Furious FTX judge threatens sanctions on former exec Ryan Salame for lying in guilty plea
A furious federal judge on Thursday threatened to slap unspecified sanctions on former FTX executive Ryan Salame for lying to him last year when he pleaded guilty to campaign finance and money transmitting crimes.
Salame at a hearing Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan admitted lying to Judge Lewis Kaplan by saying during his plea hearing that federal prosecutors had not made promises to him to induce his guilty plea.
Salame now claims prosecutors promised him through his then-attorneys that they would drop a criminal probe of his romantic partner Michelle Bond if he pleaded guilty in his case.
"You are asking me to let stand a conviction and sentence that I now know is based on false testimony before me in the plea allocution," Kaplan told Salame on Thursday.
"And that might be a big problem," the judge told Salame, whom he previously sentenced to 7½ years in prison, several months more than the top end of what prosecutors had requested.
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