Caroline Ellison Describes Love Life With Sam Bankman-Fried, Her $20 Million Bonus and His Designs on the White House

Caroline Ellison, Sam Bankman-Fried's ex girlfriend, testified Tuesday about her sex life with her former boss — whom she started sleeping with in 2018 — and his pillow talk, which included boasts that he might just become president one day, and how they lost billions of customer funds together.

Ellison, 28, the former CEO of Bankman-Fried's doomed hedge fund, Alameda Research, revealed that her on-again, off-again lover paid her a $200,000 annual salary and $20 million bonus in 2021, the year she was promoted to chief executive.

The Stanford-educated ex crypto executive — who wore a red dress, black blazer and round-oversized glasses — is the star witness at Bankman-Fried's the $8 billion fraud trial. If convicted, he faces the possibility of more than a century in prison.

Ellison's testimony began with a damning accusation that she and Bankman-Fried had taken customer funds from the cryptocurrency exchange FTX to fund risky bets that Alameda made — bets that ultimately brought both the fund and exchange down.

Romance Begins

It didn't take long after she joined the fund in 2017, just two years out of Stanford, before the two struck up a romantic relationship.

"In the fall of 2018, we started sleeping together on and off and then in the summer of 2020 we started a romantic relationship," she told jurors at Bankman-Fried's fraud trial in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon then asked if 31-year-old Bankman-Fried, the founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, ever shared his professional goals while they were romantically involved.

Ellison testified with her hair down — half draping over her shoulder and the other half behind her back — during much of her time on the stand. She avoided the press ahead of the hearing, shielding her appearance with a blue baseball cap, sunglasses, oversized jacket and backpack as she entered the courthouse.

President 'of the United States'

She said Bankman-Fried told her he wanted "Alameda and FTX to be successful and huge companies that did a wide variety of things."

She also said Bankman-Fried was "interested in politics."

"At one point, he said there was a 5% chance he’d become president someday," she said.

The prosecutor then asked which presidency Ellison meant.

"Of the United States," she answered.

Ellison testified earlier Tuesday that she met Bankman-Fried when she was an intern at the powerhouse Wall Street firm Jane Street Capital.

After he left Jane Street to form Alameda in 2017, she said, he recruited her to work for the new company.

"I got coffee with him and he told me about a crypto trading firm he had started called Alameda Research," she testified.

'Worse Shape Than I Realized'

But soon after starting to work as a trader there, Ellison said, "I learned the company was in much worse shape than I realized."

More than half of the employees wound up quitting, she said.

"I asked [Bankman-Fried] why he hadn’t shared more of this information," she testified.

She said he responded by saying that "he didn't know how to tell me."

Ellison said Bankman-Friend named her a co-CEO of Alameda in 2021, during a "break" in their dating that resumed in November of that year.

$20 Million Bonus

Although she didn't get a raise from her $200,000 base salary, the new job came with bonuses that included $20 million in 2021, she said.

"I would say the whole time we were dating, he was also my boss at work which created some awkward situations," she said.

The "general theme" of the relationship was that Ellison "wanted more from our relationship but felt he was often distant," which led to their breakup, she said.

"He wasn’t paying much attention to me," she testified.

When asked if they told co-workers about their relationship, Ellison said, "The first time we dated we agreed to keep it secret."

"The second time, Sam agreed we could make it public, we were living together," she said.

"But it wasn’t something that we talked about openly with people much."