Adam Iza Gets 78 Months for $37M Meta Fraud, on Top of a 15-Year Robbery Term

Adam Iza, 26, once called himself "The Godfather." On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced he was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison for defrauding Meta of more than $37 million, plus tax evasion and a campaign of intimidation run through off-duty deputies. U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson also ordered $23.4 million in restitution. The sentence runs at the same time as the 15-year term Iza received last month in Connecticut for his role in an attempted bitcoin robbery.

The Meta scheme, and how it paid

Iza got into Meta Business Manager, the company's dashboard where advertisers buy and manage ad space. He gained access to business accounts and the credit lines attached to them, then sold that access to advertising companies. Those companies billed clients for ads that never ran. Meta billed them too, and then issued refunds for the fake buys. The gap between what was billed and what was refunded is where the money came from. Prosecutors said the scheme brought Iza at least $36.4 million in income and left an estimated $13.3 million tax loss for the IRS. He moved the corporate income tied to the fraud into crypto custodians, accounts held by outside crypto firms that safeguard funds, while hiding his ownership of a company called Zort. That is the part that ties this case to crypto: the fraud itself hit Meta, but the laundering touched the bitcoin and crypto custody world.

The deputies-for-hire problem

Between 2021 and 2022, Iza paid off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies to dig up confidential law-enforcement information and personal data on people he had disputes with. He used search warrants and database access to locate and harass them. Five of those deputies have since been convicted. Prosecutors used that pattern at sentencing, arguing that people with money cannot buy their way into investigative tools, warrants, and armed officers to settle private scores. That thread runs through the case in an ugly way. Iza treated both Meta's ad system and the county's badge as rentable services. In the ad scheme he rented trust through hacked accounts. In the intimidation scheme he rented authority through deputies. The 78 months, the tax conviction, and the five deputy convictions all sit inside the same pattern.

Guilty plea, and the Connecticut case running alongside

Iza pleaded guilty in January 2025 to conspiracy against rights, wire fraud, and one count of tax evasion. The 78 months from Judge Anderson does not stack behind his Connecticut sentence. It runs concurrently, meaning both clocks tick at once. The 15-year Connecticut term, imposed last month for his role in an attempted bitcoin robbery in August 2024, is the longer of the two and the one that sets the floor for his time inside. He is not the only one in recent sentences. A Brooklyn man got 12 years last month for impersonating Coinbase support in a $16 million theft from about 100 victims, and a Las Vegas businessman convicted in August faces up to 280 years after a Ponzi scheme that defrauded at least 400 investors out of $24 million, per court reporting. The pattern for crypto-linked fraud cases heading into late 2026 has been long sentences plus large restitution orders. Iza's $23.4 million restitution order, whatever share of it the government can actually collect, follows that line. What to track next: how much of the $23.4 million in restitution is recoverable, and how the concurrent structure shakes out against the 15-year Connecticut term, since anything left of that sentence is the real measure of his time behind bars. The Meta case resolves that same Tuesday, but the Connecticut sentence is the one still running.