Rossen Iossifov was already doing 111 months for laundering nearly $5 million when, prosecutors now allege, the crypto the court ordered him to forfeit walked out of a Kraken account and through a mixer. The story is not the theft. The story is that the keys never actually left the cell.
A Cleveland man pleaded guilty in a transnational scheme that turned ride-share drivers into unwitting cash couriers and grandchildren's voices into the lock that opened a generation's savings accounts. The machine ran from October through January. The drivers never knew what they were carrying.
Joseph Kwadwo Badu Boateng spent ten years running a long con out of Ghana under the name "Dada Joe Remix," courting elderly Americans through screens and asking them to pay the taxes on a fortune that was never going to arrive. He pleaded guilty in Arizona on a conspiracy to commit wire fraud charge and agreed to $4.4 million in restitution.
Eleven defendants have pleaded guilty in a $65 million elder fraud and money laundering operation that used call centers in India, money mules in Flushing, and a nationwide grid of short-term rentals to launder cash mailed by more than 2,000 elderly Americans. This is what the machine looked like from the kitchen table.
Hua Wang pleaded guilty in San Diego federal court to running the pickup end of a $65 million elder fraud ring that reached from India-based call centers to short-term rentals across America. The machine ran on cash mailed in shoeboxes by people who thought they were saving their own money.
Arya Bolurfrushan built an AI startup in Abu Dhabi and pleaded guilty in secret last summer to trading on merger tips leaked out of America's biggest law firms. The plea was unsealed this week. The machine it revealed is older than any startup.