Payza founder gets 3.5 more years for hiding $43M in Bitcoin

Firoz Patel, the founder of Payza, has been sentenced to an additional three and a half years in prison for attempting to conceal 450 Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC), valued at over $43 million, after his 2020 money laundering conviction.

Judge Dabney Friedrich of the Washington, D.C., federal court handed down the 41-month sentence following Patel's guilty plea to obstruction of an official proceeding in September.

In 2020, Patel received a three-year sentence plus two years of supervised release for operating Payza, which processed crypto payments in the U.S. without proper authorisation and facilitated transactions for money launderers, Ponzi (CRYPTO:PONZI) schemes, and pyramid schemes.

As part of his initial sentencing, Patel was ordered to disclose all property acquired through Payza's operations.

Patel claimed to only have $30,000 in a retirement account.

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), Patel began gathering Payza's Bitcoin shortly after sentencing and attempted to deposit it with Binance, but the exchange flagged and closed his account in April 2021.

He then opened an account at Blockchain.com under his father's name and tried to transfer the Bitcoin, but the exchange also flagged the deposit and froze the funds.

Patel then instructed a Payza associate to provide false identification to the exchange in an attempt to release the funds.

While serving his initial three-year sentence, Patel became aware of the investigation into the 450 BTC and enlisted someone to impersonate a lawyer to delay prosecutors long enough for him to be released and flee the U.S.

However, investigators uncovered the scheme and indicted him before his scheduled release.

In addition to the new prison sentence, Judge Friedrich ordered Patel to three years of supervised release and to forfeit over $24 million along with the 450 BTC held by Blockchain.com.