One of the FTX co-founders who pleaded guilty to massive fraud and cooperated against CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced Wednesday to time served.
Gary Wang, 32, walked out of Manhattan Federal Court a free man.
New York federal prosecutors repeatedly praised Wang for his cooperation, describing him as the first FTX employee to flip and aid investigators in the case. The feds said Wang “deciphered basically half the case for us” on his first day as a cooperating witness in November 2022.
The speedy investigation allowed U.S. authorities to quickly extradite Bankman-Fried from his palatial residence in The Bahamas and haul him before a judge in Manhattan. After pleading not guilty, Bankman-Fried was convicted at trial and sentenced to 25 years behind bars.
Wang testified across three days of Bankman-Fried’s October 2023 trial. He told authorities he inserted code into FTX’s operations that allowed its sister firm, Alameda Research, to have a preposterous $65 billion line of credit and use customer funds to pay losses. FTX eventually stole $11 billion from its users.
Wang was one of several FTX employees to testify against Bankman-Fried. All the cooperators were praised by authorities for their help to unravel the case, but Wang was the highest-profile person to receive no additional prison time.
Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend and the CEO of Alameda, got two years in prison.
Wang said he “took the cowardly path instead of doing the right thing. Nothing I do will ever be able to make up for it.”
With News wire Services