Hugo Sergio Mejia. A 49-year-old peer-to-peer crypto dealer has agreed to plead responsible for cash laundering expenses and working in an unlicensed cash forwarding enterprise.
The U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace cites Mejia for utilizing a set of limited legal liability companies to conceal his operations’ true nature while exchanging money for Bitcoins (BTC) over a period spanning more notable than two years.
The complaint accuses Mejia of transferring funds between Bitcoin and U.S. {dollars} price no less than $13 million for purchasers from Might 2018 and September 2020 utilizing his firms Worldwide Safe Communications, World Safe Knowledge, and The HODL Group.
In reply to the offered plea settlement, Mejia arranged with a shopper collaborating with regulation enforcement to alternate Bitcoin for tens of hundreds of {dollars} in money between Might 2019 and March 2020.
Despite the shopper notifying Mejia that his primary buyer was an Australian methamphetamine purchaser throughout a gathering in March 2020, Meija was keen to proceed with the transaction. The grievance affirms Mejia carried out transactions price more significant than 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 {dollars} for the shopper:
“Mejia and the shopper who was working with regulation enforcement carried out 5 Bitcoin-cash transactions that cumulatively exceeded $250,000, the plea settlement states.”
The shopper carried out no less than five transactions price greater than $250,000 incomplete.
As a part of his plea deal, Mejia has accepted to forfeit nearly $234,000 in money and roughly $95,500 in cryptocurrency and metals found at his California residences.
The agreement moreover mandates that any further, Meija will “preserve, at most, one digital foreign money pockets, and that one pockets shall be used for all private transactions, restricted to solely utilizing and owning open public blockchain digital currencies and restricted from utilizing privacy-based blockchain digital currencies.“
Mejia was charged on Friday, Jan. 29, and is expected to plead responsible to one rely upon cash laundering, and one relies upon working an unlicensed cash substitute which he didn’t register with the Treasury Division’s Monetary Crimes Enforcement Community (FinCEN).
Mejia is expected to go earlier than a U.S. district court docket in March and faces a most statutory sentence of 25 years behind bars in federal jail.
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