Cash News
A failed Long Island congressional candidate was busted Thursday for illegally filling her campaign coffers with $400,000 from the disgraced crypto exchange FTX — where her beau worked as an top executive, prosecutors charge.
Michelle Bond, 45, was given a no-show gig as an FTX “consultant” from her romantic partner Ryan Salame, a top lieutenant at the then-booming Bahamas-based firm — and put $388,075 of her “sham” salary into her political coffers.
The allegedly funneled cash — which she used to run in the 2022 Republican primary for Long Island’s 1st District — broke federal laws barring corporate contributions and far exceeded individual donation limits, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Bond, who runs the crypto-boosting Digital Future think-tank in Washington D.C, also lied on a congressional financial disclosure form that the cash was “consulting income,” but later admitted that the money was for her campaign in talking points prepared for the board of her lobbying firm, court papers allege.
“Attempting to start a hopeful career in our government using unlawful transactions and lies erodes the integrity and credibility of our legislative system,” said FBI Acting Assistant Director Christie M. Curtis in a statement.
Court papers do not explicitly name Salame or FTX.
But Salame identified Bond as his “domestic partner and the mother of his child” in a separate court filing Wednesday in which he tried to back out of his own campaign finance fraud plea deal worked out with the feds.
Salame, who has been sentenced to 7.5 years in prison, accuses prosecutors of “conveying” to him that they would stop probing Bond for campaign finance breaches if he pleaded guilty to conspiring with his boss — convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried — to secretly pump money into political campaigns.
Prosecutors blasted Salame in their own filing of making a “shameless and self-serving attempt” to back out of his plea deal based on “factually baseless” and “legally meritless” claims.
Bond, who faces up to five years in prison, was expected to make her first appearance in the case Thursday afternoon in Manhattan federal court.
Her attorney information was not immediately available.
Bond lost the 2022 GOP primary in the 1st District, which covers the easternmost part of Long Island, to Republican Nick LaLota, who is currently locked in a tight race for reelection with Democrat John Avlon.