Ryan Salame requests self-surrender date be pushed to Dec. 7

Former FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame, scheduled to report to a federal correctional institution for a seven-and-a-half-year sentence, asked a judge to delay his self-surrender date by roughly two months.

In an Oct. 9 filing in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Salame’s lawyers requested he be allowed to serve his sentence starting on Dec. 7 rather than Oct. 11. Judge Lewis Kaplan granted a continuance in July after Salame reported being “mauled” by a German Shepherd on June 29.

The medical information related to Salame’s request to push back his self-surrender date was redacted but included a statement from a Virginia physician. According to the filing, the former FTX executive required “continuing medical treatment” before reporting to prison.

Salame pleaded guilty to conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and defraud the Federal Election Commission in September 2023, roughly a year after FTX’s collapse. He was the second individual named in the same indictment as Sam Bankman-Fried to receive prison time after the former FTX CEO’s conviction. Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, sentenced after Bankman-Fried and Salame, received two years.

‘Excited’ about prison?

After Judge Kaplan sentenced Salame to 90 months in prison in May 2024, Salame returned to his X account, regularly posting about US politics and making claims about his role in FTX’s downfall. He suggested that prison would be an “exciting” experience, and he was “honestly not worried” about going.

The Oct. 9 filing did not mention Salame’s partner, Michelle Bond, with whom he has a child. In August, prosecutors indicted Bond in a separate case, in which she faces multiple charges related to campaign finance violations. She pleaded not guilty and was free on bail at the time of publication.

Related: Judge questions if ex-FTX exec perjured himself in guilty plea

It’s unclear whether Judge Kaplan will respond to the motion requesting a delay before Salame is scheduled to report to prison. Reports from the courtroom during a Sept. 12 hearing suggested that the judge was frustrated with the former FTX executive’s actions — seeking to vacate his guilty plea in response to Bond’s indictment and then dropping the petition.

Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, the final FTX executives named in the initial indictment as Bankman-Fried, Ellison, and Salame, are scheduled to appear for sentencing hearings on Oct. 30 and Nov. 20, respectively. They both potentially face years in prison.

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