Caroline Ellison Leaves US Custody After 14 Months

Caroline Ellison is out of federal custody, roughly a year after she helped prosecutors take down Sam Bankman-Fried. Federal prison officials confirmed the 32-year-old former head of Alameda Research—FTX's sister trading firm and a key player in its collapse—was released Wednesday from "community confinement," meaning she is no longer in a halfway house or on home confinement, Business Insider reports. Ellison pleaded guilty to conspiring with FTX founder Bankman-Fried in what prosecutors said was an $11 billion fraud that siphoned customer funds through Alameda. She became the government's star witness at his 2023 trial, offering an inside account of how customer money was misused and risk concealed.

Ellison had been moved out of a Connecticut prison in October after serving about 11 months of her two-year sentence; online records had previously projected her release for Feb. 20, but that date was quietly advanced. Bankman-Fried was convicted on seven counts including wire fraud and money laundering and is serving a 25-year sentence at a federal prison in Los Angeles while he appeals. He began lobbying last year for a pardon from President Trump, per the Guardian, but the president told the New York Times this month that he doesn't plan to pardon him.