Court orders permanently restrict Alex Mashinsky, Shlomi Daniel Leon and Hanoch Goldstein from broad areas of crypto and asset-services marketing, with payments partly creditable through forfeiture and bankruptcy settlements.
Permanent court orders now bar Celsius co-founders Alex Mashinsky, Shlomi Daniel Leon and Hanoch Goldstein from wide swaths of crypto and asset-services activity, extending the fallout from the bankrupt lender’s collapse. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said the founders’ combined obligations total $16.5 million, although Goldstein’s entered order lists $2.014 million, with Mashinsky responsible for $10 million, Leon for $4.1 million and Goldstein’s amount eligible to be credited through the Celsius bankruptcy adversary proceeding. The orders prohibit the three men from making material misrepresentations and from fraudulently seeking customer financial information such as bank-account details, login credentials, private keys and wallet data. Mashinsky and Leon are broadly barred from advertising, marketing, promoting, offering or distributing products or services used to deposit, exchange, invest or withdraw assets, including through intermediaries, while Goldstein is barred from marketing or selling retail crypto products and services used to buy, sell, deposit, withdraw, distribute or trade cryptocurrency. The restrictions stem from the FTC’s 2023 allegations that Celsius marketed itself as safer than a bank, said customers could withdraw at any time, advertised yields of as much as 18.63% APY and claimed on June 7, 2022 that it had sufficient reserves before freezing withdrawals and transfers five days later. Celsius filed for bankruptcy on July 13, 2022. Payments made through Justice Department forfeiture and Celsius bankruptcy settlements count toward the obligations, meaning the orders may not result in additional payouts for Celsius creditors.