The founder and former boss of the Celsius cryptocurrency exchange was indicted and taken into custody on Thursday. This situation comes one year after the company filed for bankruptcy, which had blocked nearly five billion dollars in customer assets.

Alexander Mashinsky is accused, among other things, of deception, market manipulation, fraud, the Manhattan Federal Attorney's Office Damian Williams said in a statement, according to which the entrepreneur “deceived his customers and gave them a false image of fundamental aspects of the company he created.”

The 50-year-old, born in Ukraine, before moving to Israel, then to the United States, faces several decades in prison, five of the seven charges against him each providing a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison.

Arrested on Thursday, he was due to be presented that same day to a federal judge in Manhattan.

In addition, the former boss is accused of manipulating the price of the cryptocurrency created by Celsius, the CEL, in particular by using, without their knowledge, funds deposited by customers to buy the currency and artificially inflate its price.