TYLER, Texas –A 75-year-old woman and a 33-year-old man have been indicted for their roles in a cryptocurrency money laundering scheme in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney Brit Featherston.
Lois Boyd, of Amelia Court House, VA, and Manik Mehtani, of McLean, VA, were named in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury, charging them with a violation of the Travel Act, money laundering, and money laundering conspiracy.
According to the indictment, Boyd and Mehtani are alleged to have conspired with others to receive victim money derived from a variety of fraud schemes and launder the proceeds through cryptocurrency. The defendants are alleged to have routinely structured deposits in order to avoid transaction reporting requirements and to conceal the nature and source of the criminal proceeds. The defendants allegedly exchanged the criminal proceeds for cryptocurrency and directed the cryptocurrency to wallets under the control of their foreign co-conspirators. In August 2020, the defendants traveled to Longview, Texas, where they attempted to exchange more than $450,000 for Bitcoin. They were temporarily detained and the money was seized. In the course of their operation, Boyd, Mehtani, and their co-conspirators allegedly laundered more than $750,000.00.
If convicted, Boyd and Mehtani face up to 20 years in federal prison. A grand jury indictment is not evidence of guilt. A defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
This effort is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) operation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach. Additional information about the OCDETF Program can be found at https://www.justice.gov/OCDETF.
This case is being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nathaniel C. Kummerfeld and L. Frank Coan, Jr.
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