Ex-Celsius Exec Sentenced to Time Served after Guilty Plea

A US federal judge has sentenced the former chief revenue officer of defunct cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius to time served after almost three years following his arrest on fraud and conspiracy charges.

In a sentencing hearing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday, Judge John Koeltl ordered that Roni Cohen-Pavon be sentenced to time served and one year of supervised release for his role in manipulating the price of Celsius’s CEL token and fraud on the platform.

The former chief revenue officer initially pleaded not guilty to four charges following his arrest in September 2023, changing his plea to guilty about a week later.

Alex Mashinsky at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami. Source: Cointelegraph

Cohen-Pavon was indicted along with former CEO Alex Mashinsky in July 2023 after the 2022 collapse of Celsius, which led to billions of dollars’ worth of investor and user losses.

Cohen-Pavon, an Israeli citizen and resident, was outside the US when prosecutors filed the indictment, but later reentered the country for his arraignment. He posted a $500,000 bond in September 2023 and has been free to travel with some restrictions.

With the sentencing of Cohen-Pavon and Mashinsky, who is already serving 12 years following his guilty plea, the criminal cases involving Celsius are winding down. The former CEO was ordered to pay $48 million as part of a forfeiture in his criminal case, while Cohen-Pavon agreed to pay more than $1 million and a $40,000 fine.

Related: Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky settles FTC case with $10M payment

“Whatever sentence the Court imposes, the deeper obligation will remain the same,” said Cohen-Pavon in a letter to Koeltl before his sentencing. “I will have to spend the rest of my life becoming, through my conduct, the husband, father, and man my family had every right to expect from me all along.”

The sentencing memorandum for Roni Cohen-Pavon. Source: Court Listener

Tornado Cash co-founder still potentially looking at SDNY retrial

Roman Storm, the co-founder of crypto mixing service Tornado Cash, still faces a possible retrial on two charges in the Southern District of New York after a jury failed to reach a verdict in his trial last year.

Prosecutors requested that a judge schedule the proceedings in October to retry Storm on money laundering and sanctions violation conspiracy charges, for which the jury deadlocked.

The terms of Storm’s $2 million bail restrict the Tornado Cash co-founder to certain areas of New York, Washington and California. However, on Thursday, a federal judge granted him permission to “attend his niece’s high school graduation” in El Dorado Hills, California.

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