--- alias: - Caroline Ellison - Caroline Ellison (Alameda Research) born: 1994-11 category: AI & Effective Altruism created: 2026-10-01 location: Boston, Massachusetts (born) relations: - end: 2018-03 fn: 4 role: assistant quantitative trader on the equities desk, after summer internships in 2015 and 2016 start: 2016 type: employed_by with: '[[Jane Street Capital]]' - fn: 4 role: cryptocurrency trader start: 2018-03 type: employed_by with: '[[Alameda Research]]' - end: 2022-11-18 fn: 6 role: co-CEO, then sole CEO from about August or September 2022 type: head_of with: '[[Alameda Research]]' - end: 2022-11-11 fn: 7 role: director, per the FTX debtors' complaint start: 2022-09-06 type: director_of with: '[[Alameda Research]]' - fn: 8 role: director of the Delaware nonprofit whose sole member was Bankman-Fried type: director_of with: '[[FTX Foundation]]' - fn: 1 role: former girlfriend, per the government's sentencing letter type: partner_of with: '[[Sam Bankman-Fried]]' - end: 2025-12-23 fn: 12 role: defendant in SEC v. Ellison, No. 22-cv-10794; consent judgments of 2022 and 2025 start: 2022-12-21 type: subject_of with: '[[Securities and Exchange Commission]]' - fn: 4 role: consent judgment in CFTC v. Bankman-Fried, No. 22-cv-10503 start: 2022-12-23 type: subject_of with: '[[Commodity Futures Trading Commission]]' - fn: 1 role: cooperating witness under a cooperation agreement start: 2022-12-08 type: informant_for with: '[[U.S. Attorney''s Office for the Southern District of New York]]' - end: 2024-09-24 fn: 2 reverse: true role: guilty plea to seven counts; sentenced to 24 months start: 2022-12-19 type: prosecuted with: '[[U.S. Attorney''s Office for the Southern District of New York]]' - fn: 4 reverse: true role: defense counsel type: represented with: '[[WilmerHale]]' summary: Jane Street trader turned Alameda Research chief executive who pleaded guilty in December 2022, testified against Sam Bankman-Fried, forfeited Anthropic shares and was released from federal custody in January 2026. tags: - Person - CarolineEllison - AlamedaResearch - FTX - SamBankmanFried - JaneStreet - EffectiveAltruism - FTXFoundation - Anthropic - CooperatingWitness - Forfeiture updated: 2026-10-01 --- Caroline Ellison (born November 1994 in Boston) was a trader at [Jane Street](/organizations/jane-street-capital/) and then at [Alameda Research](/organizations/alameda-research/), the cryptocurrency trading firm of [Sam Bankman-Fried](/people/sam-bankman-fried/), which she ran as co-chief executive and chief executive until her employment ended on or about November 18, 2022. She pleaded guilty on December 19, 2022 to seven counts in the Southern District of New York under a cooperation agreement, testified for about three days at Bankman-Fried's trial in October 2023,[^1] and was sentenced on September 24, 2024 by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to 24 months in prison (Bureau of Prisons register number 36854-510).[^2] The Federal Bureau of Prisons records her actual release date as January 21, 2026, from the residential reentry management office in New York.[^3] ### Family and education Her counsel's sentencing memorandum, citing the presentence report, states that she was born in Boston to Glenn and Sara Ellison, both professors of economics at the [Massachusetts Institute of Technology](/organizations/massachusetts-institute-of-technology/), and grew up in the Boston suburbs; that she captained her middle and high school math teams and won an award at the 2011 International Olympiad in Linguistics; and that she studied mathematics at [Stanford University](/organizations/stanford-university/), where she was the fifth member of a newly formed [Effective Altruism](/concepts/effective-altruism/) group, came to the movement through online communities devoted to rationalism as she moved away from the Catholic faith of her youth, and started a blog on which she wrote about effective altruism topics. The memorandum states that she adopted the precept of "earning to give," gave first to global health and animal welfare charities, and later devoted much of her giving to artificial intelligence safety; a college friend's letter quoted in it describes her concern that artificial intelligence "would take over the world and cause humanity's extinction."