Prosecutors have asked a judge to sentence Celsius Network founder Alex Mashinsky to 20 years behind bars.
It comes as investors who lost their savings when the doomed crypto lender collapsed call for him to spend the rest of his life in prison.
In a sentencing memo, the U.S. Justice Department said he should face “just punishment for his years-long campaign of lies and self-dealing that left in its wake billions in losses and thousands of victimized customers.”
The filing asserts that Mashinsky “misrepresented how Celsius handled customer deposits, fabricated the company’s profitability, and placed his customers’ funds at the mercy of uncollateralized loans and undisclosed market bets.”
Mashinsky has pled guilty to two of the seven fraud counts against him—commodities fraud and conspiring to manipulate the value of CEL tokens.
Prosecutors argue that his crimes sparked losses of $550 million, while he personally profited by more than $48 million.
“His crimes were not the product of negligence, naiveté, or bad luck. They were the result of deliberate, calculated decisions to lie, deceive, and steal in pursuit of personal fortune,” the memo reads.
The filing goes on to claim that Mashinsky has “engaged in elaborate linguistic acrobatics” in an effort to avoid taking responsibility.
According to the Justice Department, a 20-year jail term would reflect the seriousness of his crimes, deter other fraudsters, and would be consistent with the sentences handed to others prosecuted in similar cases.
Pointing to the 150-year sentence given to Bernie Madoff and the 25 years handed to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, prosecutors wrote: “Defendants who steal billions of dollars through calculated deceit deserve decades, not years, in prison.”
The memo went on to warn: “Mashinsky’s sentencing submission shows he has not truly reckoned with what he did, and he has shown remorse only for the fact that his scheme unraveled and he was caught. If Mashinsky cannot admit the full scope of his crimes, there is no reasonable assurance that he will not commit them again.”
Mashinsky has previously argued that he is worthy of a lesser sentence than SBF because he pleaded guilty—but prosecutors reject this, and argue there are factors that suggest he should receive an even harsher punishment.
Pointing out that the Celsius founder enriched himself to a greater degree, the filing adds: “While Bankman-Fried was in his 20s and argued that his actions were attributable to youth and inexperience, Mashinsky, who is in his 60s, was indisputably old enough and experienced enough to better appreciate the crimes he was committing.”
He is due to be sentenced on May 8.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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