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Alex Mashinsky, founder of collapsed Crypto -money shooter Celsius Network, was sentenced to 12 years in prison after having admitted his role in a scheme to cheat customers and to told token with the help of customer funds.
Mashinsky pleaded in December guilty of securities fraud and raw material fraud. Federal Public Prosecutors in New York said he promised customers with promises of a high return on digital deposits, who misled them about the activities of Celsius and used their deposits to increase the price of his own crypto -toking, cell.
At its peak, Celsius held $ 25 billion in customer assets. But the bank was buffered by volatility in cryptom markets in 2022, and hundreds of thousands of customers could not reclaim their money after it had stopped the recordings.
District court John Koeltl of the southern district of New York sentenced the 59-year-old Mashinsky on Thursday. Mashinsky previously agreed to forfeit more than $ 48 million, which represented his personal revenues from the sale of cell tokens before it crashed. His bank accounts were frozen by American authorities after his indictment in 2023.
The conviction comes when the US President Donald Trump has tried the Crypto industry, launched his own sign and eliminated the approach to the administration for enforcement and supervision of digital assets. In March he required the company behind the Crypto Exchange Bitmex-Die last year to be guilty of violating the Bank Secrecy Act with regard to anti-money legislation checks. Moreover, the policy of the new Ministry of Justice prohibits the prosecution of crypto companies for the actions of their users.
“The case for tokenization and the use of digital assets is strong, but it is not a license to mislead,” said Jay Clayton, American lawyer for the southern district of New York, in a statement. “The rules against fraud still apply, and the SDNY will hold those who give them responsible to their crimes.”
Prosecutors had asked for a prison sentence of 20 years and said last month in a submission that Mashinsky was “a fraudster of epic proportions” and that “a serious sentence is justified”.
Mashinsky told a court in December that “what I did was wrong and I want to do what I can do to make it right” and said he accepted full responsibility for his actions.
Mashinsky said that the punishment would not have to take more than 366 days last week. He accused the government of doing a “GIF-Legal Submission” to the court and said that he was a “first time, non-violent perpetrator who argued guilty and accepts responsibility”.
The application said that he was “punished and humiliated” and “was tortured every day by his crimes and the pain he caused”.
Mashinsky was arrested and charged in 2023. His company had applied for bankruptcy the previous year, after a cryptomark route.
Prosecutors said that Mashinsky Celsius had presented as a “modern bank”, but that it had been a “risky investment fund”, and that Celsius had used the money from some customers to manipulate the market for his cell -so that it could sell its own participations above their market value.