Ex-Celsius Exec Roni Cohen-Pavon Sentenced for CEL Fraud

Roni Cohen-Pavon, former Chief Revenue Officer of the now-defunct Celsius Network, has been sentenced to time served and one year of supervised release for his involvement in manipulating the price of Celsius’s CEL token and defrauding users. U.S. District Judge John Koeltl delivered the sentence on May 14, 2026, nearly three years after Cohen-Pavon was arrested and pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and conspiracy.

Cohen-Pavon’s case is one of the final chapters in Celsius’s downfall, which began with the platform’s collapse in mid-2022. Once a major player in crypto lending, Celsius managed over $20 billion in customer assets at its peak. Promising high yields on deposits, it froze withdrawals in June 2022 before filing for bankruptcy the following month. The collapse left billions in losses for investors, with CEL token holders among the hardest hit.

Prosecutors alleged that Cohen-Pavon, alongside Celsius founder and former CEO Alex Mashinsky, engaged in fraudulent schemes to inflate the value of CEL, which at one point traded above $8 in June 2021. By the time of Cohen-Pavon’s sentencing, CEL was trading at just $0.019, reflecting the token’s near-total collapse and the broader fallout from Celsius’s bankruptcy.

Cohen-Pavon initially pleaded not guilty in September 2023 but changed his plea to guilty within weeks. In addition to his time-served sentence, he agreed to pay over $1 million in restitution and a $40,000 fine. Mashinsky, meanwhile, received a harsher punishment, sentenced to 12 years in prison in May 2025 and ordered to forfeit $48 million.

Market reaction to news of Cohen-Pavon’s sentencing was muted, reflecting CEL’s diminished trading activity and relevance. With a market cap of just $690,000 as of May 14, 2026, and daily volume data unavailable, the token’s price movements have little impact on the broader crypto market.

Cohen-Pavon’s sentencing underscores a broader push by U.S. regulators and prosecutors to hold crypto executives accountable for fraudulent activities. Alongside Mashinsky's case, it serves as a cautionary tale for firms operating in the volatile and often underregulated crypto industry.

While the legal proceedings against Celsius’s leadership are nearing their conclusion, the platform’s bankruptcy process continues, with creditors awaiting further distributions. For CEL token holders, however, the prospects remain bleak, with current prices reflecting the token’s de facto obsolescence.