Michelle Bond Charged with Campaign Finance Violations

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Michelle Bond, a former U.S. congressional candidate and the romantic partner of former FTX cryptocurrency exchange executive Ryan Salame, has been charged with violating campaign finance laws, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan stated that Bond, during her unsuccessful 2022 campaign for a New York congressional seat, utilized $400,000 from the cryptocurrency exchange where her partner was an executive to fund her campaign, which violates laws prohibiting corporate contributions.

Although prosecutors did not name Salame or FTX, a court filing on Wednesday indicated that Salame accused prosecutors of breaking an assurance that they would not investigate Bond — who he noted is the mother of his child — if he pleaded guilty.

Salame pleaded guilty last year to contributing tens of millions in unlawful campaign donations to aid causes promoted by his boss, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, and was sentenced in May to 7-1/2 years in prison.

In the Wednesday filing, Salame requested U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to vacate his guilty plea due to the resumption of the investigation into Bond by prosecutors.

Bond, 45, was employed at the Association for Digital Asset Markets, a cryptocurrency trade group, from 2020 to 2022, as per her LinkedIn profile. She lost the 2022 Republican primary for a congressional seat representing part of New York’s Long Island.

She is facing four criminal counts, including causing and receiving an unlawful contribution and causing and receiving a straw contribution.

Bankman-Fried was sentenced in March to 25 years in prison for stealing $8 billion from FTX customers in what prosecutors termed one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history.