Former chief income officer at Celsius pleads responsible to 4 felony prices

Roni Cohen-Pavon, the previous chief income officer of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Community, has pleaded responsible to U.S. felony prices associated to the collapse of the crypto lending community final 12 months.

Reuters reported this morning that Cohen-Pavon pleaded responsible to 4 prices, together with manipulating the worth of the alternate’s token, CEL.

Cohen-Pavon, together with former CEO and co-founder Alex Mashinsky, was charged in July with market manipulation and wire fraud for artificially inflating the worth of CEL, based on court docket paperwork.

Fallout

The case is a part of a sequence of prices towards key figures within the crypto lending sector. Crypto lenders comparable to Celsius noticed speedy progress as crypto costs surged in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, promising straightforward mortgage entry and memorable rates of interest to depositors and lending tokens to institutional traders, aiming to revenue from the distinction.

Nonetheless, in 2022, a flurry of buyer withdrawals and a dramatic drop in cryptocurrency costs led to the collapse of crypto lenders like Celsius and FTX as they failed to fulfill these calls for. Mashinsky, nevertheless, reportedly withdrew $10 million from the corporate simply weeks earlier than its chapter.

Mashinsky, who additionally faces civil fraud prices introduced by New York Lawyer Common Letitia James, has “vehemently” denied the fees and intends to battle them in court docket. He was launched after his arrest in July on a $40 million bail.

Cohen-Pavon and Mashinsky will not be the one high-profile crypto trade figures dealing with felony or civil prices. Ex-FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and former Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon are each dealing with felony prices from the Division of Justice, whereas the U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee has filed dozens of fits towards varied actors and initiatives, together with main trade gamers comparable to Binance and Coinbase.

Cohen-Pavon’s sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 11, 2024, marking a major date within the ongoing saga of authorized proceedings towards key figures within the crypto lending trade.