Onchain, in court: What happened in crypto legal news this week
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 recent legal development in the US, former FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame is fighting to have certain evidence precluded from his trial in the Southern District of New York (SDNY). Salame, currently serving a 90-month sentence, pleaded guilty in 2023 to making political contributions funded by FTX. Michelle Bond, his wife, faces campaign finance charges alleging her 2022 congressional run was partially funded by FTX contributions facilitated by Salame.
In a filing, Bond's legal team requested the court to exclude evidence of Salame's guilty plea and related materials, claiming their probative value is outweighed by potential unfair prejudice to Bond. The motion also seeks to include information related to Bond's divorce and custody proceedings, arguing Salame was not an "ordinary 'individual' donor" despite not being married at the time of the alleged crime.
Meanwhile, a former congressman, George Santos, was ordered to pay a $17,500 civil monetary penalty and $17,570 in disgorgement for manipulative trading on a prediction markets platform, Kalshi. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) found Santos made material misrepresentations about attending the State of the Union address, allowing him to profit.
A soldier, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, is also facing criminal charges for using insider information from a military operation to bet on the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Polymarket, potentially leading to a trial in late 2026 or early 2027.
Written by urgent.news from Cointelegraph's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
