Caroline Ellison Reveals She Moved on With Co-Worker After Breakup With Sam Bankman-Fried

Caroline Ellison admitted under cross-examination Thursday that she began dating a co-worker following the end of her rocky relationship with ex-boss Sam Bankman-Fried.

Ellison, the prosecution's star witness at Bankman-Fried's $8 billion fraud trial in New York City, said the unidentified underling was present when the FBI executed a search warrant at her mother's home on Nov. 16.

The feds seized computers owned by both her mom and her boyfriend, Ellison, 28, said.

"Without getting into names, had he worked at Alameda and FTX?" defense lawyer Mark Cohen asked, referencing Bankman-Fried's bankrupt hedge fund and cryptocurrency exchange.

"Yes, he had," she said.

Bankman-Fried, 31, named Ellison a co-CEO of Alameda Research in October 2021 and made her the sole CEO in August 2022, about three months before the companies collapsed following a report their FTX deposits were propping up Alameda.

Ellison testified Thursday that the April 2022 end of their on-off love life made it hard for her to talk business with him — even though they were living in a $30 million, six-bedroom room penthouse with other FTX executives in the Bahamas.

“I found it difficult to have in-person one-on-one conversations with him," she said.

"I tried to avoid those and avoid spending much time with him in social settings."

Instead, they communicated about work matters over the encrypted messaging app Signal and in group meetings, and sometimes spoke outside of work, she said.

Ellison is testifying under terms of a plea deal with federal prosecutors in a bid for leniency for her role in deceiving lenders and customers who got burned when FTX and Alameda collapsed.

Prosecutors allege Bankman-Fried ordered the creation of a secret line of credit between Alameda and FTX that allowed the hedge fund to siphon off billions of dollars customers had invested on the cryptocurrency exchange.

On Wednesday, Ellison testified that as part of the scheme, she falsified an Alameda balance sheet and presented it to a client in an effort to hide the secret line of credit and make the company appear more financially sound.

Bankman-Fried, who's been held without bail since August for leaking Ellison's private writings to the New York Times, faces more than 100 years in prison if convicted on all counts.