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Celsius Founder Alex Mashinsky Sentenced to 12 Years in Prison
After pleading guilty to two counts of fraud, the founder of failed cryptocurrency platform Celsius will serve 12 years in federal prison.
The yawning gap between the sentences requested by the defense and prosecution reflects the dispute between the two sides over the nature of Mashinsky’s wrongdoing: Namely, whether the Celsius founder was guilty of a handful of ill-considered lies—those to which he had already admitted—or a concerted and extensive campaign of fraud. “Where there has been a plea, to the extent that there are factual disputes, they are often relatively minor and the core of the conduct is clear,” says Katherine Reilly, a partner at law firm Pryor Cashman who previously led the complex frauds and cybercrime unit in the SDNY. Ultimately, the judge proved unsympathetic to Mashinsky’s version of events, ruling that the severity of his crimes and the extent of the damage he caused to victims warranted a substantial prison sentence.
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