Caroline Ellison wrote a steamy Bridgerton-style romance novel as she waited to learn her fate for participating in the multi-billion-dollar crypto fraud at FTX, her mom has revealed.
The Stanford-educated Ellison had a tempestuous on-off relationship with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and mused about experimenting with polyamory — and then famously turned feds’ witness and gave damning evidence against her ex.
“She has written a charming novella (set in Edwardian England and loosely based on her sister Kate’s imagined amorous exploits, to Kate’s great delight),” her mother Sara Fisher Ellison wrote in a letter asking the sentencing judge for leniency.
“She is working on another novel, which we have yet to see,” the mother added.
The 29-year-old now has ample time to finish that follow-up — she was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday for her role in the FTX catastrophe, which saw billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency vanish in days in 2022.
Considered one of the largest financial crimes in history, Ellison pleaded guilty to fraud the same year and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors.
That cooperation was instrumental in landing FTX founder — and her former lover — Bankman-Fried behind bars for 25 years.
After pleading guilty, Ellison was freed on $250,000 bail while she testified for the feds.
Some observers suggested Ellison might avoid prison entirely for her cooperation. However, on Tuesday, Judge Lewis Kaplan said a prison sentence was needed because Ellison had participated in what might be the “greatest financial fraud ever perpetrated in this country and probably anywhere else.”
Kaplan said he would not grant her a “get out of jail free card” despite Ellison’s “genuine” remorse for her role in the brazen crime — in which Bankman-Fried stole billions of dollars of FTX user funds in 2022 to plug losses at his failing hedge fund.
The judge also said that Ellison was “vulnerable” and was “exploited,” calling Bankman-Fried “your kryptonite.”
“While you were gravely culpable in this fraud, there is no doubt that you had remarkable cooperation,” Kaplan added. “That’s a fundamental distinction between you and Mr. Bankman-Fried.”
Wearing a dark gray blazer over a maroon dress, Ellison stood, her hands clasped together in front of her, as the judge delivered the sentence. She then tilted her head slightly forward. She was ordered to report to prison on Nov. 7.
In addition to penning racy prose as she whiled away the two years before her sentencing, Ellison has also been volunteering as an English as a second language teacher, her mother wrote in her letter.
“These tasks are not performance to her. She cares about doing a good job and cares about the people she is helping. None of this is surprising to us, of course, but we are heartened by the fact that she is finding so much joy and fulfillment in directly working to help those in need,” she said.
Ellison has also been contributing to a statistics textbook her father and some colleagues are working on, the mother wrote.
“Caroline is a very talented writer,” she said.
A Boston-area native and graduate of Stanford, Ellison faced up to 110 years in prison for her part in the scheme before she took the plea.