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FTX exec Ryan Salame threatened with sanctions for lying

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FTX exec Ryan Salame threatened with sanctions for lying


Former FTX executive Ryan Salame outside of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Sept. 12, 2024

MacKenzie Sigalos | CNBC

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A furious federal judge on Thursday threatened to slap unspecified sanctions on former FTX executive Ryan Salame for lying to him last year when he pleaded guilty to campaign finance and money transmitting crimes.

Salame at a hearing Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan admitted lying to Judge Lewis Kaplan by saying during his plea hearing that federal prosecutors had not made promises to him to induce his guilty plea.

Salame now claims prosecutors promised him through his then-attorneys that they would drop a criminal probe of his romantic partner Michelle Bond if he pleaded guilty in his case.

“You are asking me to let stand a conviction and sentence that I now know is based on false testimony before me in the plea allocution,” Kaplan told Salame on Thursday.

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“And that might be a big problem,” the judge told Salame, whom he previously sentenced to 7½ years in prison, several months more than the top end of what prosecutors had requested.

Kaplan repeatedly said during the hearing that Salame “induced” him to accept his guilty plea and was visibly annoyed at the defendant.

Salame and other federal criminal defendants are required to testify truthfully during plea hearings and reveal if anyone has made promises or offers in exchange for their admission of guilt.

Kaplan told Salame, his lawyers and prosecutors that he will take some time to consider what should be done.

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He said sanctions are possible against Salame, who had been a leader at FTX, the now-failed cryptocurrency exchange founded by convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

Salame’s lawyer declined to comment to CNBC after the hearing.

The judge also said Thursday that Salame must now surrender to prison by Oct. 11 after officials realized that the prior surrender date of Oct. 13 would fall on a Sunday.

Michelle Bond, CEO of Digital Futures. 

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CNBC

Last month, lawyers for Salame asked Kaplan to void his 2023 guilty plea by claiming that prosecutors weren’t holding up their end of the agreement.

Salame’s attorneys alleged in an August court filing that the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, despite promising Salame in April 2023 that they would stop probing his domestic partner Bond for campaign finance violations if he agreed to the arrangement, had continued to investigate Bond.

The defense lawyers asked Kaplan to void Salame’s guilty plea on those grounds.

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A day after the filing, Bond was indicted in Manhattan federal court on campaign finance charges tied to her unsuccessful run for Congress in 2022. Prosecutors accused her of conspiring to raise unlawful campaign contributions from FTX.

The indictment alleges Salame conspired with Bond to commit the crimes, saying he arranged the payment from FTX to Bond.

Salame allegedly wired hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bond’s personal bank account between June and August 2022, which she put toward illegally funding her campaign, according to the indictment.

Days after Bond was charged, Salame filed a motion seeking to drop his bid to vacate his guilty plea.

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Kaplan then ordered him to appear for Thursday’s hearing to review his allegations.

Salame reiterated during the hearing that he is no longer seeking to void his guilty plea.

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Affirm (AFRM) earnings report Q1 2025

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Affirm (AFRM) earnings report Q1 2025


Block and Affirm slide on earnings

Affirm, the provider of buy now, pay later loans reported better-than-expected fiscal first-quarter results.

Here’s how the company did, compared to analysts’ consensus estimates from LSEG.

  • Loss per share: 31 cents adjusted vs. a loss of 35 cents expected
  • Revenue: $698 million vs. $664 million expected

Affirm reported gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $7.6 billion, topping the average estimate of $7.28 billion, according to StreetAccount. GMV, a key metric that helps gauge the total value of transactions, increased by 35% from a year earlier.

Revenue in the fiscal first quarter rose 41% from $496.5 million a year earlier.

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Revenue less transaction costs (RLTC) came in at $285 million, ahead of earlier guidance of $265 million to $280 million.

Affirm said it expects to achieve profitability on a GAAP basis in its fiscal fourth quarter of 2025. Last quarter, CEO Max Levchin said in a note to shareholders that the company had set a new goal of hitting operating profitability on a GAAP basis by the end of its fiscal year.

The company sees second-quarter revenue of between $770 million and $810 million, or $790 million in the middle of the range, versus the average estimate of $785 million, according to LSEG. Affirm is guiding to GMV in the range of $9.35 billion to $9.75 billion. Analysts polled by StreetAccount called for GMV of $9.48 billion.

Affirm shares were about flat for the year as Thursday’s close, but have been trending higher lately, up more than 70% since the end of August.

