Alex Mashinsky, founder and former CEO of now-bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius, submit The court filed a new motion asking that the FTC’s case against him be dismissed “in its entirety.”
Legal counsel for the former Celsius boss argued that the allegations against his client did not support a claim that he knowingly made false statements to “fraudulently obtain customer information from a financial institution”. Attorneys said the charges did not meet the criteria for claims under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The 1999 law requires knowingly making false statements to fraudulently collect customer information from a financial institution.
In addition, the lawyers claimed that because Marcinski resigned as Celsius CEO on September 27, 2023, the indictment failed to prove that he was “violating” or “imminent to violate” the law.
The FTC fined bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network $4.7 billion in July and filed a lawsuit against Celsius founders and Celsius co-founders Shlomi Daniel Leon and Hanoch “Nuke” Goldstein. Marcinski’s legal team also represents Goldstein.
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his lawyer claim The FTC appears to be suing Goldstein based solely on the fact that he retweeted Celsius’s blog post. Goldstein said such behavior was misinterpreted as a sign of complicity or involvement in alleged wrongdoing.
Before its collapse in 2022, Celsius was one of the largest cryptocurrency lending platforms and was led by Mashinsky. The founder resigned as CEO later that September, and by the end of 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted the former CEO on multiple criminal fraud charges. Masinski has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges against him and is free on $40 million bail.
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