea, it would drop its investigation against Michelle Bond, his partner, for campaign financing violations.

Ryan Salame maintains that he entered a guilty plea based on this guarantee, but the government has started looking into Bond again.

He contends that by dropping all charges against his partner or enabling him to rescind his guilty plea, the government should be held accountable for its actions.

In addition, the ex-CEO contended that the prosecutor’s use of a third party as leverage to extract a plea from him was “improper” and “coercive” and that his plea ought to be rejected for those reasons. The document stated:

“If the Government is not held to its assurances, the Court should nonetheless grant post-conviction relief because the assurances made during the plea negotiations were unlawfully coercive, and the entire plea agreement and conviction must be vacated.”

Salame requests that Bond’s charges be dropped, that his conviction be overturned, or, at the very least, that a hearing or discovery be held about these matters.

Ryan Salame remarked, “I’m pretty nervous about this because I know the most powerful body in the world is going to come at me and my loved ones again,” in a post on X on August 22.

He continued in a later tweet, saying:

“The government responded, asking if my proposal was self-serving. In other words, if I consented, lock me up and keep your word as you know you made it.

Regarding donations made to Michelle Bond’s 2022 campaign for the Republican primary in New York’s first congressional district, federal prosecutors looked into her in 2023.

As reported by the WSJ, the investigators closely examined the money Salame contributed to Bond and the loans she made for her campaign.

In May, the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets was found guilty of conspiring to operate an unauthorized money-transmitting firm, make illegal political contributions, and deceive the Federal Election Commission. The conviction carried a 7.5-year prison sentence.

In addition to being ordered to pay more than $5 million in restitution and more than $6 million in forfeiture, he is scheduled to serve his sentence on October 13.