He is now permanently barred from the securities, commodities and cryptocurrency industries. The $35 million the attorney general announced is the sum of two penalties that fall due only if he fails to forfeit $10 million to federal prosecutors or fails to serve his full prison sentence.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said on Friday that her office has secured a permanent ban on Alex Mashinsky's participation in the securities, commodities and cryptocurrency industries, along with payments of up to $35 million, resolving the case the state brought against the former Celsius Network chief executive in 2023.
The ban applies now. The money depends on what Mashinsky does next. Under the settlement described in the attorney general's announcement, he must pay New York $25 million only if he fails to forfeit $10 million in ill-gotten gains to the federal government, in addition to assets already forfeited under his federal plea agreement. He must pay the state a further $10 million only if he does not serve his full prison sentence, which the release describes as mandated by the criminal court and overseen by the Bureau of Prisons.
Both payments are triggered by non-compliance rather than by the settlement itself. If Mashinsky makes the federal forfeiture and serves his term, neither condition is met and New York receives nothing under the agreement. The "up to $35 million" figure is the sum of the two contingent amounts, which makes it a measure of the state's exposure to his failure to comply rather than a sum changing hands.
Two separate $10 million figures appear in the terms and they do different work. The first is the forfeiture Mashinsky owes the federal government, which he must complete to avoid the $25 million payment to New York. The second is the penalty payable to New York if his sentence ends early. Both the attorney general's release and CoinDesk's report set out the two conditions, while The Block reported the $35 million and the ban without the payment terms.
Mashinsky is serving a 12-year federal sentence after pleading guilty to securities and commodities fraud. In that case he was also ordered to forfeit more than $48 million to the federal government. The release does not explain how that order relates to the $10 million forfeiture the state settlement refers to, which it describes only as additional to assets already forfeited under the plea agreement.
The state sued Mashinsky in 2023, alleging that he misled hundreds of thousands of investors, including more than 26,000 New Yorkers, by promoting Celsius as a safer home for savings than a bank while the company put customer assets into risky investments and concealed the results. The release says Celsius lost hundreds of millions of dollars on those investments and that Mashinsky tried to hide the losses from investors. It cites a disabled veteran who lost a $36,000 investment he had taken nearly a decade to save.
"Alex Mashinsky promised New Yorkers that his company was a secure place to invest their hard-earned savings, only to leave them penniless when his risky investments collapsed," James said in the release. She added that she would not allow scammers to use cryptocurrencies to prey on unsuspecting New Yorkers.
Celsius froze customer withdrawals in June 2022 and filed for bankruptcy about a month later. More than $3.4 billion had been distributed to creditors in that proceeding as of August 2026, according to the attorney general. The estate is still litigating to recover more, including a claim for 6,360 bitcoin against a closing BitMEX over positions liquidated in March 2020.
Mashinsky was already barred from the industry by two federal agencies before Friday. The Block reported a Federal Trade Commission action in April 2026 and a Commodity Futures Trading Commission order in June 2026 that imposed permanent trading and registration bans. Neither was examined for this article. The attorney general's release separately says Celsius founders and executives were forced to pay $16.5 million to the FTC, a figure covering more people than Mashinsky.
A similar distance between a headline number and its practical effect appeared in a recent Los Angeles sentencing, where Adam Iza's 78 months for Meta fraud added no time in custody because the term runs concurrently with a longer sentence he is already serving, leaving $23.4 million in restitution as the operative penalty.
What the New York settlement adds beyond the existing federal bans is a state prohibition covering securities, commodities and cryptocurrency, and a financial consequence if Mashinsky's prison term is cut short. The release links to a stipulation titled New York v. Alex Mashinsky. It does not name the court or set out terms beyond the ban and the two payment conditions.
