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A popular Jackson Township pastor has been convicted of illegally allowing Bitcoin scammers to launder dirty money through the pastor's credit union in exchange for kickbacks.
A federal jury in New York City found Trevón Gross, 52, pastor at Hope Cathedral in Jackson and former chairman of the now-defunct Helping Other People Excel Federal Credit Union, guilty of one count each of receipt of corrupt payments as an officer of a financial institution, conspiring to make or receive corrupt payments, obstructing a regulatory investigation and making false statements to regulators, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. The verdict was returned Friday following the pastor's trial. He was accused of accepting $150,000 in bribes but pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The scheme began in Florida, where Anthony R. Murgio ran Coin.mx, a bitcoin exchange service, with help from Yuri Lebedev, prosecutors said. Investigators charged Murgio and Lebedev with using a bogus antiques exchange as a front for the bitcoin service, skirting registration and reporting requirements on $10 million worth of bitcoin transactions. A bitcoin is a computer-generated digital currency that is used worldwide and is untraceable in most cases.
The owner of Coin.mx, Israeli national Gery Shalon, also was tied to a 2014 cyber attack against JPMorgan Chase bank, which federal investigators called the largest-ever theft of customer data from an American financial institution.
Murgio, Lebedev "and their co-conspirators engaged in substantial efforts to evade detection of their unlawful Bitcoin exchange scheme by operating through a phony front company called Collectibles Club, and by maintaining a corresponding phony Collectibles Club website," according to a criminal complaint against all three. They "sought to trick the major financial institutions through which they operated into believing their unlawful Bitcoin exchange business was simply a members-only association of individuals who discussed, bought, and sold collectible items, such as stamps and sports memorabilia."
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Murgio and his associates opened bank accounts in the name of the dummy organization – one of them in New York – and told their customers to lie to banks about what they were buying through Coin.mx, according to the complaint.
Murgio and Lebedev roped in Gross in 2014, according to the complaint. Lebedev offered up $41,000 of his own money to help convince Gross to let him, Murgio and their associates take over HOPE FCU, a federal credit union based alternately in Lakewood and Jackson that catered to "primarily low-income members."
Gross had chaired the credit union's board. With Gross' help, Murgio "installed his co-conspirators, including Lebedev, on HOPE FCU's board of directors and transferred Coin.mx's banking operations to HOPE FCU," according to the complaint.
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The Florida-based crew used HOPE FCU "as a captive bank" into 2015, according to a March 2016 statement from then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, but the National Credit Union Administration – which charters and supervises federal credit unions – eventually caught on to the "substantial payment processing activity" that was going on there. The regulators "forced HOPE FCU to cease engaging in such activity."
Murgio moved his exchange offshore, and the regulators put HOPE FCU into conservatorship before killing it altogether, Bharara announced at the time.
According to a November 2015 statement from the regulatory agency, HOPE FCU had 110 members and $626,529 in assets just before it was liquidated.
Murgio, 34, of Tampa, Florida, pleaded guilty in January to one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, prosecutors said. The same jury that found Gross guilty also convicted Lebedev, 39, of St. Johns, Florida, of one count of making corrupt payments to an officer of a financial institution, participation in a conspiracy to make and receive corrupt payments, obstructing the regulators' examination, making false statements to regulators, wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud.
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Gross is scheduled for sentencing on July 20.
Hope Cathedral's website still named Gross as pastor on Tuesday, as well as his wife, D. Qwynn Gross.
Gross "accepted his call to preach at a very young age. He was licensed to preach at the age of 14. Since that time, he has actively prepared for pastoral ministry," according to his biography on the church's website. "With degrees from the University of Virginia, Duke University and further graduate work at Harvard University, Pastor Trevón has a passion for teaching the word of God. His desire is to see people added to the family of God and growing in their faith so that they will see God's purposes for their lives unfold."
Gross could not be reached for comment. He faces 30 years in prison.
Henry Klingeman, Gross' defense attorney, said in an email to Newsweek magazine that, “On behalf of Pastor Gross, we will now seek a judgment of acquittal from the court and — if and when the time comes — a fair and lenient sentence.”
Alex N. Gecan: 732-643-4043; [email protected]
http://www.app.com/story/news/crime/jersey-mayhem/2017/03/21/jackson-pastor-convicted-bitcoin-money-laundering-scheme/99448268/