Crypto Lobbyist Charged With Breaking Campaign Finance Rules

A former cryptocurrency industry lobbyist was charged with campaign finance fraud on Thursday, the latest criminal prosecution to stem from the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange.

Federal prosecutors in New York accused the former lobbyist, Michelle Bond, 45, of violating campaign finance laws in 2022, when she made an unsuccessful bid for Congress as a Republican on Long Island. In an indictment filed in the Southern District of New York, the prosecutors said Ms. Bond had received a “sham $400,000 payment” from FTX that was orchestrated by Ryan Salame, an executive at the exchange and Ms. Bond’s boyfriend.

Last year, Mr. Salame pleaded guilty to a separate campaign finance charge. He was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.

Nearly two years after FTX filed for bankruptcy, the charges against Ms. Bond show that the legal fallout from the company’s implosion is not over. When FTX was a high-flying exchange, its executives made tens of millions of dollars in political donations — a spending spree that came under scrutiny from prosecutors after the company failed. Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, was convicted of fraud in November and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Ms. Bond, who ran a crypto industry trade group, was a longtime supporter of Mr. Bankman-Fried and FTX. Her ties to the company were strengthened after she met Mr. Salame. By 2022, they had started dating, according to the indictment.

That May, Ms. Bond made a last-minute bid for the Republican nomination for an open House of Representatives seat. Consultants involved in that race recalled that Mr. Salame had played an integral strategy role, including helping to recruit other donors from the crypto industry, appearing at campaign fund-raisers with Donald Trump Jr. and putting $1 million of his money into a supportive super PAC that was set up by Republican operatives who had grown close to Mr. Salame..