FTX whistleblower Caroline Ellison set for early release next month

https://invezz.com/news/2025/12/26/ftx-whistleblower-caroline-ellison-set-for-early-release-next-month/

20•jxmorris12•2h ago

Comments

tptacek•1h ago

She was a model cooperator and was sentenced only to 2 years, so this isn't a surprising outcome.

skullone•1h ago

But it shows that there's really no penalties for the rich to commit billions in fraud

amanaplanacanal•1h ago

Not as long as you are willing to roll on the other guy. This has always been the way.

ralph84•1h ago

It's more about who you defrauded. Bernie Madoff died in prison because he defrauded other rich people.

mikkupikku•1h ago

Bankman-Fried is doing 25 years in prison. That's the average prison sentence for murder. The message being sent is that you should turn on your partners in crime now and save yourself a lot of suffering in the long run.

jahnu•1h ago

I think people have no handle on what years and decades of life lost to prison means. The numbers are just abstract to them.

Rebelgecko•1h ago

As long as they have someone "worse" to snitch on

JumpCrisscross•1h ago

> it shows that there's really no penalties for the rich to commit billions in fraud

She’s a felon, banned “from holding executive roles in public or crypto companies,” penniless and probably fighting lawsuits for the rest of her life.

rasz•1h ago

But she was never a whistleblower. Whistleblower is someone who goes to feds, not someone forced in court to cooperate.

tptacek•1h ago

No, of course not; she was a felon, and was convicted of felonies and sentenced to federal prison.

michaelt•1h ago

Once again proving that stealing $20 carries a longer sentence than white collar criminals stealing $200,000,000.

tptacek•1h ago

It in fact does not.

allyouseed•43m ago

It in fact does, but this fact appears outside your sphere of interest in defending.

> suspected that Floyd had used a counterfeit $20 bill

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd#Murder

tptacek•43m ago

Floyd was never charged, let alone convicted, for stealing $20, and we're talking about federal crimes here.

allyouseed•40m ago

Polish that turd all you want.

Why you want to remains a mystery to me.

JumpCrisscross•59m ago

> proving that stealing $20 carries a longer sentence than white collar criminals stealing $200,000,000

Who has been prosecuted for stealing $20?

chollida1•1h ago

> She has agreed to a 10-year ban from holding executive roles in public or crypto companies.

Judging by how Alemeda research was provided with as much money as they wanted with zero interest rate attached and she still ran the company into the ground, I don't think the ban will hurt her too much.

This really goes to show that most hedge funds are successful because of the infrastructure built around them rather than the people.

You need both to be successful, but good systems and infrastructure trump good people most of the time. RenTech is the best example of this.

No one is going to trust her to run a Baskin Robbins, much less put her in a role with any responsibility now.

kirubakaran•1h ago

> No one is going to trust her to ...

I wish I had your optimism:

> Adam Neumann’s Flow raises over $100M at $2.5B valuation Backed by a16z, the ex-WeWork CEO's real estate platform targets global expansion. (2025)

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/h1uevrw1xe

JumpCrisscross•1h ago

I feel like it’s still debatable whether Neumann committed fraud or stupidity. Bankman-Fried, on the other hand, cooked the books.

dheera•1h ago

> She has agreed to a 10-year ban from holding executive roles in public or crypto companies.

So you can hold an executive role in a wholly owned private subsidiary of a public company, or hold a role in a Cayman Island company instead of a US company and have the Cayman entity buy the US entity. Rules like this don't actually do anything.

daft_pink•32m ago

I feel like in Crypto world, they value how high you were able to get the plane flying and don’t care if you crashed and burned in the end.

glerk•1h ago

> whistleblower

This is… an interesting spin.

Aurornis•1h ago

I’ve never seen invezz.com before, but this whole article feels oddly favorable to Caroline Ellison

fruitworks•1h ago

the pic they use also seems AI generated

mingus88•1h ago

Yeah, cooperative testimony after the fact does not a whistleblower make

> She has agreed to a 10-year ban from holding executive roles in public or crypto companies.

Yeah, I don’t think this will be hard for her. Anyone involved in FTX is radioactive. Whoever negotiated this for her as a concession is brilliant.

whycome•1h ago

Whistleblower?

PunchyHamster•1h ago

even her image in article is fake

zoklet-enjoyer•1h ago

>FTX fraudster Caroline Ellison set for early release next month

Fixed it

SilverElfin•1h ago

I don’t see her as any less guilty than Sam. If I recall, she directly was involved in the movement of people’s funds into Alameda - that was not something she got tricked into by some separate criminal mastermind. That’s her. Even if she cooperated, she should be serving 10+ years. Otherwise what’s the deterrent when you can mostly get away with large white collar crimes.

While we’re at it, Musk should also face charges for related fraudulent claims about self driving, battery tech that went nowhere, robotaxis, and other things. But he likely won’t. In general, these crimes are treated far too leniently for the rich and connected.

bragr•1h ago

The counter argument is if you don't incentivize flipping enough, it is the prisoners' dilemma: the option of everyone keeping their mouth shut and potentially going free is too attractive compared to flipping.

runjake•1h ago

The image header appears to be an AI-generated and certainly doesn't look like Ellison, despite the image's name.

It doesn't bode well for the rest of the article.

pants2•1h ago

Yep, aside from the fact that photography isn't allowed in US Federal Court, the most obvious sign is that she and the microphone are facing away from the judge - the positioning makes no sense.

That's the classic AI photo issue where "man looking at the moon" is a man looking at the camera with the moon behind him.

mingus88•59m ago

Could be, but I’m sure the past few years have aged her pretty severely. She’s 31 now and the later ones are city miles.

constantcrying•1h ago

It is just so insane that the web is just full of 100% AI generated slop.

The title image is AI and presumably the text is AI generated, this appears to be true for everything on that website. Just 100%, everything AI generated, likely zero human oversight and fully automated.

And it even has auto translation which turns the whole page into literal nonsense, but surely looks good for SEO.

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FTX whistleblower Caroline Ellison set for early release next month

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