Alex Mashinsky, former CEO of crypto lending platform Celsius, could face up to 115 years in prison. His legal team filed a memorandum with the New York District Court last Friday, requesting that six former Celsius employees be allowed to testify in his criminal trial, including the company's former chief financial officer and chief revenue officer, some of whom live outside the United States.
The attorneys claimed in the memo that Mashinsky had no intention of harming anyone and that “as Celsius’s CEO, Mashinsky relied on information provided by the experienced team of Celsius professionals around him,”
“The stakes are high,” the lawyers later added, “and the government has informed the defense that its ‘current position’ is that the Sentencing Guidelines require a sentence of 115 years in prison for Mashinsky.”
Celsius filed for bankruptcy in 2022 and was shut down earlier this year. In July 2023, Mashinsky was arrested on suspicion of defrauding customers and misleading them about Celsius' profitability. The SEC accused Celsius and Mashinsky of raising billions of dollars through fraudulent and unregistered cryptocurrency sales, repeatedly lying to investors about Celsius' financial condition, and manipulating the price of the company's native token CEL. (The Block) #crypto2023A
