Alex Mashinsky
Founder and CEO of the crypto lending platform Celsius Network. Pleaded guilty to commodities and securities fraud and was sentenced in May 2025 to 12 years in prison.
Bio
Alex Mashinsky founded and led the cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network. Prosecutors said he misrepresented the safety of customer deposits and manipulated the price of the platform's CEL token while personally profiting. [1]
Legal outcome
He pleaded guilty to commodities fraud and securities fraud in December 2024 and was sentenced in May 2025 to 12 years in prison, agreeing to forfeit more than $48 million. [1]
Bracketed numbers refer to the numbered sources listed below.
Sources (1)
See also
Luke BelmarIndividualsCryptocurrency influencer Luke Belmar (@lukebelmar on X) became the subject of controversy following allegations related to the promotion of a memecoin. Critics on social media alleged that Belmar used a series of posts referencing a forthcoming cryptocurrency project and a large-scale airdrop to generate interest in a token without explicitly identifying a specific contract address. Belmar published multiple posts discussing an upcoming memecoin, describing plans for what he characterized as a major airdrop and making comparisons to other cryptocurrency projects. Because no contract address was publicly provided, several tokens emerged claiming association with his statements. Critics alleged that this ambiguity enabled speculation around multiple tokens while avoiding a direct endorsement of any particular asset.
- REcoin / Diamond Reserve ClubProjectsTwo 2017 ICOs run by Brooklyn's Maksim Zaslavskiy, marketed as tokens backed by real estate and diamonds that did not exist. The case produced the first U.S. criminal conviction for an ICO fraud; Zaslavskiy was sentenced to 18 months in 2019.
This page was last updated on Jun 15, 2026. View revision history.