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The company’s new relationship with Apple plus other partnerships with Amazon and Shopify are helping results. In June, Affirm and Apple announced plans for U.S. Apple Pay users on iPhones and iPads to be able to apply for loans directly through Affirm.

“Affirm’s growth story has continued, particularly as they add new strategic distribution partners,” Kevin Kennedy, an analyst at global research firm Third Bridge, said in an email.

Kennedy added that the quality of Affirm’s underwriting, specifically for higher-priced orders and interest-bearing BNPL purchases, sets the company apart from the growing list of competitors.

“The payments space is constantly facing commoditization risk, and BNPL, while nascent, is facing the same challenge,” he wrote. “However, large ticket interest bearing purchases, which are becoming more accessible through Affirm, are better protected” compared with offerings from peers, he added.

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Square parent Block, which also reported earnings after the bell, acquired BNPL firm Afterpay for $29 billion in 2021.

Affirm’s quarterly earnings call starts at 5:00 P.M. eastern.

WATCH: Affirm CEO on consumer behavior

Affirm CEO on consumer behavior: 'shopping is back on and people are buying'



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Block (SQ) earnings Q3 2024

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Block (SQ) earnings Q3 2024


Block shares tumbled 11% in extended trading on Thursday after the company reported third-quarter revenue that trailed Wall Street expectations.

Here is how the company did, compared to analysts’ consensus estimates from LSEG.

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  • Earnings per share: 88 cents adjusted vs. 87 cents expected
  • Revenue: $5.98 billion vs. $6.24 billion expected

Block, formerly known as Square, posted $2.25 billion in gross profit, up 19% from a year ago. Analysts tend to focus on gross profit as a more accurate measurement of the company’s core transactional businesses.

The company reported net income of $283.7 million, or 45 cents per share, after losing $88.7 million, or 15 cents a share, a year earlier.

The Cash App business, the company’s popular mobile payment platform and a significant contributor to overall profitability, reported $1.31 billion in gross profit, a 21% year-over-year jump. Block, run by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, said its Cash App Card monthly active users increased 11% year over year to more than 24 million.

The company said gross profit for the fourth quarter will increase 14% to $2.31 billion.

Block’s third-quarter earnings call starts at 5 P.M. Eastern time.

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New DNA evidence at Pompeii reveals surprises about identities of Vesuvius eruption victims

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New DNA evidence at Pompeii reveals surprises about identities of Vesuvius eruption victims


When a volcanic eruption buried the ancient city of Pompeii, the last desperate moments of its citizens were preserved in stone for centuries.

Observers see stories in the plaster casts later made of their bodies, like a mother holding a child and two women embracing as they die.

But new DNA evidence suggests things were not as they seem — and these prevailing interpretations come from looking at the ancient world through modern eyes.

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“We were able to disprove or challenge some of the previous narratives built upon how these individuals were kind of found in relation to each other,” said Alissa Mittnik of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. “It opens up different interpretations for who these people might have been.”

Mittnik and her colleagues discovered that the person thought to be a mother was actually a man unrelated to the child. And at least one of the two people locked in an embrace — long assumed to be sisters or a mother and daughter – was a man. Their research was published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

pompeii-bodies.jpg
The remains of two who perished in the volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii. 

CBS News

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The team, which also includes scientists from Harvard University and the University of Florence in Italy, relied on genetic material preserved for nearly two millennia. After Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the Roman city in 79 A.D., bodies buried in mud and ash eventually decomposed, leaving spaces where they used to be. Casts were created from the voids in the late 1800s.

Researchers focused on 14 casts undergoing restoration, extracting DNA from the fragmented skeletal remains that mixed with them. They hoped to determine the sex, ancestry and genetic relationships between the victims.

There were several surprises in “the house of the golden bracelet,” the dwelling where the assumed mother and child were found. The adult wore an intricate piece of jewelry, for which the house was named, reinforcing the impression that the victim was a woman. Nearby were the bodies of another adult and child thought to be the rest of their nuclear family.

DNA evidence showed the four were male and not related to one another, clearly showing “the story that was long spun around these individuals” was wrong, Mittnik said.

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Researchers also confirmed Pompeii citizens came from diverse backgrounds but mainly descended from eastern Mediterranean immigrants – underscoring a broad pattern of movement and cultural exchange in the Roman Empire. Pompeii is located about 150 miles (241 kilometers) from Rome.

