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MANTORVILLE — A Pine Island man was sentenced in Dodge County District Court on Wednesday, June 28, 2022, to five years of probation for using cryptocurrency to money launder over a million dollars in 2021.
Daniel Joseph Rezac, 37, pleaded guilty in May 2022 to three counts of felony concealing criminal proceeds. As part of the plea deal, seven counts of felony concealing criminal proceeds were dismissed.
District Judge Jodi Williamson also ordered Rezac on Wednesday to serve 100 hours of community service.
According to the criminal complaint:
Rezac was involved in a money laundering scheme where he would deposit large amounts of money given to him into checking accounts under his name. Multiple people would then collect the money and deposit it into cryptocurrency accounts on Kraken and Gemini, two exhanges used to buy and sell cryptocurrency.
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Rezac told a Dodge County deputy and a senior special agent for the U.S. Secret Service during a July 2021 interview that he was contacted via Facebook by a man from the United Kingdom and continued to converse with him through emails and internet applications. The British man asked Rezac to be a middleman for the money laundering scheme in exchange for being paid. Rezac told law enforcement he signed an employee contract with the man.
According to bank statements provided to law enforcement by Rezac, he deposited $1,114,878 into various bank accounts and transferred out $1,081,265 between April 2021 and January 2021. Rezac was left with a profit of $33,513 following the transactions.
A Secret Service agent told Rezac that what he was doing was acting as a “money-mule” and what he was doing was illegal. Rezac told law enforcement that he knew his actions were unlawful and at one point had tried to quit before being talked back into continuing the scheme.
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