Alex Mashinsky filed a handwritten motion in federal court on May 26, 2026, seeking to vacate his 12-year prison sentence — arguing that his own lawyers were compromised by their undisclosed financial relationship with Sam Bankman-Fried, the man Mashinsky now says destroyed his company in the first place.

The motion, a 51-page habeas corpus petition filed pro se in the Southern District of New York (Case 1:23-cr-00347-JGK, Document 189), is the Celsius founder's first formal legal challenge since he was sentenced in January 2025. He wrote it by hand from FCI Otisville, where he is serving his term. No attorney signed it.

The Conflict Claim

Mashinsky's core argument is that his law firm, Mukasey & Young LLP, was in financial distress caused by its engagement with FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried. That, he says, created an unresolvable conflict of interest — because SBF's alleged market manipulation of the CEL token and StETH was itself a cause of Celsius's collapse.

In his own words from the motion: "The root of counsel's deficiencies lay in the undisclosed financial distress of the firm Mukasey & Young LLP. This distress created a conflict of interest that permeated every strategic decision made by counsel since the outset of the petitioner's representation."

The theory is that a firm financially entangled with FTX could not have mounted a defense that leaned into SBF's conduct as contributing to Celsius's liquidity crisis — because that would have reflected poorly on its other client. Mashinsky invokes "fruit of a poisonous tree," a doctrine typically applied to evidence obtained through unconstitutional police conduct, and applies it to his entire defense strategy.

The legal standard for ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland v. Washington requires showing both that counsel's performance was deficient and that the deficiency prejudiced the outcome. Mashinsky is arguing both: his lawyers were compromised from day one and, as a result, he never received advice untainted by their competing financial interest.

The SBF Angle

The irony in Mashinsky's motion is hard to miss. He is the man who stood in a Manhattan courtroom and said, "I know what I did was wrong, and I want to try to do whatever I can to make it right." He pleaded guilty to commodities fraud and securities fraud, admitted his conduct caused harm to Celsius customers, and received a sentence that his victims argued was too lenient.

Now he is pointing at SBF.

His claim is that Bankman-Fried's manipulation of the CEL token and StETH drove the liquidity shock that forced Celsius to pause withdrawals in June 2022 — and that a law firm properly representing him would have built that argument into his defense. Celsius paused customer withdrawals on June 12, 2022, and filed for bankruptcy roughly five weeks later. The Department of Justice later charged Mashinsky with defrauding customers of at least $42 million through misrepresentations about Celsius's financial health and its own token.

What Mashinsky is not saying — and the motion does not allege — is that he is innocent. He is saying the lawyers who helped him decide how to plead, what to argue, and how much to fight were making those decisions while financially compromised by their exposure to the other side of his defense.

The Handwritten Detail

The pro se filing matters beyond symbolism. Mashinsky's ineffective counsel claim is built around the argument that his lawyers failed him at every stage. Filing without a lawyer is how you demonstrate you no longer trust the institution of legal representation — or at least, that is the argument it sets up. A judge reading a handwritten habeas petition from a federal inmate has to reckon with the fact that the man could not, or would not, find an attorney willing to sign it.

The motion runs 51 pages. The handwritten text, transcribed from a court scan, contains occasional OCR artifacts but is substantively coherent. Mashinsky identifies himself as prisoner number 63086-510 and lists FCI Otisville in New York as his place of confinement.

Where This Stands

A § 2255 motion is not an appeal. It is a collateral attack on a conviction or sentence, limited to claims that the sentence was "imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States." The most common ground is ineffective counsel, which is exactly what Mashinsky is citing. These motions succeed rarely: the bar for showing both deficient performance and actual prejudice is high, and courts are generally reluctant to unwind guilty pleas.

The government has not yet responded. Judge John G. Koeltl, who presided over the original case, will decide whether to order a response, hold a hearing, or dismiss the motion outright.

What Celsius Victims Think

The victims of Celsius's collapse — roughly 600,000 customers who had billions locked in the platform when it froze withdrawals — have not had a quiet relationship with this prosecution. When Mashinsky was sentenced to 12 years in January 2025, a vocal portion of the creditor community called it insufficient. Some had pushed for life imprisonment. The idea that Mashinsky is now seeking to reduce or vacate that sentence will not land well with that group.

Last month, Mashinsky separately agreed to a $10 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and accepted a lifetime ban from the cryptocurrency industry. That settlement resolved FTC claims that Celsius deceived customers about the safety and returns of its lending product. The $10 million figure is not restitution to victims; it is a civil penalty. The criminal sentence, and any reduction of it, is a separate matter entirely.

The Larger Picture

The SBF-caused-Celsius argument has circulated in crypto circles since the summer of 2022. Celsius's bankruptcy estate raised versions of it in civil litigation. Whether it has legal force in a § 2255 motion — where the issue is not what SBF did but what Mashinsky's lawyers did or failed to do — is a different question. Mashinsky is not arguing that SBF should have been charged for his losses. He is arguing that his lawyers' relationship with SBF made them incapable of giving him unbiased counsel.

The motion does not name partners or detail the specific FTX engagement at Mukasey & Young LLP. It does not include a declaration from any attorney at the firm, a billing record, or a financial disclosure. What it has is Mashinsky's assertion, in his own handwriting, that the conflict existed and was material.

Courts can request more. They can also dismiss on the face of the pleading.

Mashinsky is 59 years old. He began serving his sentence this year. If the motion succeeds, he would be resentenced — not necessarily released. If it fails, as most § 2255 motions do, he returns to serving out the 12 years that his own guilty plea helped produce.

The man who told his customers he knew what he did was wrong is now asking a federal judge to agree that someone else's wrongdoing poisoned the outcome.

Primary sources: CourtListener docket entry, Case 1:23-cr-00347-JGK, Document 189, SDNY, filed May 26, 2026; Decrypt, May 31, 2026; Department of Justice press release on Celsius charges; FTC settlement announcement.