Lawyers representing Alex Mashinsky, the former CEO of the crypto platform Celsius facing a criminal indictment in the United States, have lost a motion to drop two charges related to commodities fraud and manipulating the price of the Celsius token.
n a Nov. 8 filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge John Koeltl ruled that Mashinsky’s legal team’s arguments to have the charges dismissed were “either moot or without merit.” The judge denied the motion to dismiss the two charges, leaving seven counts on the indictment for the former Celsius CEO’s trial, scheduled to begin in January 2025.
The former Celsius CEO’s lawyers claimed that the securities and commodities fraud charges were inconsistent, as prosecutors alleged the platform’s Earn Program was treated as a security while the Bitcoin deposited by investors were commodities. Mashinsky also claimed that he lacked “fair warning” that allegedly manipulating the price of CEL was a criminal charge.
