The U.S. government seeks to seize $1.07 million in assets before sentencing former Celsius executives

On May 14, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said in a court filing on Tuesday that Roni Cohen-Pavon, the former Chief Revenue Officer of the defunct crypto lending platform Celsius, agreed to a forfeiture judgment of $1.07 million, an amount representing proceeds traceable to his criminal conduct. Cohen-Pavon pleaded guilty in September 2023 to charges related to Celsius’s CEL token fraud and conspiracy to manipulate prices, and is scheduled to be sentenced this Thursday.
Cohen-Pavon’s lawyer previously asked for him to be sentenced to the time he has already served, citing his cooperation agreement with the government and the role he may have played in the guilty plea of Celsius’s former CEO Alex Mashinsky. Mashinsky was sentenced to 12 years in prison in May 2025 for commodities and securities fraud and agreed to forfeit more than $48 million. In a letter to the judge, Cohen-Pavon said, “I plead guilty because I am guilty. I participated in the manipulation of the CEL token. I should have stopped but didn’t, and I could have left but didn’t. I take full responsibility for this.”
Also, according to a report on Thursday, Judge Lewis Kaplan of the same court ordered that $10 million in assets associated with former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried be used to fulfill his forfeiture agreement. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $11 billion in fines for defrauding FTX users and investors. His appeal to overturn the conviction and sentence is still pending.