Caroline Ellison is a former CEO at Alameda Research and made headlines in December 2022, when she pleaded guilty to fraud charges stemming from allegations that the company owed $10 billion to cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Ellison was born in November 1994, although her exact birthdate is unclear. She is the daughter of Glenn Ellison, a Gregory K. Palm Professor of Economics at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Sara Fisher Ellison, a senior lecturer in economics at MIT.
Ellison was raised in the suburbs of Boston, where she attended Newton North High School and participated in the 2011 International Linguistics Olympiad, where she represented the United States.
Ellison also placed in the top ten at the Harvard MIT math competition and received an honorable mention from Math Prize for Girls.
In 2012 Ellison earned a Merit Scholarship before graduating high school. She attended college at Stanford and graduated in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics.
While at Stanford, Ellison belonged to the Effective Altruism Club, something she had a special interest in.
Ellison performed well while attending Stanford and ranked in the top 500 students in the 2013, 2014, and 2015 Putnam Competitions, an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate students. Ellison’s first job out of college was as a junior trader at Jane Street, where she first met Sam Bankman-Fried.
In 2018, Ellison told the Tiger Insider, “I’m kind of proud of how far I’ve come as a trader. I started working at a quantitative trading firm out of college and went from knowing nothing and struggling with the basics to being pretty competent.”
She held her position at the trading firm for 19 months before joining Alameda Research in March 2018, after Bankman-Fried encouraged her to do so.
Three years later, Ellison became co-CEO of Alameda Research, along with Sam Trabucco, before he stepped down in August 2022. Prior to Trabucco’s departure, he and Ellison were featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30.
FTX
Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang were top executives at Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX before it was discovered that Alameda Research, the company’s crypto trading firm, used money from personal customer accounts to pay for a string of high-risk bets.
On December 21, 2002, Ellison and Wang pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering after the discovery.
Several celebrities, including Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Steph Curry, and Shaquille O’Neal, publicly backed FTX and are now being sued in an $11 billion class action lawsuit.
Ellison previously dated the CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, and the Daily Mail reported Ellison posted on her Tumblr about being polyamorous and wanting to be a part of an ‘imperial Chinese haven.’
Bankman-Fried has blamed Ellison for the demise of the FTX crypto exchange. At one point, Ellison, Bankman-Friend and eight others were living together in the Bahamas, where FTX was based, and they all shared the same therapist.
Where is Caroline Ellison now?
Ellison was found guilty on seven charges and is currently awaiting her sentencing, which could have landed her up to 110 years in jail; however, she has cooperated with the feds to lighten her sentence.
Since Ellison disclosed pertinent information to the case, prosecutors allowed her to be released on a $250,000 bail, but she cannot travel outside the continental United States.
On the other hand, Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bail and is currently sporting an ankle monitor, while staying at his parents’ house in Palo Alto, CA.
