6 Years in Prison for Arizona Entrepreneur for Offering Shadow Banking Services to Crypto Exchanges

A joint investigation by the FBI’s Money Laundering Task Force and the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigations led to a 75-month prison sentence for 64-year-old Arizona businessman Reginald Fowler.

The court also required Fowler, a former co-owner of the professional American football team Minnesota Vikings, to pay $74.02 million and recover $5.31 million to the American Football Association (AAF), a short-lived American football club. minor league.

The lawsuit was led by the United States Attorney’s Office’s Money Laundering and Transnational Corporate Crime Unit.

Providing shadow banking services

Damien Williams, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York (SDNY) PR on June 5, He said Fowler processed approximately $750 million in transactions for cryptocurrency exchanges acting as payment processor while his company Global Trading Solution did not have a license for the money transfer business as required by US federal laws. While doing so, he also lied to American banks.

FOWLER also directed other individuals to include false information in wire transfer instructions to further deceive banks about the nature of GTS’ business. In less than ten months, FOWLER has processed nearly $750 million in cryptocurrency transactions in various currencies,” said the PR from the attorney’s office.

NFL fraud

He was also convicted of defrauding the NFL, in which he acquired a large stake by investing clients’ money claiming it was his personal wealth.

“As he did when opening bank accounts, FOWLER lied to AAF executives, telling them that the money in the GTS bank accounts was derived from real estate investments as well as government contracts and that the tens of millions of dollars in the GTS accounts were liquid assets he could use to invest,” Williams said. in the AAF”.

In part, because of Fowler’s lies, the AAF declared bankruptcy in April 2019.

Catch up on cryptocrime

Due to the growing number of cryptocurrency-related crime and fraud cases, the US Department of Justice formed the “National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team” in September 2022. Cybersecurity Prosecutor Eun Young Choi heads the team of 150 plaintiffs.

In May, it was a Russian guy Accused by the Department of Justice with being part of three ransomware gangs that have made nearly $200 million dollars through numerous ransomware attacks targeting police departments, hospitals, and schools.