The CFTC closes civil fraud cases against Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, who cooperated with prosecutors after FTX's $8 billion collapse. The agency's $12.7 billion recovery against FTX entities stands as its largest ever.
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The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has resolved its civil enforcement actions against Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, and Zixiao “Gary” Wang, co-founder of FTX and Alameda. The pair had already consented to liability judgments on fraud charges tied to the collapse of FTX, which cost customers more than $8 billion. The CFTC's announcement Thursday formally closes those individual proceedings.
The CFTC added Ellison and Wang as defendants in an amended complaint on Dec. 21, 2022, about six weeks after FTX filed for bankruptcy. Neither contested the allegations. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York approved the consent judgments two days later, on Dec. 23.
The case centered on a scheme in which Ellison and Wang, along with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, allegedly diverted customer deposits from the exchange into Alameda Research. The trading firm was supposed to operate independently of FTX but instead used those funds for trading, venture investments, and personal expenses.
Both Ellison and Wang pleaded guilty in parallel criminal cases in December 2022 and cooperated extensively with federal prosecutors. That cooperation helped secure Bankman-Fried's conviction on fraud and conspiracy charges in November 2023. He was later sentenced to 25 years in prison.
While the individual civil cases are now closed, they sit within a broader enforcement effort. In August 2024, the same court issued a consent order against FTX Trading Ltd. and Alameda Research LLC requiring $12.7 billion in total monetary relief – $8.7 billion in restitution and $4 billion in disgorgement. The CFTC called it the largest monetary recovery in its history.
Monetary penalties for Ellison and Wang had remained pending since their initial consent. The CFTC's latest move resolves that piece. Ellison received a two-year prison sentence in her criminal case; Wang avoided prison time entirely. Their cooperation influenced those sentences, yet the civil enforcement actions still ran their course independently.
The individual resolutions do not end the CFTC's broader scrutiny of the FTX collapse. The agency continues to pursue related matters, though no further individual targets have been named in its public filings.
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