A former top executive of the bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network, Roni Cohen-Pavon, was released after a U.S. federal judge sentenced him to time already served and one year of supervised release. Judge John G. Koeltl of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York handed down the sentence on May 13, following Cohen-Pavon’s guilty plea over his role in artificially inflating the price of Celsius’s native token, CEL, and defrauding platform users between 2018 and 2022.
Because the court credited him for the period he had already spent in custody, Cohen-Pavon faces no additional prison time. He has agreed to forfeit more than $1 million and pay a $40,000 fine. The sentence closes a major chapter in the criminal fallout from Celsius’s 2022 bankruptcy, which locked up billions in customer funds. Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky is already serving a 12-year prison term after pleading guilty to multiple fraud charges and was ordered to forfeit $48 million.
The case is one of the clearest examples of U.S. prosecutors pursuing senior crypto executives for market manipulation and investor deception. It underscores growing legal accountability in the digital asset space and may influence future enforcement actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice. While criminal proceedings against Celsius executives are now largely resolved, the platform’s bankruptcy distribution process continues, and the precedent set for token manipulation cases is expected to shape the regulatory landscape.
