The founder and former CEO of bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network has been sentenced to 12 years in prison on fraud charges, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said on May 8.
Alexander Mashinsky, 59, of New York, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl on May 8 after pleading guilty in December 2024 to commodities fraud and securities fraud.
His sentence includes three years of supervised release and a $50,000 fine. Mashinsky was also ordered to forfeit $48.39 million, according to the DOJ’s statement.
Prosecutors stated that Mashinsky had misled customers about Celsius’s proprietary crypto token CEL and artificially inflated its value by buying it on the open market. This manipulation allowed him to profit about $48 million from his own sales of CEL….