The former owner of a National Football League (NFL) team has been sentenced to more than six years in prison for acting as a “shadow bank” and illegally processing more than $700 million in transactions for crypto exchanges.
Reginald Fowler, who previously co-owned the Minnesota Vikings, founded a company called Global Trading Solutions LLC in 2018.
Using that company, he partnered with Israeli nationals who operated a number of crypto companies, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
The Israeli crypto companies worked with exchanges to trade crypto for fiat currencies, but the companies would not have been allowed access to banks if they were open about their digital asset trading, so they lied to financial institutions instead.
Fowler opened accounts with banks on behalf of Israeli crypto companies and did not tell them that he used the accounts to process crypto transactions. None of the affiliates was licensed as a money transmitter.
Fowler also ripped off the now-defunct Alliance of American Football (AAF), a football minor league that lasted less than one season in 2019.
The former Vikings co-owner acquired an ownership interest in the football league by lying and saying he owned the funds his company held on behalf of clients for whom he performed illegal payment processing services.
Fowler also claimed the money came from real estate rather than crypto, and he did not tell the league that the US government had closed his accounts and seized his money in the month prior to his “investment” in the league.
The AAF went bankrupt in 2019, which the US law firm attributes “in part” to Fowler’s lies. The former co-owner of Vikings was charged with violating anti-money laundering laws, defrauding the AAF and lying to US banks.
In addition to his 75-month prison sentence, he was also ordered to forfeit more than $740 million and repay more than $53 million to the AAF.
Says Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York,
“Reginald Fowler circumvented federal law by processing hundreds of millions of dollars in unregulated transactions on behalf of cryptocurrency exchanges as a shadow bank. He did this by lying to legitimate US financial institutions, which exposed the US financial system to serious risks. He then victimized a professional football league by lying about his net worth in exchange for a significant portion of the league.
Let’s be clear: this Bureau is committed to prosecuting people who lie to banks and circumvent the law as a means of doing business.”
Don’t Miss Out – Subscribe to receive crypto email alerts delivered straight to your inbox
Check price action
follow us on TwitterFacebook and Telegram
Surf the Daily Hodl mix
Image generated: Midway through the journey
