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Self-proclaimed “godfather” Adam Iza sentenced for Meta fraud and hiring police officers for 78 months]
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said that 26-year-old Adam Iza, who called himself the “godfather,” was sentenced to 78 months in prison and ordered to pay 23400000 USD in restitution. He pleaded guilty in 2025 January to conspiracy against rights, wire fraud, and tax evasion charges and has been detained since 2024 September. The sentence will run concurrently with the 15-year sentence he received last month for an attempted Bitcoin robbery and will not increase his actual time in prison. 2021 August to 2022 April, Iza hired off-duty Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies as private security and admitted conspiring with them to obtain confidential law-enforcement records and personal data on people with whom he had disputes, secure court-authorized search warrants to track them, and have the officers intimidate and threaten them. The Justice Department said that five former officers have been convicted for working for him. Among them, 42-year-old Eric Chase Saavedra established a security company that supplied the officers and was sentenced to 21 months; 45-year-old Michael David Coberg is serving 63 months for helping extort rivals and arranging false drug arrests. Prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum that wealthy people cannot buy “search warrants, arrests, badges, or guns” for private disputes. In a separate fraud scheme, beginning in 2020 December Iza obtained access to Meta business management accounts and their associated lines of credit and resold that access to advertising agencies.Meta customers were charged for advertising they had never purchased, and Meta refunded the customers and absorbed the losses after discovering this.