[^4] ### Jane Street According to the memorandum, she applied in her junior year for paid internships in order to earn money to donate, received three offers from financial companies, and in June 2015 moved to New York as a summer trading intern at Jane Street, where she first met Bankman-Fried, then a full-time trader of about a year's standing who was coaching a mock trading exercise; they became acquainted at a Jane Street-sponsored dinner at a Brazilian steakhouse. Her counsel wrote that Jane Street trained interns to maximize the expected value of a trading strategy rather than to focus on potential losses, through mock trading and a culture of constant small wagers, and that she did not recall structuring her thinking around expected value before Jane Street. She arranged a fifth year at Stanford in order to qualify for a second internship in the summer of 2016, was asked within weeks to forgo the master's program, and worked from the fall of 2016 for about a year and a half as an assistant quantitative trader on the equities desk, giving away most of her salary, with a social circle made up mainly of Jane Street employees, Bankman-Fried among them.[^4] ### Alameda Research The memorandum states that in February 2018 Jane Street sent her on a recruiting trip to the Bay Area, that she met Bankman-Fried for coffee in Berkeley, where he described Alameda as having an effective altruism ethos and as largely funded by wealthy people he knew through the movement, and that she began there as a cryptocurrency trader in March 2018, aged 23. Shortly afterward, her counsel wrote, she learned that Alameda had suffered large losses before she arrived; four managers who had pressed Bankman-Fried to disclose the losses to the wealthy investors who had lent Alameda its trading capital told the lenders against his directive, the lenders recalled much of their money, and the four managers left with many other employees. Bankman-Fried later told her he had known of the crisis when he offered her the job.[^4] A 2025 filing of the FTX Recovery Trust states that Bankman-Fried had founded Alameda in November 2017 with Tara MacAulay, the former chief executive of the [Centre for Effective Altruism](/organizations/centre-for-effective-altruism/), and that in April 2018 MacAulay and other employees resigned after he refused their offer to buy him out.[^5] The memorandum describes overnight shifts from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. from the fall of 2018, moves to [Hong Kong](/places/hong-kong/) and then [the Bahamas](/places/bahamas/) at Bankman-Fried's direction, and an "on-again-off-again, sometimes-secret relationship" with him; it states that she received no equity in Alameda and held less than 1 percent of [FTX](/organizations/ftx/).[^4] The government's letter of September 17, 2024, signed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle R. Sassoon, states that Bankman-Fried appointed her and Sam Trabucco co-chief executives of Alameda in the summer of 2021, explaining that he wanted to separate Alameda and FTX "more optically," that her salary did not change, that he retained 90 percent of Alameda, and that she continued to report to him.[^1] The [Securities and Exchange Commission](/organizations/securities-and-exchange-commission/)'s complaint gives her tenure as co-chief executive from about October 2021 to about August 2022, when she became the sole chief executive, and records that she lived in Hong Kong and the Bahamas;[^6] the FTX debtors' complaint against the insiders gives it as August 2021 to September 2022 and states that she was also a director of Alameda from September 6, 2022 until the bankruptcy petition.[^7] The debtors' complaint in the Latona proceeding states that the directors of the FTX Foundation, a Delaware nonprofit whose sole member was Bankman-Fried, included Bankman-Fried, Nishad Singh, Gary Wang, Ellison and [Nick Beckstead](/people/nick-beckstead/);[^8] a later complaint by the FTX Recovery Trust describes the same five as its directors and officers.