In a Brooklyn federal court, Jebara Igbara, also known as “Jay Mazini,” a crypto-influencer on social media platforms such as Instagram, was sentenced to 84 months in prison for wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, and money laundering.
According to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, Igbara’s schemes caused significant financial losses to naïve investors, totaling millions of dollars.
Social Media Deception
According to the investigation, Igbara used his prominent Instagram account, “Jay Mazini,” to project a false appearance of affluence.
Igbara shared films in which he pretended to give big sums of money to various people as gifts. However, it was discovered that behind this “facade,” Igbara was conducting many fraudulent activities, robbing investors of at least $8 million.
Igbara has been sentenced to forfeit $10 million as part of his sentence. The exact amount of recompense due to the victims will be established later. Breon Peace, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said:
The prosecution of Igbara revealed him to be a scammer who utilized his social media prominence to defraud investors of millions of dollars. Shamefully, he targeted his own religious community, abusing their trust in him to waste and gamble their hard-earned money. Hopefully, today’s sentencing will make fraudsters like this defendant reconsider the consequences before victimizing investors for personal gain.
False Promises and Fake Cryptoschemes
According to investigations performed by the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, Igbara had a substantial social media presence on Instagram from 2019 to 2021, garnering approximately one million followers.
He portrayed himself as a successful investor and businessman, while also incorporating elements of his Muslim faith into his articles to appear devout and trustworthy.
Videos on Igbara’s Instagram showed him delivering cash to unsuspecting people in grocery stores, fast food restaurants, and even a woman he met at the airport who had misplaced her handbag.
Igbara’s fraudulent actions were principally focused on a firm called Halal Capital LLC, through which he carried out an investment fraud scheme.
Igbara claimed to invest in stocks, electronics resale, and personal protective equipment sales after requesting donations from New York’s Muslim-American community.
Igbara ran a Ponzi scam, spending the majority of the proceeds on personal expenses, expensive vehicles, and gambling. To preserve the sense of legality and keep investors interested, he launched a second fraudulent scam on his social media profiles, claiming to pay above-market prices for various crypto assets.
Victims would subsequently get altered photos of wire transfer confirmations, implying that Igbara had delivered money for the promised cryptocurrency while, in reality, he had stolen the funds.
IRS-CI Special Agent in Charge Fattorusso described Igbara as a “crypto con man” who not only constructed a bogus online persona to trick people into investing in his scams, but also used his Instagram presence to demonstrate his success.
Fattorusso claimed that Igbara defrauded the New York Muslim community of millions of dollars, wasting and gambling it away “without remorse.”