Lois Boyd, Cryptocurrency Money Laundering, Texas 2020

TYLER, Texas – A cryptocurrency money laundering scheme has been uncovered in the Eastern District of Texas, with a 75-year-old woman and a 33-year-old man at the center of the investigation.

According to a federal indictment, Lois Boyd, of Amelia Court House, VA, and Manik Mehtani, of McLean, VA, were named in a violation of the Travel Act, money laundering, and money laundering conspiracy. The indictment alleges that Boyd and Mehtani conspired with others to receive victim money derived from a variety of fraud schemes and launder the proceeds through cryptocurrency.

The defendants allegedly structured deposits in order to avoid transaction reporting requirements and to conceal the nature and source of the criminal proceeds. They also 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, and 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.

The 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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