Caroline Ellison, once romantically linked to disgraced cryptocurrency figure Sam Bankman-Fried, is poised for an early release from prison, just over a year into her term.

The 31-year-old was handed a two-year prison sentence in September 2024 after being convicted of wire fraud and money laundering. She confessed to collaborating with Bankman-Fried’s FTX platform, orchestrating a scheme that siphoned billions from unsuspecting clients.

According to records from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Ellison is now scheduled for release on January 21, 2026. This date marks a nine-month reduction from her initial sentence, as reported by the Daily Mail.

Ellison served as the CEO of Alameda Research, a trading firm under the FTX umbrella. She admitted to the unlawful transfer of billions of dollars from FTX clients to Alameda, which contributed to the platform’s downfall in November 2022.

Following the collapse of FTX, Ellison promptly pleaded guilty to fraud charges. Initially, she was incarcerated in a federal facility in Connecticut. After completing 11 months of her two-year sentence, she was moved to community confinement in October 2025, a transition first noted by Business Insider.

Community confinement means Ellison is either under house arrest or is in a halfway house, and in January, she will be freed less than four years after she first pleaded guilty to a slew of charges related to the collapse of FTX. 

In Bankman-Fried’s 2023 trial, Ellison became the prosecution’s star witness against her former on-and-off lover. 

Ellison cooperated with prosecutors and offered key testimony that brought down Bankman-Fried, as she confessed to knowingly engaging in illegal business tactics with the disgraced FTX founder, including telling jurors that he gave Alameda ‘unlimited’ access to FTX client money. 

Caroline Ellison, the former girlfriend of crypto swindler Sam Bankman-Fried, is set to be released from prison in January 2026, just over a year into her sentence for her role in the $8 billion FTX cryptocurrency fraud  

Ellison was the former girlfriend of Sam Bankman-Fried, and sensationally turned on him and worked with prosecutors to bring him down at trial in 2023

Ellison’s sentence of two years in federal prison surprised legal experts at the time in September 2024, as she was expected to be rewarded for her cooperation with the prosecution against Bankman-Fried. 

Before her sentencing, the CEO of the FTX bankruptcy estate, John J Ray, told the judge that Ellison deserved to avoid prison time because she ‘provided the Debtors with valuable assistance and cooperation, which resulted in the recovery of hundreds of millions of dollars in Debtor assets for the benefit of creditors.’ 

Earlier this month, after being placed on community confinement, Ellison also agreed to a 10-year ban on serving as an officer or director of cryptocurrency exchanges or public companies. 

She was the star witness at Bankman-Fried’s trial and her three days of testimony, which revealed how Alameda stole billions of dollars from FTX customers to finance risky trades and lavish spending, was ‘crucial’ in securing a conviction for the fraudster. 

After pleading guilty to seven charges in late 2022, including wire fraud and money laundering, Ellison faced as much as 115 years in prison, but was expected only to receive supervised release. 

Ellison surrendered to authorities in the chaotic aftermath of the FTX collapse, which followed the platform loaning billions in client cash to Alameda. 

A court sketch depicts a moment during the Bankman-Fried trial when Ellison was overwhelmed by emotion on the stand

She was the former on-again, off-again girlfriend of Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded both FTX and Alameda Research

When FTX customers tried to withdraw their money, the company couldn’t pay out and went bankrupt. 

When she was sentenced, Ellison grew emotional in court, saying she was sorry for her part in the fraud and for not being ‘brave’ enough to stop it. 

‘I participated in a criminal conspiracy that ultimately stole billions of dollars from people who entrusted their money with us,’ she said. ‘Not a day goes by that I don’t think about all of the people I hurt.’

She cried and sniffled at times throughout her remarks.

The days of the trial when she was on the stand consistently drew the most attendees, as she recounted the salacious details of her toxic relationship with SBF and the shockingly brazen means through which the young crypto executives at FTX and Alameda, herself included, committed one of the largest financial hoodwinks in American history.

Ellison testified that Bankman-Fried ‘directed me’ to commit fraud. She said that Bankman-Fried told her to take $14 billion from the failed crypto exchange’s customers to repay the eyewatering loans Alameda had racked up to fund its often disastrous trades.

She also said that Alameda took FTX deposits for ‘whatever’ it needed.

Ellison cooperated with prosecutors and offered key testimony that brought down Bankman-Fried, as she confessed that she knowingly engaged in illegal business tactics with the disgraced FTX founder

Bankman-Fried is pictured with Gisele Bundchen at a Crypto Bahamas conference

Part of what Ellison said Bankman-Fried instructed her to do was to draft seven different balance sheets to send to Genesis, one of Alameda’s leading lenders, when it recalled its $500 million loan to Alameda in June 2022.

Many lenders were demanding their money back at this time because crypto markets were in the red.

Bankman-Fried denied telling her to do this, even though prosecutors showed he opened the Google document containing the seven balance sheets.

Ellison sent ‘alternative seven’ to Genesis and others. The document inflated Alameda’s asset value and downplayed its liabilities by billions of dollars.

By this time, she and Bankman-Fried had broken up but they had dated from summer 2020 to summer 2021.

‘I would say the whole time we were dating he was also my boss at work which created some awkward situations,’ she said at trial, adding that ‘I wanted more from our relationship and often felt he was distant or not paying attention to me.’

Ellison found herself intertwined with the bushy-haired crypto boss years before FTX’s bankruptcy, once valued at $32 billion by venture capital firms.

At Bankman-Fried’s trial, she said he directed her to tweet out a defense of the FTX and Alameda in the wake of insolvency rumors

Ellison, the daughter of two MIT professors, first met Bankman-Fried in the summer of 2015 while she was working at Jane Street Capital, a proprietary trading firm.

He was two years older than her and a full-fledged trader, while she had just taken an internship before her senior year at Stanford University.

In fall 2017, the two crossed paths again, meeting at a coffee shop in the San Francisco Bay Area to discuss what Bankman-Fried was working on: Alameda Research.

Ellison joined the company shortly after this in what she described as ‘a blind leap into the unknown.’

With Ellison now facing freedom in January, Bankman-Fried has also been actively seeking clemency from President Trump, appealing for a pardon and claiming his prosecution was politically motivated because of the ‘anti-crypto’ Biden administration.