A former minority owner of the Minnesota Vikings has been sentenced to 75 months in prison over a cryptocurrency fraud.
Reginald Fowler, 64, of Chandler, Arizona, was ordered to forfeit $740 million and pay restitution of $53 million after being found to have processed more than $700 million in “unregulated transactions” on behalf of cryptocurrency exchanges, which the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York says violates federal anti-money laundering laws.
The SDNY says Fowler also lied to banks to process the transactions, and “defrauded” the Alliance of American Football (AAF) as he bought an ownership stake in the league while lying about his net worth.
Fowler attempted to buy the Vikings in 2005, eventually becoming a minority owner until 2014, when he left the franchise amid financial struggles as reported at the time by the Star Tribune.
Per SDNY, Fowler in early 2018 established a company called Global Trading Solutions that would work with a series of cryptocurrency companies operated by Israeli nationals.
These companies offered exchange of fiat currency for cryptocurrency, but were unable to access legitimate banks as they were “reluctant to handle” such transactions.
The attorney’s office says the companies “lied to banks in order to open accounts that were used to process cryptocurrency transactions without the banks’ knowledge,” with Fowler responsible for opening dozens of these accounts in the U.S. and around the world.
“He did not disclose GTS’s involvement with the Crypto Companies and the fact that it was operating as a payment processor for hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency transactions,” the SDNY said.
“Fowler also directed other individuals to include false information on wire transfer instructions to further deceive banks about the nature of GTS’s business.”
Over the course of ten months, he processed around $750 million in transactions in various currencies.
“At no point were Fowler, GTS, nor any of the Crypto Companies ever licensed as a money transmitting business in the United States, as required by federal law,” the attorney’s office said.
When buying a stake in the short-lived AAF, he claimed personal ownership of GTS funds that actually belonged to clients on whose behalf he was transferring money.
“As he did when opening bank accounts, Fowler lied to AAF executives, telling them that the funds in the GTS bank accounts derived from real estate investments as well as government contracts and that the tens of millions of dollars in the GTS accounts were liquid assets he could use to invest in the AAF,” the SDNY said, adding that Fowler never disclosed that he was involved with the crypto companies.
