STORY: The ex-girlfriend of former FTX head Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday.

Caroline Ellison was a top executive at the cryptocurrency exchange.

Prosecutors have called its collapse one of the biggest financial frauds in US history.

Bankman-Fried was behind the $8 billion theft of customer funds from FTX, which he founded.

The judge noted Ellison's cooperation with prosecutors in convicting Bankman-Fried last year.

However the judge said he not comfortable with remorse and cooperation being a "get out of jail free card" in a case so serious.

Bankman-Fried rode a boom in cryptocurrency prices during the COVID pandemic to a net worth of, according to Forbes magazine, $26 billion by October 2021.

Ellison ran Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund also founded by Bankman-Fried, from 2021 to 2022.

His wealth evaporated when FTX collapsed in November 2022 after a flurry of customer withdrawals.

Bankman-Fried was charged a month later with stealing FTX customer funds to plug losses at Alameda.

Ellison testified at his trial he directed her and others to take money from FTX's customers without their knowledge.

Later she pleaded guilty to seven felony counts of fraud and conspiracy, crimes which carry a maximum sentence of 110 years in prison.

In handing down her two-year sentence,

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said Ellison's "remarkable cooperation" was a "fundamental distinction" between her and Bankman-Fried.

She'd met with prosecutors about 20 times to help piece together FTX's unravelling and make their case against him.

Earlier in the hearing, she said that "Not a day goes by when I don't think about all the people I hurt"

and that she'd thought about leaving Alameda several times, before telling the judge, "I'm sorry I wasn't brave."