Caroline Ellison, the former girlfriend of crypto swindler Sam Bankman-Fried, is set to be released from prison just over a year into her sentence. 

The 31-year-old was sentenced to two years in prison in September 2024 for wire fraud and money laundering, after admitting to helping Bankman-Fried's FTX platform steal billions from clients. 

According to Federal Bureau of Prisons records seen by the Daily Mail, Ellison is now set to be released from custody on January 21, 2026, nine months before the end of her original sentence. 

Ellison was CEO of Alameda Research, a trading company owned by Bankman-Fried's FTX, and she admitted that he illegally loaned Alameda billions of clients' money before the platform collapsed in November 2022. 

She pleaded guilty to fraud charges soon after FTX collapsed and was initially sent to federal prison in Connecticut following her sentencing. After serving 11 months of her two-year sentence, she was transferred to community confinement in October 2025, as first reported 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.'