Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky pleads guilty to two fraud charges

ChainCatcher news, according to Reuters, Alex Mashinsky, the 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's customers, enticing them to invest, and artificially inflated the value of the company's proprietary cryptocurrency. He pleaded not guilty to these charges on that day.

During Tuesday's hearing, Mashinsky stated that he pleaded guilty to two of the original seven charges: commodity fraud and a fraudulent scheme to manipulate the price of CEL (Celsius token).

In court, Mashinsky admitted that during an interview in 2021, he provided "false comfort" to Celsius customers by claiming that Celsius had received regulatory approval for its Earn program, when in fact it had not been approved. The program promised to use customers' cryptocurrency to generate investment returns.