SBF's cohorts at FTX take last SEC hit, Ellison banned from company roles for decade

Three of the top former executives at FTX and its affiliates have accepted final punishments from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as the agency resolves its enforcement cases connected to the exchange's collapse, the SEC said in a litigation notice on Friday.

As former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried continues his federal prison sentence on his fraud convictions, Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of its Alameda Research arm, is among those who agreed to consent judgements to resolve enforcement actions filed in 2022 and 2023, which still have to be approved in court. Others who signed the deals include Zixiao "Gary" Wang, the former chief technology officer of FTX Trading, and Nishad Singh, the former co-lead engineer of FTX.

Each of them will be banned from serving as officers or directors in other companies, the SEC said, with Ellison accepting a 10-year restriction and the others getting eight-year bans. They're also subject to five-year "conduct-based injunctions," the agency said.

"Bankman-Fried, Wang, and Singh, with Ellison’s knowledge and consent, had exempted Alameda from the risk mitigation measures and provided Alameda with a virtually unlimited 'line of credit' funded by FTX’s customers," according to the SEC statement. "The complaints also alleged that Wang and Singh created FTX’s software code that allowed FTX customer funds to be diverted to Alameda, and that Ellison used misappropriated FTX customer funds for Alameda’s trading activity."

Ellison had been given a two-year prison sentence for her role in the FTX fraud, though she's recently been released from prison early, according to records from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Wang, who was a key cooperating witness in the government's case, avoided jail time, as did Singh.