Falled Crypto Lending Platform Celsius Network Founder should face 20 years behind bars, according to prosecutors.

The founder and ex -Chief Executive of the Failed Cryptocurrency Loan PlatformNetwork of CelsiusIt should deal with 20 years behind the bars to lie and self -control that customers cost billions of dollars in losses, prosecutors told a judge on Tuesday.

Alexander Mashinsky59, he told thousands of customers that their money was safe and safe, which caused investors to pour more than $ 20 billion in Celsius in 2021, they wrote in a presentation before the sentence scheduled for May 8 in the Federal Court of Manhattan.

“They were not,” the prosecutors said, noting that Celsius declared bankruptcy in 2022 and acknowledged that he could not return to customers what they had invested.

The prosecutors said Mashinsky made the return of Celsius and put customers ‘customers’ funds at non -arlateralized loans and non -disseminated market bets. In the meantime, the company was announced as a modern bank where people could deposit Crypt assets safely and gain interest.

“Mashinsky’s behavior made him rich,” they wrote.

In his submission to the judge, defense lawyers said that his client should not deal with a year and one day in prison after declaring to blame for federal fraud in December. In doing it, he admitted to misleading customers between 2018 and 2022.

The defense blamed the collapse of Celsius in a “cataclysmic fall” of the cryptocurrency markets in May and June 2022.

“His actions were never predators, exploiters or venals. He never acted with the intention of hurting anyone. He never stole money or erased with anyone’s assets. And he has never been driven by greed, cruelty or greed,” said lawyers.

They also said that Mashinsky had a difficult early life in a small Ukrainian town of the former Soviet Union, which his family fled when he was 7 years old. They moved to Israel, where Mashinsky served for three years in Israeli defense forces as a hunting pilot.

“ This is not a arrogant and greedy scammer who thought he could go out with stealing the money from the people to satisfy his own hedonistic pleasures. Nor is a shameless company that was exposed as a card home. These are postoc, shallow and dehumanizing troops that are not applied here, ” said the defense.

Lawyers described Mashinsky as a devotee father to six children who deserves a partly mercy because their crimes came from “otherwise legitimate efforts that have gone into crime as a result of unexpected difficulties.”

Due to its supplication, Mashinsky accepted illegally manipulating the price of the Crypt to testimony of Celsius, as his own tiles secretly came at pocket prices for about $ 48 million.

In court, he admitted that in 2021 he publicly suggested that there was a regulatory consent for company movements because he knew that customers would “find false comfort” with this.

He said that in 2019 he came from crypto sheets, although he told the audience that he was not, knowing that customers would also get a false comfort.

An indictment alleged that Mashinsky promoted Celsius through media interviews, his social media accounts and the Celsius website, along with a weekly session “Ask Mashinsky anything” published on the Celsius website. YouTube Canal.

This story originally presented to Fortune.com

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