[^9] A December 30, 2021 document in which Bankman-Fried set out proposed terms for hiring Ross Rheingans-Yoo, a former Jane Street colleague, lists the manager as "likely Caroline [Ellison] + SBF [Bankman-Fried] + Nick [Beckstead] depending on the task," and the revised and final terms place his Alameda position "reporting to CE [Ellison]." On April 11, 2022 Ellison signed his employment agreement with Alameda Research (Bahamas) Ltd. by DocuSign on behalf of Alameda; the debtors and Rheingans-Yoo stipulated that he did not perform the duties of a trader or investment associate there, was not employed by the FTX Foundation, and was paid from the bank accounts of FTX Digital Markets Ltd.[^10] ### Conduct described by prosecutors The government's letter described Ellison as "Alameda's nominal CEO and Bankman-Fried's former girlfriend." Prosecutors wrote that she never worked at FTX and had no role in designing the code that gave Alameda special treatment there, that she had no knowledge of Bankman-Fried's campaign finance scheme, and that once she learned of the features she used them at his direction to misappropriate customer funds. The letter recounts, citing trial testimony and exhibits, the mid-2021 repurchase of Binance's stake in FTX, then worth about 2 billion dollars, with a mix of FTX funds and customer deposits; an analysis she prepared in the fall of 2021 showing Alameda's net asset value at negative 2.7 billion dollars without FTT, Solana and Serum, after which she told Bankman-Fried that further venture investments were too risky and he proceeded with billions of dollars of them; and the May 2022 collapse of Terra and Luna, after which Alameda's lenders recalled nearly all their loans and Alameda repaid more than 6 billion dollars on demand. A spreadsheet prepared at Bankman-Fried's request showed Alameda with a negative 11 billion dollar balance on FTX and 13 billion dollars borrowed in customer funds; of the 6.5 billion dollars repaid to lenders, almost 70 percent was customer money. She prepared seven alternative balance sheets for lenders such as Genesis, and Bankman-Fried chose "alternative 7," which hid Alameda's borrowing from FTX and about 5 billion dollars of related-party loans to FTX executives.[^1] The government wrote that in November 2022 she posted tweets meant to reassure FTX customers after Bankman-Fried told her, "I can't be the one to tweet because I don't want to be associated with Alameda"; that at an all-hands meeting on November 9, 2022, which she did not know was being recorded, she told Alameda employees that customer funds had been used to repay recalled loans and that she, Bankman-Fried, Wang and Singh had been involved; and that, unlike Ryan Salame, she did not try to withdraw large sums from her FTX accounts before the bankruptcy. It quotes her testimony that Bankman-Fried's attitude toward lying and stealing "made me more willing to do things like lie and steal over time." She disclosed to prosecutors a payment of about 140 million dollars in cryptocurrency to unfreeze Alameda's accounts in China by bribing a Chinese official; the government charged Bankman-Fried with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on that basis but, "without the Bahamas consent," did not proceed on the count at trial.[^1] The SEC's complaint alleged that from at least May 2019 through November 2022 Ellison, Wang and Bankman-Fried defrauded the equity investors who put more than 1.8 billion dollars into FTX, and that Ellison, at Bankman-Fried's direction, caused Alameda to borrow from third-party lenders against holdings of FTT, a token FTX issued to Alameda at no cost, and engaged in automated purchases of FTT in order to increase its price and the value of Alameda's collateral.