Ex-Celsius executive pleads guilty to four charges

Roni Cohen-Pavon, former chief revenue officer at Celsius, pled guilty to four charges according to multiple reports on Thursday.

Bloomberg reported that the charges included fraud, securities price manipulation and conspiracy. His sentencing is set for December 2024, and he has a chance of leniency depending on his cooperation in the case against his former boss, Alex Mashinsky. 

Cohen-Pavon and former CEO Mashinsky are accused of inflating “the price of Celsius’s proprietary token, CEL,” in a July Department of Justice indictment.

The DOJ claims that both Mashinsky and Cohen-Pavon discussed artificially inflating Celsius (CEL) in WhatsApp messages.

“We’re not just sitting and watching the price. We’re on it all week and even now [another Celsius executive] and I are live with the market maker. The issue is that people are selling and no one is buying except for us,” Mashinsky allegedly said.

Cohen-Pavon is named as a co-defendant in the DOJ’s suit against Mashinsky, who also stands accused of defrauding investors. He faces a suit from the Federal Trade Commission as well as the DOJ.

An unsealed order in September showed that prosecutors froze Mashinsky’s assets in August.

Mashinsky’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the FTC suit on Tuesday, Sept. 12, claiming that the FTC does not “allege a violation of an FTC rule.”

However, lawyers for his co-defendant Hanoch Goldstein said, “Mashinsky was responsible for leading almost all of the acts of misconduct alleged in the Complaint, including conducting weekly marketing and advertising videos called ‘Ask Mashinsky Anything.”

Mashinsky’s legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Cohen-Pavon’s plea.

---

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

• Blockworks Daily: The newsletter that helps thousands of investors understand crypto and the markets, by Byron Gilliam.
• Empire: Start your morning with the top news and analysis to inform your day in crypto.
• Forward Guidance: Reporting and analysis on the growing intersection of crypto and macroeconomics, policy and finance.
• 0xResearch: Alpha directly in your inbox. Market highlights, data, degen trade ideas, governance updates, token performance and more.
• Lightspeed: Built for Solana investors, developers and community members. The latest from one of crypto’s hottest networks.
• The Drop: For crypto collectors and traders, covering apps, games, memes and more.
• Supply Shock: Tracking Bitcoin’s rise from internet plaything worth less than a penny to global phenomenon disrupting money as we know it.