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Celsius Former Chief Revenue Officer Sentenced to Time Served After Nearly Three Years
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Roni Cohen-Pavon, the former chief revenue officer of collapsed cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius, has been sentenced to time served and one year of supervised release by Judge John Koeltl in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Cohen-Pavon pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy to commit price manipulation of the CEL token, having initially entered a not guilty plea following his September 2023 arrest before changing it about a week later. The sentencing closes one of the two major criminal cases to emerge from Celsius's 2022 collapse, which caused billions of dollars in investor and user losses. Cohen-Pavon agreed to pay more than $1 million in forfeiture and a $40,000 fine as part of the resolution. In a letter to Judge Koeltl ahead of sentencing, he wrote: "Whatever sentence the Court imposes, the deeper obligation will remain the same. I will have to spend the rest of my life becoming, through my conduct, the husband, father, and man my family had every right to expect from me all along.
"The time served sentence reflects the substantial cooperation Cohen-Pavon provided to prosecutors, which his lawyers argued contributed directly to former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky's guilty plea. Mashinsky is already serving a 12-year sentence following his own conviction and was ordered to pay $48 million in forfeiture — a dramatically different outcome that reflects the scale of his role and culpability relative to Cohen-Pavon's. Cohen-Pavon, an Israeli citizen who was outside the US when the indictment was filed and voluntarily reentered for his arraignment, posted a $500,000 bond and has been free with travel restrictions since September 2023. With both principal Celsius cases now resolved, the criminal proceedings arising from one of crypto's most significant 2022 collapses are effectively concluded.
