A Los Angeles man has been sentenced to three years behind bars and ordered to pay $26.8 million for his role in laundering more than $36.9 million from victims of an international digital asset investment scam that was carried out from Cambodia, officials said Tuesday.
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Jose Somarriba, 56, who pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money services business, was sentenced Monday in Los Angeles federal court.
Somarriba and four co-defendants were part of an international criminal network that induced U.S. victims, believing they were investing in digital assets, to transfer funds to accounts controlled by co-conspirators and that laundered victim money through U.S. shell companies, international bank accounts and digital asset wallets, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
As part of the conspiracy, co-conspirators living overseas contacted U.S. victims directly through unsolicited social media interactions, telephone calls, text messages and online dating services -- and gained the victims' trust, court papers allege.
The co-conspirators then promoted fraudulent digital asset investments to the victims. Scammers would tell victims that their investments were appreciating in value when, in fact, those funds were stolen and not invested at all, according to the DOJ.
Instead, almost $37 million in victim funds were transferred from U.S. bank accounts controlled by the co-conspirators to a single account at Deltec Bank in the Bahamas, opened in the name of Axis Digital Limited, court papers say.
Somarriba and associates directed Deltec Bank to convert victim funds to a cryptocurrency and to transfer the converted funds to a digital asset wallet controlled by individuals in Cambodia, according to the DOJ. From there, co-conspirators in Cambodia transferred the funds to the leaders of scam centers throughout the region, they said.
Prosecutors said Somarriba co-founded Axis Digital and opened the Deltec Bank account.
Co-defendant Shengsheng He, 40, of La Puente, was sentenced in September to four years and three months in federal prison, and ordered to pay restitution, for his role in the scheme.
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