Instagram Influencer Jay Manzini Pleads Guilty for Draining $2.5M in BTC From Fans

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The pop­u­lar Insta­gram influ­encer Jebara Igbara, also known as “Jay Manzi­ni,” plead­ed guilty to mon­ey laun­der­ing, wire fraud, and wire fraud con­spir­a­cy. He used the social media plat­form to pro­mote var­i­ous schemes to investors but, in fact, defraud­ed them with $8 million.

In addi­tion, Igbara told his fol­low­ers he want­ed to buy a huge amount of bit­coin and that autho­rized exchanges would not allow him to accu­mu­late such a stash. He urged Insta­gram users to send him BTC, assur­ing he will pay pre­mi­um prices for those trans­ac­tions. Need­less to say, he pock­et­ed approx­i­mate­ly $2.5 mil­lion worth of the pri­ma­ry cryp­tocur­ren­cy from the lured individuals.

Prison Time for the Criminal

The US Depart­ment of Jus­tice announced that the so-called Insta­gram influ­encer “Jay Manzi­ni” will face up to 20 years in fed­er­al prison for his offenses.

He admit­ted using his fame on the social media plat­form to pop­u­lar­ize invest­ment prod­ucts to his fol­low­ers, main­ly part of the New York Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty. The scams result­ed in at least $8 mil­lion drained from conned individuals.

“With today’s plea, the defen­dant has admit­ted lever­ag­ing his Insta­gram pop­u­lar­i­ty to prey upon inno­cent investors and steal at least $8 mil­lion of their hard-earned mon­ey. Togeth­er with our agency part­ners, this Office is com­mit­ted to bring­ing scam­mers to jus­tice,” the state­ment reads.

Addi­tion­al­ly, “Jay Manzi­ni” ran a mul­ti-mil­lion bit­coin Ponzi scheme. He post­ed ads on his Insta­gram sto­ries, main­tain­ing he want­ed to buy such large amounts of BTC that promi­nent trad­ing venues like Binance and Coin­base would not allow him.

Jay Manzini
Jay Manzi­ni, Source: NY Post

He promised to pay above-mar­ket prices for the bit­coin his fans sent to his per­son­al wal­let and pro­vid­ed fab­ri­cat­ed pic­tures of wire trans­fers. How­ev­er, he nev­er sent those funds and end­ed up steal­ing the people’s assets:

“All the vic­tims, in this case, were promised some­thing that was too good to be true. The vic­tims of the bit­coin advance fee scheme were guar­an­teed above the cur­rent mar­ket val­ue for their bitcoin.

This mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar case is a reminder for any­one think­ing of invest­ing: Be skep­ti­cal of any invest­ments with larg­er-than-life promis­es, because if it sounds too good to be true, it prob­a­bly is,” IRS-CI Spe­cial Agent-in-Charge Fat­torus­so warned.

The Punishment Might not be That Tough

Despite run­ning a mul­ti-mil­lion scam, plead­ing guilty could result in a reduced prison sen­tence for “Jay Manzini.”

The Flori­da res­i­dent Joshua David Nicholas, who stole $100 mil­lion worth of cryp­to from investors, admit­ted his crime in Sep­tem­ber and is expect­ed to stay behind bars for up to five years.

On the oth­er hand, Da Corte, Gon­za­lez, and Meza, who stole $4 mil­lion in dig­i­tal cur­ren­cies from banks and exchanges, have not plead­ed guilty and might spend up to 30 years in jail.

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