Alex Mashinsky

What the public record shows

Alex Mashinsky, founder and former CEO of crypto lender Celsius Network, pleaded guilty on December 3, 2024 to commodities fraud and securities fraud. On May 8, 2025, Judge John G. Koeltl sentenced him to 12 years in prison, three years of supervised release, a $50,000 fine, and forfeiture of $48,393,446.

The scheme

According to the Department of Justice:

• Mashinsky told retail customers Celsius would keep their digital assets “safer than a bank” — while using deposits to place risky bets.
• He and others ran a years-long scheme to manipulate the price of Celsius’s own CEL token, spending hundreds of millions buying it on the open market to prop up its value — at times using customer deposits to fund those purchases without telling customers.
• Mashinsky personally made tens of millions — including from selling his own CEL at inflated prices — while customers ultimately lost billions when Celsius collapsed into bankruptcy in 2022.

Why we rate this 1 / 10 — Avoid

A guilty plea to defrauding the very retail savers he courted on weekly livestreams. Celsius’s pitch — high yield, no risk, “unbank yourself” — was the classic too-good-to-be-true offer, wearing a fintech interface.

Verify it yourself

• DOJ press release — linked in Sources.
• PACER — United States v. Mashinsky, S.D.N.Y.

Bottom line

Convicted by his own plea and serving 12 years. Yield always comes from somewhere — if a platform can’t show you exactly where, the yield is you.

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