Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky Arrested, Charged with Fraud

 

- Alex Mashinsky, the founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, was arrested by US authorities and charged with fraud and market manipulation.

Imagine this - you put your money into a "bank" that pays out really high interest rates and promises to be totally safe. But behind the scenes, it's making risky investments, lying about its funds and profitability, and ultimately collapsing into bankruptcy. That describes the sad saga of cryptocurrency platform Celsius and its bombastic founder, Alex Mashinsky.

Mashinsky, once known as "Uncle Cel" for promoting Celsius, was arrested by the feds this week and charged with running a massive fraud. Prosecutors allege that Mashinsky duped over a million investors into pouring billions into Celsius with misleading sales pitches and false claims.

Authorities say Celsius portrayed itself as a "modern day bank" when in reality it operated more like a "risky investment fund" that lacked anywhere near the promised profits. The company also used customer deposits to manipulate the price of its own CEL token, allowing it to sell at inflated prices.

As the indictment shows, Mashinsky and Celsius ran an elaborate deception centered around phony spreadsheets, made-up users numbers, and hiding the fact that Celsius had to use over 80% of revenue just to pay interest to early investors. When crypto markets crashed last year, this whole pyramid scheme came crashing down.

Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July 2022 after the company "froze" users' assets, locking them out of access to billions of dollars. Thousands of angry investors were left with nothing.

Now Mashinsky, known as"Uncle Cel" for promoting the project on YouTube,faces criminal fraud charges. The SEC also filed a lawsuit seeking to ban him from the crypto industry for life while getting fines and penalties.

After the lies and deception are peeled away, all that's left of Celsius is a cautionary tale of crypto hype and mania that ended in total collapse and ruin for investors who thought they'd found a miracle high-yield savings account. But in the end, it was just another wild Ponzi scheme.

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