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Celsius co-founders Leon and Goldstein ordered to pay $6M+ to FTC
The FTC settlements also bar Leon from marketing or selling products or services that could be used to deposit, exchange, invest, or withdraw crypto assets.
Cointelegraph reports that Celsius co-founders Shlomi Daniel Leon and Hanoch “Nuke” Goldstein have been ordered to pay more than $6 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges tied to alleged misrepresentations about the safety of the Celsius platform before the company collapsed.
Goldstein, Celsius’ former chief technology officer, was ordered to pay $2.014 million under an order signed by US District Judge Denise Cote, while Leon, the former chief strategy officer, was ordered to pay $4.1 million under a separate order entered on June 29.
The settlements extend the fallout from Celsius’ 2022 collapse, when the crypto lending platform held $25 billion in assets at its peak and owed users $4.7 billion upon filing for bankruptcy in July 2022.
The FTC alleged Celsius falsely told customers it had sufficient reserves for withdrawals, maintained a $750 million insurance policy for customer deposits, and did not issue unsecured loans, and Cointelegraph notes the settlements add to a prior $10 million FTC settlement agreed by former CEO Alex Mashinsky in April.