The US Federal Trade Commission has fined the insolvent cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network $4.7 billion.
The statement made on July 13 states that Celsius and its affiliated businesses will be prohibited from always “offering, marketing, or promoting any product or service that could be used to deposit, exchange, invest, or withdraw any assets.”
The company’s headquarters in New Jersey offered customers a range of cryptocurrency goods and services, including interest-bearing accounts, personal loans backed by customers’ Bitcoin deposits, and a cryptocurrency exchange.
The FTC said in its lawsuit that platform co-founders Alex Mashinsky, Shlomi Leon, and Hanoch Goldstein misappropriated more than $4 billion in consumer assets while marketing the platform as a “safe place” for users to deposit their cryptocurrencies.
The action against the co-founders will go to federal court because they refused to sign an FTC settlement agreement. The FTC also charged Celsius with making unsecured loans totaling $1.2 billion, lying about having a user insurance coverage worth $75 million, and not having any way to track its assets and liabilities until late 2021.
According to the FTC, officials reportedly lied about the state of the company even as the 2022 cryptocurrency bear market was beginning:
“While lying to their customers to keep them from withdrawing their cryptocurrency deposits, Leon, Goldstein, and Mashinsky protected themselves by withdrawing significant sums of cryptocurrency from Celsius two months before the company filed for bankruptcy. Consumers subsequently lost access to their life savings, college funds, and money saved for retirement.”
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed cases against Celsius the same day. Mashinsky was arrested after being indicted by the US Department of Justice on seven fraud-related offenses simultaneously. In July of last year, Celsius previously declared bankruptcy.
