Svmuu News: Celsius co-founders Shlomi Daniel Leon and Hanoch “Nuke” Goldstein have been ordered to pay the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) more than $6 million to settle allegations that they misled the public about the platform’s security prior to Celsius’s collapse.
Goldstein, who served as Celsius’s chief technology officer, must pay $2.014 million under an order signed Monday by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote. Leon, who served as Celsius’s chief strategy officer, must pay $4.1 million under a separate order entered on June 29.
The FTC stated that Celsius had claimed to hold sufficient reserves to meet withdrawal demands, maintain $750 million in insurance covering customer deposits, and not issue unsecured loans. The FTC alleged that these promises were false and that executives continued to claim customer deposits were safe even days before the company filed for bankruptcy.
At its peak, Celsius held $25 billion in assets; when it filed for bankruptcy in July 2022, it owed users $4.7 billion. The order also prohibits Leon from marketing or selling products or services that can be used to deposit, exchange, invest in, or withdraw assets, and prohibits Goldstein from marketing or selling retail products or services that can be used to trade cryptocurrency.