[^6] ### The debtors' claims and her FTX holdings On July 20, 2023 FTX Trading Ltd., Alameda and other debtors sued Bankman-Fried, Wang, Singh and Ellison in the Delaware bankruptcy court for breach of fiduciary duty, waste, conversion and fraudulent transfers. As to Ellison, the debtors alleged that on February 22, 2022 she caused 22.5 million dollars to move from an Alameda account on FTX named "off_market_ftt" to an Alameda payroll account, then to an account of Salameda Limited, an FTX group entity, and then to her own FTX account; that on March 29, 2022 she transferred 10 million dollars from that account to her personal bank account; and that this money funded her 10 million dollar investment, through an M-SAFE agreement in late March 2022, in an unnamed "artificial intelligence safety and research company." They also alleged that she received 2,000,000 FTX call options on December 29, 2020 and a further 750,000 less than three months later without paying for them, and cash bonuses of 6,262,529.89 dollars on July 23, 2021 and September 14, 2022. The complaint quotes her private notes of March 2022 estimating a cash deficit at FTX.com of more than 10 billion dollars, and records that she responded with a "claps" emoji to a developer's warning about Alameda's borrowing on FTX US.[^7] The equity holder lists filed by the debtors on March 13, 2023 record Caroline Ellison as the holder of 38,160,000 shares of Class A common stock of West Realm Shires Inc., the parent of FTX US, and of 2,750,000 shares of common stock of FTX Trading Ltd.[^11] ### Plea and cooperation According to the government's letter, federal agents executed a search warrant at her residence on November 16, 2022 and seized her phone; her attorneys relayed her interest in assisting the government the same day, gave an attorney proffer on December 7, and she began proffering on December 8. A grand jury indicted Bankman-Fried on December 9, 2022. On December 19, 2022 she pleaded guilty before Judge Ronnie Abrams to a superseding information charging conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers (18 U.S.C. section 1349), wire fraud on customers (section 1343), conspiracy to commit and commission of wire fraud on lenders, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud and securities fraud (section 371), and conspiracy to commit money laundering (section 1956(h)). The pleas of Ellison and Wang were unsealed after Bankman-Fried consented to extradition and arrived in the [United States](/places/united-states/) on December 21, 2022. She met the government about 20 times after her plea and testified for about three days at the October 2023 trial, at which Bankman-Fried was convicted on all seven counts.[^1] Prosecutors wrote that she reviewed hundreds of documents and spreadsheets in discovery to identify evidence in an investigation hampered by Bankman-Fried's destruction of evidence, located the seven-tab balance sheet spreadsheet whose metadata showed his review before one version went to a lender, flagged chats concerning the use of Alameda trading to raise the price of FTT, and continued despite public scrutiny and Bankman-Fried's efforts to "weaponize her personal writings."[^1] The SEC filed its action against Ellison and Wang on December 21, 2022 (No. 22-cv-10794, Southern District of New York), and judgments on consent were entered as to each on December 23, 2022.[^12] Her counsel wrote in 2024 that under the consent judgments with the SEC and with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (in *CFTC v. Bankman-Fried*, No. 22-cv-10503) she had accepted lifetime bans from working in the securities or commodities industries, from trading for others, and from serving as an officer or director of a public company.[^4] On December 19, 2025 the SEC filed her consent and moved for final judgment, and on December 23, 2025 Judge P. Kevin Castel entered a final judgment permanently enjoining her from violating section 10(b), Rule 10b-5 and section 17(a), barring her for 10 years from the date of the initial judgment from acting as an officer or director of an issuer with registered securities, and enjoining her for five years from participating in the issuance, purchase, offer or sale of securities other than for her own account. The final judgment entered as to Wang the same day carries an eight-year officer and director bar.[^12] ### Settlements and civil cooperation The sentencing memorandum states that she had settled with the plaintiffs' steering committee in the FTX multidistrict litigation in the Southern District of Florida by a stipulation dated January 23, 2024, and, subject to the approval of the United States Attorney's Office, gave it documents and a declaration, filed February 16, 2024, describing how the Bahamian bank Deltec Bank and Trust provided Alameda a "clandestine line of credit of approximately $2 billion." It states that she sat for multiple interviews with the FTX bankruptcy examiner about Alameda and its relationship to FTX US, provided information to the New York Attorney General's Investor Protection Bureau for a cryptocurrency investigation, and assisted the SEC and CFTC on market manipulation and FTX US compliance. Her counsel wrote that she had lived largely in hiding since December 4, 2022, and that friends declined to submit sentencing letters for fear of being identified.