January 7, 2020, was a productive day in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Russian hacker Andrei Tyurin was sentenced to 12 years in prison as an accomplice to Israeli cybercrime supervillain Gery Shalon, who was also charged. He had previously pleaded guilty. In parallel, Hamid “Ray” Akhavan and his German partner Ruben Wiegand, charged with money laundering and bank fraud, had a trial. Akhavan was rearrested for violating pretrial release conditions.
The Eaze Case
It is known that Iranian-born U.S. citizen Ray Akhavan and his German partner Ruben Wiegand have been charged by the U.S. government with money laundering and bank fraud in connection with the Eaze marijuana online market place. While the purchase and sale of marijuana for personal use have become legal in many U.S. states, it remains illegal on the federal level. Most U.S. banks aren’t willing to process payments for marijuana sales. Prosecutors allege that Eaze executives worked with Akhavan and Weigand to devise a “transaction laundering scheme” that hid the true nature of the transaction from banks.
Between 2017 and 2019, more than $100 million in credit and debit transactions were processed in the Eaze scheme. Akhavan and Weigand used to open phony merchants’ accounts, collected fees that were in some cases more than 10% of the marijuana transactions.
FBME Bank and Wirecard
Ray Akhavan – he is also referred to as “Porn Baron” was one of the key players in the scandal surrounding the collapsed FBME Bank (read this FinTelegram report). FBME Bank in turn is said to have been connected to the also collapsed Wirecard via Akhavan. There are currently reportedly investigations on the part of the U.S. authorities into whether there are any links between these cases – Eaze, FBME, and Wirecard. In any case, Akhavan is currently back in custody as Matthew Russel of Inner City Press reported yesterday.
