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- Celsius misled customers when it advertised its business model, a court-appointed examiner said.
- The crypto lender filed for bankruptcy in June as the market collapsed.
- Examiner Shoba Pillay said the lender was making the market for its CEL coin by buying it.
Celsius, the bankrupt cryptocurrency lending company, misled customers and marketed itself as a different company from how it operated, a court-appointed examiner has said in a detailed probe into allegations that the group ran a Ponzi scheme.
In a Tuesday filing linked to Celsius Network LLC’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case, former prosecutor Shoba Pillay lamented Celsius’s use of risky investments and its role in “making the market” for its collapsed native coin CEL.
Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July last year, having frozen its accounts in June amid a crypto selloff that saw the value of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) plunge more than 60% and 70% from November 2021 highs.
The group had attracted customers with the promise of high-interest returns and easily available loans. The company pitched itself as being better than traditional “big banks,” Pillay wrote.
“The business model Celsius advertised and sold to its customers was not the business that Celsius actually operated,” Pillay said in an executive summary within her…
