Alexander Mashinsky, founder and former CEO of crypto lending platform Celsius Network, has been sentenced in the Southern District of New York to 12 years in federal prison for commodities fraud, securities fraud, and market manipulation tied to the operation and collapse of Celsius. He pleaded guilty in December 2024 and was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl, who also imposed three years of supervised release, a $50,000 fine, and forfeiture of about $48.4 million. Prosecutors said Mashinsky repeatedly misled customers about Celsius’s financial health, risk profile, and regulatory status, and secretly used customer assets for risky trading strategies while assuring users their funds were safer than in a bank. Authorities further found that Mashinsky and colleagues engaged in a multi‑year scheme to artificially inflate the price of Celsius’s native token, CEL, including by using customer deposits to buy the token on the open market without disclosure. Celsius, which at its peak managed roughly $25 billion in assets and more than a million customers, froze withdrawals in 2022 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy amid a market downturn, ultimately leaving customers with billions in losses and a deficit exceeding $1 billion. The case has become one of the most prominent U.S. criminal prosecutions arising from the collapse of centralized crypto lending platforms, and it underscores intensifying regulatory and law‑enforcement scrutiny of yield‑bearing crypto products marketed as bank‑like alternatives.

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