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Celsius founder and former CEO Alex Mashinsky has been sentenced to serve 12 years in prison for crypto fraud. Mashinsky defrauded hundreds of thousands of customers lured by his firm’s high interest rates on digital-asset deposits. JUST IN: Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky sentenced to 12 years for crypto fraud. — Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) May 8, 2025 Mashinsky pleaded guilty to the charges back in December and was sentenced Thursday by US District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan. Prosecutors previously wanted the former Celsius CEO to serve 20 years, calling him “unrepentant.” Federal prosecutors charged Mashinsky with fraud, conspiracy, and market manipulation. Moreover, they claimed that he had misled Celsius customers, using their investments to increase the value of both the company and a native cryptocurrency. However, Mashinsky’s defense argues that a shorter sentence would suffice. “He was not motivated by malevolence, cruelty, greed, or ego,” Mashinsk...

Summary: Summary: ⚈ ALCATRAZ meme coin rallied after Trump’s Alcatraz prison post. ⚈ The coin’s surge mimicked other opportunistic political-themed token launches. ⚈ Multiple ALCATRAZ tokens exist, but one led with a 255% price spike. A newly-listed meme coin, Jail of the United States (ALCATRAZ), was quick to rise to stardom and enjoy a strong rally in the night between May 4 and May 5 after President Donald Trump revealed his plans for the famed prison in a Truth Social post. The ALCATRAZ cryptocurrency’s price tracking started late Sunday on TradingView. Within about three hours, it soared from $0.00008154 to highs at approximately $0.0002895, for a total rally of 255.04%. While the surge did not last long and Jail of the United States swiftly entered a correction, it remains, at its press time price of $0.0001266, up 55.26%. ALCATRAZ price chart. Source: TradingView The opportunistic launch of ALCATRAZ Both the timing of the listing and the...

Nishad Singh, the former Director of Engineering at FTX, has filed a sentencing submission in his criminal case arguing that he should avoid prison in light of his extensive cooperation and smaller role than many of the conspirators in the fraud. The documents detail Singh’s roles at Alameda Research and FTX, from almost the beginning of Alameda up until the firms plunged into a chaotic bankruptcy. They detail Singh’s narrative about how he was unaware of the misappropriation of customer funds at FTX until just months before the collapse, though this underplays his role in creating the infamous ‘allow negative’ years before.  Singh, like other executives, also emphasized that it was recommended to him that he take large, poorly documented loans from Alameda instead of liquidating his tokens to fund his activities. Among his activities described as “regrettable” was the purchase of a multi-million dollar vacation home after he was aware of the theft...

There is a conspiracy theory circulating that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a secret backer of Solana. As the theory goes, Solana founder Anatoly Yakavenko is a Ukrainian immigrant to the US, and for that reason, might be easily swayed by a powerful government agency. Not only that, he’s not antisemitic and may even be Jewish himself. Given that speculation around Jewish control of various aspects of society is deeply rooted in conspiracy circles, this alone is enough to make claims about Yakavenko’s supposed CIA backing easier to swallow. Solana famously also sold early allocations of its native SOL token to groups of wealthy, well-connected, and powerful venture capitalists. This, according to the theory, violated the principles of the Cypherpunks and may well have been a way for the CIA to gain alliances at the upper echelons of society . This Solana – CIA connection is very disappointing. I was hoping for the Anunnaki or something cool like that. pic....

Ryan Salame, the former co-chief exec of FTX Digital Markets, has been sentenced to 90 months in prison for conspiracy to make unlawful political contributions and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter. Salame has also been ordered to make $6 million in forfeiture and $5 million in restitution. Salame was directly involved in the usage of the ‘North Dimension’ entity to aid in maintaining access to bank accounts for FTX, despite it not being appropriately licensed to serve as a money transmitter. He was also instrumental in FTX’s political influence scheme, working with Sam Bankman-Fried and Nishad Singh to make hundreds of unlawful political donations. Additionally, FTX Digital Markets made hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of payments to Michelle Bond, a failed congressional candidate and romantic partner to Salame. Bond additionally received donations to her campaign from FTX US. Salame’s sentence weighs in at significantly less than t...

Due to some formalities in the criminal justice system, a world-class team of lawyers, and Fifth Amendment protections of due process, former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao isn’t yet in prison despite receiving a four-month sentence. On April 30, 2024, a US district judge in Seattle sentenced Zhao to four months at Seatac, an administrative security federal detention center and prison. According to the judge’s signed judgment, Zhao “shall surrender for service of sentence as notified by the Probation or Pretrial Services Office.” Those offices have not yet notified Zhao that he must enter that California prison. Possibilities for sentenced criminals who don’t immediately go to prison According to federal statute 18 U.S.C. § 3585(a), a criminal’s sentence begins when that person is ‘received in custody awaiting transportation to, or voluntarily surrenders to, the official detention facility at which her sentence is to be served.’ Although that sentence can begin i...

Kyle Davies, the founder of bankrupt Three Arrows Capital (3AC), was recently interviewed on the cryptocurrency podcast Unchained. During the interview, Davies explained how he intends to avoid his prison sentence in Singapore, how he still believes his actions were not fraudulent, and why “Uncle Kyle’s Chicken restaurant” is still unlaunched.  Davies claimed the pending Singaporean prison sentence was a surprise, blamed his and Su Zhu‘s lawyers for not adequately reminding them about the court date that they missed, and also said that “this is not my full-time job.” Despite their lawyers apparently being responsible for their prison sentences, Davies noted that he has not fired his lawyers, though he did muse that, “maybe we should.” Davies also noted that he does not intend to return to Singapore for as long as the prison sentence is waiting for him. Davies has also not returned to the United States since the collapse of Three Arrow...

While spending his days behind bars, the once-touted ‘King of Crypto’ and founder of the disgraced cryptocurrency trading platform FTX, found guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, Sam Bankman-Fried, is biding time giving crypto investment tips to prison guards. Indeed, Bankman-Fried, a.k.a. SBF, currently resides in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, where he has been sharing crypto market tips, recommending the guards to invest in Solana (SOL), according to The New York Times report published on February 27. Preparing appeal and promoting Solana Specifically, as the article reads, a “person with knowledge on the matter” said that the former crypto exchange CEO has been spending time in his jail cell preparing the appeal on his criminal conviction and sharing financial advice that heavily favors the native token of the Solana layer 1 blockchain: Picked for you Ripple v. SEC case update for end of February 2024 2 hours ago How rich ...

On September 20, 11,000 soldiers of the Venezuelan army regained control of the Tocorón prison, run by the criminal gang Tren de Aragua. Inside the prison: A nightclub, a swimming pool, a small zoo, a playground, and a Bitcoin (BTC) mining facility with dozens of what were identified as Bitcoin machines. “Inmates could place bets on horse races, arrange loans at a makeshift bank and dance the night away at a nightclub dubbed ‘Tokio’”, says a report by BBC News on September 21. “When food and everyday items were hard to come by in Venezuela at the height of the country’s economic crisis, one newspaper reported that locals would go to Tocorón to buy the essentials they could not get anywhere else.” — BBC News Notably, the Tocorón prison was known as being the center of operations of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang and the AFP News report in Spanish said “It worked like a small city”, also having a “banking agency”. Who was paying for the energy to mine Bitcoin inside of a...