The study builds upon research from 2022 when scientists sequenced the genome of a Pompeii victim for the first time and confirmed the possibility of retrieving ancient DNA from the human remains that still exist.

“They have a better overview of what’s happening in Pompeii because they analyzed different samples,” said Gabriele Scorrano of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, a co-author of that research who was not involved in the current study. “We actually had one genome, one sample, one shot.”

Though much remains to be learned, Scorrano said, such genetic brushstrokes are slowly painting a truer picture of how people lived in the distant past.

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In August, archaeologists at Pompeii announced they had unearthed the remains of two more victims — a man and a woman discovered inside what was likely the bedroom of their home, where they’d become trapped as the rest of the structure filled with debris. The woman was found on the bed with a collection of gold, silver and bronze coins, as well as a pair of gold earrings, a pair of pearl earrings and other jewelry. 

Earlier this year, three researchers won a $700,000 prize for using artificial intelligence to read a 2,000-year-old scroll that was scorched in the Vesuvius eruption.

The Herculaneum papyri consist of about 800 rolled-up Greek scrolls that were carbonized during the 79 CE volcanic eruption that buried the ancient Roman town, according to the organizers of the “Vesuvius Challenge.”

The scroll’s author was “probably Epicurean philosopher Philodemus,” writing “about music, food, and how to enjoy life’s pleasures,” wrote contest organizer Nat Friedman on social media.

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The scrolls were found in a villa thought to be previously owned by Julius Caesar’s patrician father-in-law, whose mostly unexcavated property held a library that could contain thousands more manuscripts.





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FTX’s Caroline Ellison reports to prison to begin 2-year sentence

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FTX's Caroline Ellison reports to prison to begin 2-year sentence


Caroline Ellison, former chief executive officer of Alameda Research LLC, arrives at court in New York, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

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Caroline Ellison, the star witness in the prosecution of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, reported to a low-security federal prison in Connecticut on Thursday, according to a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons.

In September, Ellison was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to forfeit $11 billion for her role in the massive fraud and conspiracy that doomed the cryptocurrency exchange once valued at $32 billion.

The federal Probation Department had recommended that Judge Lewis Kaplan sentence Ellison to three years of supervised release, with no time behind bars. Defense lawyers also had requested a punishment that didn’t include prison time.

While Kaplan praised Ellison for her extensive cooperation with prosecutors — which led to the conviction of Bankman-Fried — the judge said her criminal sentence needed to deter other potential bad actors from committing fraud.

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Ellison ran Alameda Research, which was a sister hedge fund of FTX. She was also romantically involved with Bankman-Fried.

Alameda received much of the $8 billion in customer funds looted by Bankman-Fried from FTX. The stolen money was used for Alameda’s trading operation and other purposes.

Ellison reached a plea deal with prosecutors in December 2022, a month after FTX spiraled into bankruptcy. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy and financial fraud charges.

Kaplan called FTX the greatest financial fraud perpetrated in the history of the U.S., and told the court in Manhattan during the sentencing that a “literal get-out-of-jail-free card I can’t agree to.”

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“I’ve seen a lot of cooperators over the years and I’ve never seen one quite like Miss Ellison,” said Kaplan, who also said he believed that Ellison was genuinely remorseful for her crimes and that her cooperation carried a steep price for her emotionally.

Late last month, Former FTX executive Nishad Singh was sentenced to time served and three years of supervised release, becoming the fourth ex-employee of the collapsed crypto exchange to be punished. 

At her sentencing, Ellison read from a statement in a shaky voice while crying at times as she apologized to the people she had hurt and said she was deeply ashamed. She also said she was sorry for not being brave enough to walk away from FTX and Bankman-Fried.

Kaplan allowed Ellison to remain free on bail until surrendering to prison either on or after Nov. 7.

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Bankman-Fried chose to stand trial and was convicted of all seven criminal fraud charges against him. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March and also was ordered to pay $11 billion in forfeiture by Kaplan.

Both Bankman-Fried and Ellison had faced the same statutory maximum sentence of about 110 years in prison for their crimes.

WATCH: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried appeals fraud conviction

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried appeals fraud conviction



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One solar stock to buy after Trump’s win hit the sector, analysts say

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One solar stock to buy after Trump's win hit the sector, analysts say




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Trump’s victory could disrupt energy sector. These stocks are likely winners and losers

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Trump’s victory could disrupt energy sector. These stocks are likely winners and losers




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