Biography

Alexander Mashinsky (Russian: Алекс Машински; born 6 October 1965) is an Israeli-American entrepreneur, business executive and fraudster. He is a co-founder and former CEO of Celsius Network, a bankrupt cryptocurrency lending platform. In the early 1990s, Mashinsky founded VoiceSmart, one of the first firms to offer telecommunications switches to handle ordinary voice as well as Voice over IP call routing. Mashinsky founded GroundLink in 2004 as a service to book on-demand limousines and car services from a computer or smartphone. He also founded Q-Wireless, which later became part of Transit Wireless. From 2014 to 2015, Mashinsky was CEO of Novatel. Mashinsky is the defendant in a civil lawsuit brought in January 2023 by the Attorney General of New York, who accuses him of securities fraud while CEO of Celsius. On 13 July 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Mashinsky and Celsius with violating federal security laws. On the same day, he was indicted and arrested by federal authorities in the Southern District of New York for alleged fraud and market manipulation. Mashinsky pled guilty to one count of commodities fraud and one count of securities fraud, and was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment.