EXPLORE SECTIONS
Adam Iza Called Himself The Godfather and Had Deputies on the Payroll
On September 9, 2026, Adam Iza was sentenced to 180 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release. Fifteen years. He was 26 years old, and he had spent the previous two of them in federal custody. The sentence came out of the District of Connecticut, for a crime committed in Danbury on August 25, 2024. Six men from Florida violently carjacked a Lamborghini Urus and kidnapped both of the people inside it. That is the offence Iza was sentenced for, and on its own it would be a grim but not unusual entry in this section: crypto wealth is portable, untraceable once moved, and increasingly extracted by people willing to put hands on the person who holds the keys. What separates Iza from every other violent crypto robbery CMZ has documented is what his case pulled in behind it. Iza styled himself as a cryptocurrency mogul and went by The Godfather. His federal prosecution, which ran across two jurisdictions, ensnared several former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies. Not officers who looked the other way. Officers who worked for him. One former deputy, Michael David Coberg, is serving 63 months in federal prison for helping Iza extort a rival and orchestrate the sham arrest of another adversary in Paramount in 2021. Read that twice. A sworn deputy used the apparatus of law enforcement, with its power to detain a person and place them in a cell, to arrest somebody on behalf of a private client who wanted them out of the way. Another former deputy, Simpkins, was sentenced in July 2026 to 18 months after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice for lying to federal investigators about an alleged $25,000 extortion.
CZ: The Man Who Built Crypto's Biggest Casino
Changpeng Zhao, universally known as CZ, built the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world in under six months. Binance launched in July 2017 and by December it was processing more trades than any competitor. By 2022, it handled roughly 60% of all global crypto spot trading volume. The platform that CZ built became the backbone of the entire crypto market. He did it by being faster, cheaper, and more aggressive than everyone else. While competitors navigated regulatory frameworks, CZ operated Binance from nowhere and everywhere. No headquarters. No fixed jurisdiction. Servers scattered across the globe. Regulators in dozens of countries issued warnings. CZ kept building. The strategy worked spectacularly until it didn't. In November 2023, the DOJ announced a landmark settlement. Binance would pay $4.3 billion in fines. CZ personally pleaded guilty to one count of failing to maintain an effective AML program and agreed to step down as CEO. He paid an additional $50 million personal fine. Richard Teng replaced him. CZ was given a lifetime ban from holding an executive position at Binance. The charges revealed that Binance had knowingly processed transactions for sanctioned entities, terrorist financing organizations, and ransomware operators. In 2017, it was estimated that the exchange handled 95% of all ransomware payments. Internal communications showed employees discussing how to help users in sanctioned countries bypass restrictions.