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LOS ANGELES (CN) — A self-styled cryptocurrency “godfather” has agreed to plead guilty to hiring off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff deputies to intimidate and extort people he had a conflict with, including by illegally obtaining search warrants, the U.S. attorney’s office in LA announced Friday.
Adam Iza, 24, admitted to charges that he conspired to violate the civil rights of his victims, committed wire fraud and dodged federal income taxes on more than $36 million he made from illegally selling access to Facebook advertising accounts he had hacked.
Iza, who lived in the ultra-wealthy Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles and in Newport Coast, California, has been in federal custody since his arrest in September. He faces as long as 35 years in prison.
According to his plea agreement, Iza paid $100,000 a month to a private security company owned by a sheriff deputy, who employed other active-duty deputies and law enforcement personnel, for around the clock protection.
The deputy, Eric Saavedra, 41, has also agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to violate the rights of Iza’s victims.
“When law enforcement officers violate their oath, they betray not only the public but also the vast majority of officers who do the job the right way,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement. “The conduct admitted to in these plea agreements is deeply disturbing and cannot be tolerated."
Starting in 2021, Saavedra illegally and regularly accessed nonpublic law enforcement databases to obtain personal identifiable information for Iza, including for people with whom Iza had personal or business disputes, their associates and their family members, according to the plea deal.
Saavedra also improperly obtained court-authorized search warrants related to Iza’s victims, including a warrant to search a residence, which Saavedra helped facilitate, and a warrant for another victim’s location information, which Saavedra obtained directly.
In January 2022, Saavedra lied to an LA County Superior Court judge when he claimed the phone number of one of Iza’s victims was associated with a suspect in a firearms investigation — winning him a warrant to track the victim’s phone.
Once the deputy had located the victim, he gave Iza the address. Iza, believing the victim possessed a laptop computer containing more than $100 million in cryptocurrency, sent three armed men to steal the laptop. They were chased when the victim opened fire on them when they tried to enter his home.
Afterward, Iza sent the victim a video of the attempted home invasion robbery.
In August 2021, two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies held another of Iza’s victims at gunpoint inside Iza’s residence and forced him to transfer $25,000 to Iza. Then, deputies working for Iza engineered a traffic stop where this person was arrested and accused of illegally transporting drugs.
Iza also admitted in his plea deal that for four years he illegally sold access to business manager accounts and their associated lines of credit for advertising on Facebook. He first gained access to the accounts through phishing attacks by an associate in Kosovo, and did so later through his own phishing efforts.
Largely as a result of his unique history and background, and his early acceptance of responsibility, the U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed not to prosecute Iza for additional crimes, including kidnapping, extortion, aggravated identity theft and firearm enhancements, his attorney Josef Sadat said in an email.
“Hopefully, others involved in this, whose actions were arguably more morally reprehensible than that of Mr. Iza given their comparative age and societal positions, will follow his path sooner than later since truth leads to redemption,” Sadat said. “Mr. Iza is extremely intelligent. After he is released from custody, the hope is that he will use his genius to make the world a better place.”
As part of his plea agreement, Saavedra will forfeit a sizable collection of luxury fashion items, including 32 Louis Vuitton bags and 27 pairs of Gucci shoes, purportedly bought with his criminally obtained funds. He faces as long as 13 years in prison.
An attorney for Saavedra didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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