Key Points:

Caroline Ellison, the key witness in the case against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, received a two-year prison sentence in New York federal court and was ordered to forfeit $11 billion. 

Ellison, who led Alameda Research, accepted a plea deal in December 2022, shortly after FTX's collapse into bankruptcy. 

Judge Lewis Kaplan, while commending her substantial cooperation, stated he could not grant a "literal get-out-of-jail-free card" during the sentencing.

The fallout from a multi-billion dollar scam that bankrupted the cryptocurrency company FTX and plunged some markets into chaos two years ago continued Tuesday when former crypto executive Caroline Ellison was sentenced to 24 months in prison.

Ellison, the former chief executive of FTX's sister firm and crypto hedge fund Alameda Research turned romance novelist, has described herself as a remorseful participant in the fraud. Prosecutors said her cooperation helped convict FTX mastermind and her former boyfriend Sam Bankman-Fried in 2023.

The crimes Ellison pleaded guilty to carried a maximum sentence of 110 years.

"She cooperated, and he denied the whole thing," U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said. "He went to trial, as was his right, and it didn't work out so well. The reason it didn't work out so well, in some significant part, is that Ms. Ellison cooperated."