The agreement resolves a 2023 civil fraud lawsuit against the Celsius founder and permanently bars him from the cryptocurrency, securities and commodities industries.
Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky has been permanently barred from the cryptocurrency, securities and commodities industries under a settlement with New York Attorney General Letitia James that includes up to $35 million in conditional payments.
The New York agreement, announced Friday, settles a 2023 civil lawsuit accusing Mashinsky of misleading hundreds of thousands of investors about the safety of Celsius before its collapse in 2022.
Under the settlement, Mashinsky must pay New York $25 million if he fails to forfeit an additional $10 million in ill-gotten gains to the federal government beyond assets already forfeited, and another $10 million if he does not serve his full prison sentence.
Mashinsky is serving a 12-year federal prison sentence for fraud and was separately ordered to forfeit more than $48 million. The federal sentence stems from his December 2024 guilty plea to securities and commodities fraud.
“Alex Mashinsky promised New Yorkers that his company was a secure place to invest their hard-earned savings, only to leave them penniless when his risky investments collapsed,” James said in Friday’s announcement.
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According to the 2023 lawsuit, Mashinsky promoted Celsius as a safer alternative to banks, offering yields as high as 17% while allegedly concealing risky investments and mounting losses.
By early 2022, Celsius had attracted roughly $20 billion in digital assets, but struggled to generate enough revenue to sustain its promised returns , prompting increasingly risky investments, according to the CFTC.
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