Former Ripple Executive Charged in Illegal Campaign Funding Case

Michelle Bond, a former Ripple executive, faces charges from the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly participating in illegal campaign contributions.

Bond and her partner, Ryan Salame, a former executive at FTX, are accused of improperly financing Bond’s 2022 congressional campaign for New York’s first district. Salame is said to have arranged a $400,000 payment from FTX to support Bond’s unsuccessful campaign, which ended in the primary elections.

Bond had been advised by a political consulting firm to fund her campaign personally, but she reportedly received $400,000 from FTX as part of a “consulting agreement” without providing any actual services.

Salame, who was a close associate of the disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, was sentenced to seven years in prison earlier this year. Bankman-Fried himself is serving a 25-year sentence following his conviction for orchestrating a billion-dollar fraud last November.

Salame has recently requested a judge to block Bond’s indictment or overturn his own conviction. Bond, who joined Ripple as the global head of government relations in 2019, left the company the following year to become the CEO of the Association for Digital Asset Markets (ADAM).