After the news broke that senior executives of cryptocurrency lending firm Celsius had cashed out between $17 and $23 million worth of crypto from custody accounts right before suspending client withdrawals and filing for bankruptcy, its ex-CEO seems to be dumping his CEL tokens.
Indeed, Mashinsky, who stepped down from the position of Celsius’ CEO on September 27, has been keeping himself busy by dumping his Celsius (CEL) tokens across multiple crypto wallets, YouTube investigator Coffeezilla tweeted on October 11.
CEL dumping continues
Since the start of October, Mashinsky has sent almost $1 million in Celsius and USD Coin (USDC) from his wallets to MetaMask and UniSwap, according to data by crypto analytics platform Nansen.
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According to the popular YouTuber, who referred to Mashinsky as a “cartoonish villain,” there is another wallet belonging to Mashinsky that has moved about $225,376 in CEL and USDC over the past month. As he stated:
“After getting called out for stealing money from his company on the brink of bankruptcy, he starts dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars of CEL tokens across multiple wallets.”
On top of that, Coffeezilla noted that Mashinsky was still dumping the tokens across wallets at the time when he was writing his tweet – “last trade 3 min ago.”
Stephen Findeisen, a.k.a. Coffeezilla is known for his investigations of online scams, including false marketing of crypto brokerage firm Voyager Digital, TRON DAO Reserve’s USDD stablecoin he suggested could be a Ponzi scheme, claims of insider trading at Coinbase, as well as SafeMoon ex-marketing chief’s pump and dump scheme.
Celsius in trouble with the law
Meanwhile, Mashinsky and former chief security officer at Celsius Daniel Leon allegedly removed at least $17 million in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), USD Coin, and Celsius tokens from custody accounts, as detailed in a Statement of Financial Affairs submitted in early October.
At the same time, court documents have uncovered that Kristine Mashinsky, the wife of the former Celsius CEO, herself might have participated in the withdrawals, cashing out more than $2 million in the CEL token on May 31, as Finbold reported.
Earlier in September, the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation submitted a public court filing in which it accused Celsius of hiding its financial woes from its investors and “engaged in the improper manipulation of the price” of its tokens to improve its balance sheet.