[^4] On September 23, 2024 her counsel, Anjan Sahni of [WilmerHale](/organizations/wilmerhale/), informed the court that the settlements anticipated in the sentencing submission had been finalized: a consent preliminary order of forfeiture with the government, and a settlement with the FTX debtors resolving all their claims against her and setting a framework for her continuing cooperation. The letter was copied to Christopher Dunne of [Sullivan & Cromwell](/organizations/sullivan-cromwell/), counsel to the debtors.[^13] ### Sentence, forfeiture and the Anthropic shares The presentence report put the guideline sentence at life, capped at 1,320 months, on an offense level of 43 driven by a loss above 10 billion dollars, and the probation office recommended time served. The government moved under section 5K1.1 of the Sentencing Guidelines on account of what it called her "extraordinary cooperation."[^1][^4] Her memorandum was filed by WilmerHale lawyers Sahni, Stephanie Avakian, Peter Neiman and Nicholas Werle.[^4] On September 24, 2024 Judge Kaplan imposed 24 months on each of the seven counts, to run concurrently, recommended a minimum security facility as close to Boston as possible, set surrender no earlier than November 7, 2024, and imposed three years of supervised release, with a special condition that throughout that term she continue to cooperate with the government, the SEC, the CFTC and, if requested, the FTX bankruptcy estate. All open counts were dismissed on the government's motion.[^2] The government later asked the court to correct the judgment to reflect that the court had declined to order restitution, as it had for Bankman-Fried, in favor of a remission process for forfeited assets.[^14] The consent preliminary order of forfeiture, filed September 25, 2024, provides for a money judgment of 11,020,000,000 dollars, for which she is jointly and severally liable with Bankman-Fried, Wang and Singh. It forfeits "the shares of Series B Preferred Stock in Anthropic PBC, acquired by the defendant on or about May 13, 2022, through the Simple Agreement for Future Equity the defendant purchased in exchange for $10,000,000 on or about March 31, 2022," recites a financial affidavit she swore on or about May 9, 2024, requires her to liquidate a Vanguard brokerage account and pay the proceeds to the United States before October 8, 2024, and records her admission that the property involved in the offenses, other than the [Anthropic](/organizations/anthropic/) shares, "cannot be located upon the exercise of due diligence." The United States agreed not to pursue substitute assets if she made the payment and the forfeiture was completed.[^15] Her counsel wrote that the Anthropic shares, which she viewed as an investment in the safe development of artificial intelligence, were the only significant purchase she made while at Alameda and supplied the bulk of the value of her settlements.[^4] The FTX estate agreed in March 2024 to sell the majority of its own Anthropic stake for 884 million dollars, with Jane Street the second-largest buyer at almost 100 million dollars.[^16] [^1]: Letter of the United States by Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle R. Sassoon, *United States v. Ellison*, 22 Cr. 673 (LAK) (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 17, 2024), ECF No. 502, pp. 1-10. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.590939/gov.uscourts.nysd.590939.502.0.pdf [^2]: Amended Judgment in a Criminal Case as to Caroline Ellison, *United States v. Ellison*, (S2) 22 Cr. 673-03 (LAK) (S.D.N.Y.; date of imposition Sept. 24, 2024; signed Oct. 9, 2024; filed Oct. 10, 2024), ECF No. 520, pp. 1-4. