The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced it filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against Alexander Mashinsky and Celsius Network, LLC.
The complaint charges the defendants with fraud and material misrepresentations in connection with the operation of its digital asset-based finance platform, which falsely touted high profits and security to induce customers to deposit their digital asset commodities on the platform.
The complaint also alleges Celsius acted as an unregistered commodity pool operator (CPO) and Mashinsky operated as an unregistered associated person (AP) of a CPO. The CFTC and Celsius agreed to resolve the complaint against the company by imposing a permanent injunction prohibiting future violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA).
The complaint alleges that from 2018 through June 2022, Mashinsky and Celsius engaged in a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of customers by mispresenting the safety and profitability of its digital asset-based finance platform.
Mashinsky and Celsius, via publicly available videos, blog posts, livestreams, and postings on social media and their website, touted Celsius as a “safe” alternative for customers’ digital asset commodities, similar to a traditional bank. Mashinsky and Celsius not only promised customers their deposited digital asset commodities would be safe with Celsius, but also promised customers high yield interest payments on the deposits.
To generate income to pay its customers the promised interest rates, customers’ digital asset commodities were pooled and deployed by Celsius as loans to institutional and retail customers and for other revenue generating activities, including, but not limited to, the trading of futures contracts. For this trading, Celsius operated the Celsius Pool, but was not a registered CPO.
Additionally, Mashinsky did not register as an AP of a CPO, despite soliciting members of the general public to contribute to the Celsius Pool. Based on the false promises of the safety of Celsius’ operation and receipt of high interest rate payments, customers deposited approximately $20 billion with Celsius.
However, instead of engaging in “safe” investments, Mashinsky and Celsius engaged in increasingly risky trading strategies when they were unable to make customers’ interest payments. Despite claims by Mashinsky in May 2022 that Celsius had billions of dollars in liquidity and could meet customer withdrawal requests, on June 12, 2022, Celsius froze customer withdrawals.
In July 2022, Celsius filed for bankruptcy, revealing that its liabilities exceeded its assets by more than one billion dollars.
In its continuing litigation against Mashinsky, the CFTC seeks restitution, disgorgement, civil monetary penalties, permanent trading and registration bans, and a permanent injunction against further violations of the CEA and CFTC regulations, as charged.
In a parallel, separate action, on July 13, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment charging Mashinsky with fraud. Also, on July 13, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Celsius and Mashinsky with fraud.
Also today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a settlement with Celsius.
