BlockBeats news, on December 4th, reported by Reuters, Alex Mashinsky, founder and former CEO of the cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud on Tuesday.
The 59-year-old Mashinsky was indicted on July 13, 2023, on seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, and market manipulation. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan stated that he misled Celsius customers, enticing them to invest, and artificially inflated the value of the company's own cryptocurrency tokens. He pleaded not guilty to these charges at that time.
At Tuesday's hearing, Mashinsky stated that he pleaded guilty to two of the seven initial charges: commodity fraud and a fraud scheme to manipulate the price of CEL (Celsius token).
In court, Mashinsky admitted that during an interview in 2021, he provided Celsius customers with 'false reassurance,' claiming that Celsius had received regulatory approval for its 'Earn' program, when, in fact, it had not. The program promised to use customers' cryptocurrency assets to generate investment returns.