Celsius founder Mashinsky seeks to vacate 12‑year sentence

Alex Mashinsky, the founder and former chief executive of the collapsed cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network, has filed a motion in federal court seeking to vacate his 12-year prison sentence. The motion, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, challenges the integrity of his sentencing process rather than his underlying guilty plea to commodities fraud and securities fraud.

Mashinsky, who is now representing himself, argues he received ineffective legal counsel and that the court relied on tainted evidence, invoking the legal doctrine known as "fruit of the poisonous tree." In his filing, he stated his previous attorneys stopped communicating with him, leaving him no choice but to file his reply directly with the court. The motion does not seek to overturn his conviction but focuses on alleged errors in how his sentence was determined, particularly the calculation of investor losses and the assignment of responsibility for the harm caused by Celsius's collapse.

The case stems from the 2022 failure of Celsius, which marketed itself as a safe, yield-generating platform before freezing customer withdrawals and filing for bankruptcy amid a...