A case tied to defunct crypto exchange FTX moves forward, a soldier seeks to dismiss over a Polymarket bet and a former congressman was ordered to pay $35,000 for manipulative trading.
In a Friday filing with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) over campaign finance charges, Michelle Bond’s legal team asked the court to consider precluding evidence related to former FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame, her husband who is currently serving a 90-month sentence after he pleaded guilty in 2023.
Bond faces campaign finance charges alleging that her unsuccessful 2022 congressional run in New York was partially funded by contributions from FTX facilitated by Salame. As part of the filings this week, Bond asked the court to exclude evidence of her husband’s guilty plea and “related plea materials,” in which the former executive admitted to making “political contributions in [his] name that were funded by transfers from the bank accounts” of an entity tied to FTX.
“The Court should preclude the government from introducing or referring to Mr. Salame’s guilty plea or any related plea materials, because their minimal probative value is substantially outweighed by the risk of unfair prejudice to Ms. Bond,” said the filing.
The motion also requested the court include information related to Bond’s “contemporaneous divorce and custody proceedings,” arguing that though she and Salame were not married at the time of the alleged crime, the former FTX executive was not an “ordinary ‘individual’ donor” contributing to her campaign.
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The criminal case is one of the last involving individuals tied to the defunct crypto exchange following its 2022 collapse. Salame, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison were all sentenced to prison for their role in the misuse of customer funds and related charges.
George Santos, a former New York House representative who was expelled from Congress in 2023, was ordered to pay a $17,500 civil monetary penalty and $17,570 in disgorgement from profits earned over bets placed on prediction markets platform Kalshi. The order from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) stemmed from Santos trading on event contracts betting on his appearance at the 2026 State of the Union address in Washington, DC.
“While buying and selling positions in this market, Santos posted on social media about his plans to attend or not attend the SOTU,” said the CFTC. “In his social media posts, Santos made a series of material misrepresentations and omissions about whether he would attend the SOTU. After these posts, the SOTU contract prices moved in a direction that was favorable to Santos’ positions which allowed him to make over $17,500.”
February X post about his State of the Union attendance. Source: George Santos
Santos is barred from trading on prediction market platforms for three years as part of the order. He was also previously sentenced to 87 months in prison for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in 2025, but served only three months before his sentence was commuted by US President Donald Trump.
Gannon Ken Van Dyke is a US soldier who faces charges for allegedly making more than $400,000 on Polymarket event contracts using nonpublic information tied to a military operation involving the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January. He was involved in the operation removing Maduro, according to the US Justice Department, and allegedly used insider information to bet whether the Venezuelan president would be removed from power, leading to criminal charges in April.
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