Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky faces a possible prison sentence of more than 100 years, so he has called on six witnesses who worked at the cryptocurrency company to testify.
Mashinsky was arrested last year. The prosecution said he get scammed defrauded customers and misled Celsius about its profitability. In a memorandum filed by his attorneys on Friday, he asked the New York District Court to allow witnesses from the cryptocurrency lender’s chief financial officer to its chief revenue officer to testify in his criminal trial. Many of the proposed witnesses live outside the United States, they said.
Mashinsky’s attorney argued in a memorandum that he had no intention of harming anyone.
“As CEO of Celsius, Mr. Mashinsky relied on information provided by an experienced team of Celsius professionals surrounding him,” his attorneys said.
“The stakes are high,” the lawyers later added. “The government has informed the defense that ‘the position’ is that Mr. Mashinsky should be sentenced to 115 years in prison under the sentencing guidelines.”
Celsius, which filed for bankruptcy in 2022 and was liquidated earlier this year, has drawn the ire of several regulators. In July 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission I sued The cryptocurrency lender and Mashinsky are accused of raising billions of dollars through fraudulent and unregistered cryptocurrency sales, repeatedly lying to investors about Celsius’s financial condition, and manipulating the price of the company’s native token, CEL.
The proposed witness list includes former Celsius Chief Revenue Officer Roni Cohen-Pavon, who reportedly pleaded guilty to criminal charges last year. Mashinsky’s attorneys say Cohen-Pavon and other employees ignored Mashinsky’s instructions to sell CEL tokens and instead decided to buy more tokens without telling the former CEO.
Prosecutors said Mashinsky and Cohen-Pavon Manipulate They drove up the price of CEL by spending millions of dollars to buy CEL and then sell it for a profit, with the purpose of “artificially supporting and inflating” the price of CEL.
“Mr. Cohen-Pavon is a material witness to the manipulation allegations as he provided legal advice to Celsius regarding the manner in which CEL tokens were purchased and sold on the open market from 2019 through 2022,” Mashinsky’s attorneys said in the filing.
Ask Mashinsky anything
During the weekly “Ask Mashinsky Anything” live event, where Celsius clients are given updates on the company, Mashinsky’s attorney said the firm’s legal and risk staff made edits but did not share those edits with him. The attorney said there was a review process that included the firm’s legal, risk and regulatory teams reviewing transcripts of the AMA sessions before they were published.
“As a result of this review process, Mr. Mashinsky fully anticipated and understood that accidental or unintentional inaccuracies in his public statements would be brought to his attention,” his attorneys said. “And when they were brought to his attention, the evidence shows that Mr. Mashinsky accepted them. That is evidence of good faith, not fraud.”
But the changes were “almost always made behind Mr Mashinsky’s back,” they said.
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