Founder and Former CEO of Cryptocurrency Lending Company Celsius, Alex Mashinsky, Criticizes U.S. Government’s 20-Year Sentence Request as Equivalent to Life Imprisonment
Celsius filed for bankruptcy protection in July 2022, halting user withdrawals due to unstable market conditions and owing $4.7 billion in debt. The U.S. Department of Justice requested the court impose at least a 20-year prison sentence on the 59-year-old Mashinsky for misleading Celsius users and profiting from manipulating the price of its native token, CEL.
In a memorandum submitted to the U.S. District Court in New York on May 5, Mashinsky’s legal team argued that his sentence should not exceed 366 days, as the Department of Justice did not take into account that he is a first-time offender with no history of violence and a clean record over his 30-year business career.
As part of a plea agreement, Mashinsky admitted to two charges in December 2024: commodity fraud and manipulating the price of CEL. He profited $48 million from selling his tokens before Celsius collapsed in June 2022. Prosecutors initially brought seven charges against him in July 2023.
In their sentencing request on April 28, the Department of Justice stated that Mashinsky’s guilty plea indicated his actions were deliberate, premeditated acts of fraud and theft. Prosecutors also submitted statements from hundreds of victims who lost money due to Celsius’s collapse.
In November 2023, a U.S. bankruptcy court approved Celsius’s restructuring plan to repay customers, with $2.53 billion to be returned to 251,000 creditors by August 2024.