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.590939/gov.uscourts.nysd.590939.520.0.pdf [^3]: Federal Bureau of Prisons, Inmate Locator, Caroline Ellison, register number 36854-510, facility "New York" (residential reentry management office), actual release date 01/21/2026, queried October 1, 2026. https://www.bop.gov/inmateloc/ [^4]: Defendant Caroline Ellison's Sentencing Memorandum (redacted public filing), *United States v. Ellison*, No. 22 Cr. 673 (LAK) (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 10, 2024), ECF No. 497, memorandum pp. 1-17, 26-27, 41, 46-48 and signature page (ECF pp. 4-21, 30-31, 44, 49-51). https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.590939/gov.uscourts.nysd.590939.497.0.pdf [^5]: FTX Recovery Trust's Motion for Reconsideration or to Modify Order Allowing Rheingans-Yoo's FDU Claim, *In re FTX Trading Ltd.*, No. 22-11068 (KBO) (Bankr. D. Del. July 23, 2025), D.I. 31846, paras. 8-9. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.deb.188450/gov.uscourts.deb.188450.31846.0.pdf [^6]: Complaint, *Securities and Exchange Commission v. Ellison*, No. 22-cv-10794 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 21, 2022), ECF No. 1, paras. 1-5, 13-17. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.591453/gov.uscourts.nysd.591453.1.0.pdf [^7]: Complaint, *FTX Trading Ltd. v. Bankman-Fried* (Bankr. D. Del. filed July 20, 2023), filed as D.I. 1886 in *In re FTX Trading Ltd.*, No. 22-11068 (JTD), parties, pp. 18-19, 25 and 30-31. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.deb.188450/gov.uscourts.deb.188450.1886.0.pdf [^8]: Complaint, *Alameda Research Ltd. v. Platform Life Sciences Inc.*, Adv. Pro. No. 23-50444 (JTD) (Bankr. D. Del. July 19, 2023), filed as D.I. 1881 in No. 22-11068, para. 17. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.deb.188450/gov.uscourts.deb.188450.1881.0.pdf [^9]: First Amended Complaint, *FTX Recovery Trust v. Manifold Markets, Inc.*, Adv. Pro. No. 24-50214 (KBO) (Bankr. D. Del. July 23, 2025), D.I. 38, para. 10. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.deb.194811/gov.uscourts.deb.194811.38.0.pdf [^10]: Stipulation of Undisputed Facts Relating to Ross Rheingans-Yoo's FDU Claim, *In re FTX Trading Ltd.*, No. 22-11068 (JTD) (Bankr. D. Del. Jan. 15, 2025), D.I. 29218, paras. 3-6, 13, 21-25, 44-46. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.deb.188450/gov.uscourts.deb.188450.29218.0.pdf [^11]: Notice of Filing of Lists of Equity Holders, Exhibit A (WRS Equity Holders List) p. 8 and Exhibit B (FTX Trading Equity Holders List) p. 25 of 69, filed Mar. 13, 2023 in *In re Emergent Fidelity Technologies Ltd.*, No. 23-10149 (JTD) (Bankr. D. Del.), D.I. 76-1. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.deb.189054/gov.uscourts.deb.189054.76.1.pdf [^12]: Docket, *Securities and Exchange Commission v. Ellison*, No. 22-cv-10794-PKC (S.D.N.Y.), judgments of Dec. 23, 2022, consents and motions of Dec. 19, 2025, and final judgments as to Caroline Ellison and Zixiao ("Gary") Wang signed by Judge P. Kevin Castel on Dec. 23, 2025 (docket text); CourtListener docket 66676576. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66676576/securities-and-exchange-commission-v-ellison/ [^13]: Letter of Anjan Sahni, *United States v. Ellison*, No. 1:22-cr-673-LAK (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 23, 2024), ECF No. 505. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.590939/gov.uscourts.nysd.590939.505.0.pdf [^14]: Letter of the United States re amendment of judgment, *United States v. Ellison*, S2 22 Cr. 673 (LAK) (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 7, 2024), ECF No. 517. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.590939/gov.uscourts.nysd.590939.517.0.pdf [^15]: Consent Preliminary Order of Forfeiture as to Specific Property/Money Judgment, *United States v. Ellison*, S2 22 Cr. 673 (LAK) (S.D.N.Y. filed Sept. 25, 2024), ECF No. 510, pp. 3-4, 8. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.590939/gov.uscourts.nysd.590939.510.0.pdf [^16]: MacKenzie Sigalos, "FTX estate selling majority stake in AI startup Anthropic for $884 million, with bulk going to UAE," *CNBC*, March 25, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/25/ftx-estate-sells-majority-stake-in-startup-anthropic-for-884-million.html