Las Vegas, NV: Martin Mizrahi, 51, from Las Vegas, was found guilty of wire fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, aggravated identity theft, and other crimes by Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Mizrahi was involved in various schemes that defrauded banks and credit card companies of nearly $8 million and laundered over $4 million in fraudulent and illegal drug profits.
The verdict was delivered after a 12-day trial presided over by U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken. Between February 2021 and June 2021, Mizrahi and his co-defendants engaged in various fraudulent activities to deceive banks and credit card companies and to launder money obtained from drug sales, as well as from the fraudulent activities, as stated in a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office.
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Starting around February 2021, Mizrahi started taking large amounts of cash earned from selling narcotics, which he cleaned for people linked to a Mexican cartel by changing the money into Bitcoin and transferring it to unidentified cryptocurrency accounts given to him by his partners in the scheme. Moreover, he laundered fraudulent funds received by his company through wire transfers, converting them into bitcoin before transferring them to anonymous cryptocurrency wallets.
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The cash were acquired through a business email intrusion scam, resulting in hackers stealing almost $3 million from a New York City-based non-profit organization. From February to June 2021, Mizrahi illegally cleaned over $4 million obtained from fraudulent activities and drug sales.
Between April and June 2021, Mizrahi took part in a credit card fraud conspiracy by processing around $8 million in false credit card charges through his company. The charges were made on several credit cards belonging to third parties, some of which were stolen, without any valid work or services being performed. He created fraudulent invoices to support the charges, which he then submitted to banks and credit card providers as part of the scam.