Former CEO Alex Mashinsky filed documents seeking to vacate his 12-year sentence, which included claims involving FTX and a “hostile takeover” by a former Celsius executive, who was sentenced to time served. Alex Mashinsky, the former CEO of defunct cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius, has filed a motion in a New York court to vacate his 12-year sentence for fraud and market manipulation. In a Tuesday filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Mashinsky filed a motion to vacate his 144-month sentence, set by Judge John Koeltl in May 2025. The former Celsius CEO filed the paperwork without additional counsel, having announced on May 5 that he would be proceeding pro se in his case. Although Mashinsky pleaded guilty to commodities fraud and securities fraud related to “manipulative and deceptive devices,” he filed a motion to vacate on the grounds that he had ineffective counsel and “fruit of [the] poisinous [sic] tree,” a legal doctrine referring to evidence tainted by authorit...
Celsius‘ former chief revenue officer received a lenient sentence after his 2023 guilty plea for fraud and conspiracy to commit price manipulation. A US federal judge has sentenced the former chief revenue officer of defunct cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius to time served after almost three years following his arrest on fraud and conspiracy charges. In a sentencing hearing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday, Judge John Koeltl ordered that Roni Cohen-Pavon be sentenced to time served and one year of supervised release for his role in manipulating the price of Celsius’s CEL token and fraud on the platform. The former chief revenue officer initially pleaded not guilty to four charges following his arrest in September 2023, changing his plea to guilty about a week later. Read more