Caroline Ellison, the nerdy ex of FTX crypto crook Sam Bankman-Fried who later turned on him, is due to get an early release from federal prison after serving just 15 months of a two-year sentence.
Ellison, 31, got the slap-on-the-wrist sentence after pleading guilty to fraud charges for her role in the multi-billion dollar crypto fraud scandal and agreeing to testify against Bankman-Fried, who was convicted in March 2024 and hit with a 25-year prison term.
Now, Ellison is expected to be freed on Jan. 21, US Bureau of Prisons records show.
She had served as the head of Alameda Research, the hedge fund that Bankman-Fried and other top executives used to make high risk crypto bets.
When those bets soured, prosecutors say, Bankman-Fried used $8 billion in FTX customers’ cash to keep Alameda afloat.
The cash from the hedge fund also went to illegal campaign contributions and funding a lavish lifestyle — which allegedly included drug-fueled “polycule” sex parties inside high-end penthouses and mansions.
While behind bars, Ellison bizarrely wrote a romance “novella” set in the “Edwardian” era of early 20th-century England, her mom, an MIT economics lecturer Sara Fisher Ellison, wrote to the judge.
The novella is “loosely based” on the “imagined amorous exploits” of her sister Kate.
At her sentencing, Ellison told Judge Lewis Kaplan that she was “deeply ashamed.”
Kaplan acknowledged that her testimony has been key in putting Bankman-Fried away.
“While you were gravely culpable in this fraud, there is no doubt that you had remarkable cooperation,” the judge said. “That’s a fundamental distinction between you and Mr. Bankman-Fried.”
Ellison was hit with the two-year sentence in September 2024, but just two months later her date to be released from federal prison was cut back by three months, to July 20, 2026.
Federal records show it has now been cut back even further.
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