Former cryptocurrency leader Alex Mashinsky has pleaded guilty to two fraud charges. The founder and CEO of Celsius Network was on seven criminal charges in 2023, including charges of fraud, conspiracy and market manipulation. He pleaded not guilty at the time, but at a hearing today, Mashinsky pleaded guilty to two of those original charges. The first is a commodity fraud and the second is a fraudulent scheme to manipulate the price of his company’s internal CEL crypto token. Reuters reported that, as part of the plea agreement, Mashinsky agreed not to appeal any sentence of 30 years or less.
Mashinsky’s case is one of several fraud cases prosecuted against leaders of cryptocurrency operations. The most publicized accusations are those made against the founder of FTX who was found guilty of seven counts of fraud in 2023.
National agencies began pushing fraud charges for cryptocurrency schemes in 2022, when several major companies filed for bankruptcy as token prices plummeted in response to rising interest rates and high inflation. That year, the Federal Trade Commission said victims of crypto schemes had lost more than from 2021.
