Crypto
Former FTX executive Salame sentenced to over 7 years in prison
Another former executive of FTX has been jailed over his part in the cryptocurrency giant’s implosion in late 2022.
Ryan Salame, who was the co-CEO of FTX’s Bahamian subsidiary, was sentenced to 90 months in prison, US federal prosecutors said.
Salame – who was a top lieutenant to Sam Bankman-Fried, the bankrupt crypto exchange’s founder – pleaded guilty in September last year to violating political campaign finance laws and operating an illegal money-transmitting business.
Earlier this year, Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for stealing $8bn (£6.3bn) from FTX customers.
“Salame’s involvement in two serious federal crimes undermined public trust in American elections and the integrity of the financial system,” Damian Williams, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York said in a statement.
A jury found Salame guilty in November last year on seven fraud and conspiracy counts stemming from FTX’s failure. Prosecutors have called it one of the biggest financial frauds in US history.
Salame’s sentence was longer than the five to seven years that prosecutors sought.
In addition to the prison term, he was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay more than $6m in forfeiture and more than $5m in restitution.
Salame was one of four former top executives from Bankman-Fried’s companies to plead guilty to charges, along with former Alameda chief executive officer Caroline Ellison, former FTX technology chief Gary Wang and former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh.
FTX was one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges before its demise, turning Bankman-Fried into a business celebrity and attracting millions of customers who used the platform to buy and trade cryptocurrency.
Rumours of financial trouble sparked a run on deposits in 2022, precipitating the firm’s implosion and exposing Bankman-Fried’s crimes.
He was convicted by a New York jury last year on charges including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, after a trial that detailed how he had used customers money to buy property, make political donations and put toward other investments.
Dec. 18 (UPI) — North Korea topped its own world record for cryptocurrency theft with a $2.02 billion haul in 2025, which accounted for about 60% of the world’s $3.4 billion in crypto thefts.
North Korea’s stolen crypto this year totaled $720 million and is 51% more than North Korea’s then-record $1.3 billion take in 2024. It raises to $6.75 billion its total in cryptocurrency thefts in recent years, according to a report released on Thursday by blockchain data provider Chainalysis.
Much of this year’s stolen cryptocurrency occurred when hackers working for North Korea’s hacking team in February pilfered some $1.5 billion worth of mostly ethereum cryptocurrency from Dubai-based exchange Bybit, NBC News reported.
The $1.5 billion Bybit theft set a world record for the most stolen in a single incident.
The North Korean hackers operate from the relative safety of a nation that mostly is closed to the outside world.
“It’s very difficult to stop, because there’s an asymmetry where they’re in general so cut off from the world and such a rogue state,” Matt Pearl, Center for Strategic and International Studies’ director of its Strategic Technologies Program, told NBC News.
North Korean hackers managed to steal more cryptocurrency this year despite carrying out fewer attacks, often with the help of IT workers within cryptocurrency services providers or through the use of impersonation tactics that target crypto executives, Chainalysis reported.
Once the cryptocurrencies are stolen online, North Korea’s hackers prefer to launder the proceeds through money laundering services that use the Chinese language, according to Chainalysis.
They also use bridge services and mixing protocols and take about 45 days to launder their stolen cryptocurrency after a particular theft.
A similar report in October by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said North Korean hackers conducted more than 30 hacking attacks to steal its record $2.02 billion in crypto with three months left in the year.
In addition to the Bybit theft, North Korean hackers also are blamed for stealing $14 million from nine accounts on the WOO X crypto exchange in July and $1.2 million from the blockchain funding site Seedify in September, among many other thefts.
About 40% of the proceeds from the cryptocurrency thefts are used to fund North Korea’s nuclear arms and other weapons development efforts.
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